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Embodied
Award-winning sci-fi authors team up to write a chilling story about transferring the human mind to android bodies.
The afterlife should be perfect. Your lover and friends already uploaded themselves into aesthetically tweaked android bodies and you’re the last to transition. An eternity of adventures, parties, and companionship await, in an everlasting body designed to your specifications. So why, when you wake up, do you see hands you don’t recognize? Why do you have memories of a life you never lived?
The afterlife should be perfect. Your lover and friends already uploaded themselves into aesthetically tweaked android bodies and you’re the last to transition. An eternity of adventures, parties, and companionship await, in an everlasting body designed to your specifications. So why, when you wake up, do you see hands you don’t recognize? Why do you have memories of a life you never lived?
- GenresScience FictionAudiobook
Audiobook
First published October 21, 2019
About the author
Madeline Ashby
57 books509 followersMadeline Ashby is a science fiction writer and strategic foresight consultant living in Toronto. She has been writing fiction since she was about thirteen years old. (Before that, she recited all her stories aloud, with funny voices and everything.) Her fiction has appeared in Nature, Tesseracts, Escape Pod, FLURB, the Shine Anthology, and elsewhere. Her non-fiction has appeared at BoingBoing.net, io9.com, Tor.com, Online Fandom, and WorldChanging. She is a member of the Cecil Street Irregulars, one of Toronto's oldest genre writers' workshops. She holds a M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies (her thesis was on anime, fan culture, and cyborg theory) and a M.Des. in strategic foresight & innovation (her project was on the future of border security). Currently, she is represented by Monica Pacheco of Anne McDermid & Associates.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 12, 2020
Some interesting elements (downloading a consciousness into an android body, sharing space in the same body with another, finding “work in the off-world colonies”, dastardly plots, and cats). The plot moves along quickly, but there were chapters that left me a little confused. I felt like several plot elements were introduced, then not all paid off. Not sure if this is because much more story is to come at some later date. Anyway, a quick read with some possibility.
December 28, 2020
This was my first experience with a Serial Box original story.
I thought this one was a bit all over the place and it felt too much like it was written by different people, which of course it was, but in a way that felt like they all took it in a different direction just because? I don't know.
I chose this story because I have books by all of the authors on my TBR, and thought it would be a nice introduction to their writing. I was wrong but I won't hold that against them, they are still in my TBR!
I thought this one was a bit all over the place and it felt too much like it was written by different people, which of course it was, but in a way that felt like they all took it in a different direction just because? I don't know.
I chose this story because I have books by all of the authors on my TBR, and thought it would be a nice introduction to their writing. I was wrong but I won't hold that against them, they are still in my TBR!
March 28, 2020
This is an odd little book. Little because its only 9 chapters of 10 to 12 min. each in narrated length, so roughly an hour and half listening time. And odd because each chapter is written by a different author! I listened because Mary Robinette Kowal (whom I Adore!) wrote chapter 8.
The only other book that I've ever read that was written this way was a story called Prep for Doom (which was awesome, I might add), but that's where the similarity ends! Because unlike Prep for Doom where all the indie-authors were working for common goal and the best book they could write. These pro-authors seemed to have accepted this as game/challenge to take their 10 minutes of air-time and dig the next author into a hole... making for a kinda muddled middle, sooo Mary Robinette Kowal really had to use her writing chops to pull the story together and the final episode was more or less of an epilogue...
So yeah, if you have the Serial Box app, you obviously like a narrated book, and Xe Sands was great! I say, go for it, it's free but, then you may also want to get Prep for Doom, and read the magic that can be made when authors take their work seriously!
The only other book that I've ever read that was written this way was a story called Prep for Doom (which was awesome, I might add), but that's where the similarity ends! Because unlike Prep for Doom where all the indie-authors were working for common goal and the best book they could write. These pro-authors seemed to have accepted this as game/challenge to take their 10 minutes of air-time and dig the next author into a hole... making for a kinda muddled middle, sooo Mary Robinette Kowal really had to use her writing chops to pull the story together and the final episode was more or less of an epilogue...
So yeah, if you have the Serial Box app, you obviously like a narrated book, and Xe Sands was great! I say, go for it, it's free but, then you may also want to get Prep for Doom, and read the magic that can be made when authors take their work seriously!
May 10, 2021
I wanted more of the Major, but I was NOT expecting that ending.
I love the concept of authors passing a story around, seeing where the person before you takes things and just running with it. Embodied is like that - and so is The Exquisite Corpse, if you're checking Realm for short and interesting reads or listens.
We lost sight of our original objective by the end, but we did accomplish something. Though we only get conclusions for two out of five of the main players. And no real explanation of how/why the events occurred.
I love the concept of authors passing a story around, seeing where the person before you takes things and just running with it. Embodied is like that - and so is The Exquisite Corpse, if you're checking Realm for short and interesting reads or listens.
We lost sight of our original objective by the end, but we did accomplish something. Though we only get conclusions for two out of five of the main players. And no real explanation of how/why the events occurred.
January 21, 2020
The first 4 chapters were really intriguing! Then it went in a direction I didn't expect. It was short and unexpectedly funny, I guess. I liked certain authors and chapters better than others and wasn't surprised by my preferences! I also did not think Leslie Murphy was a guy.
January 27, 2020
Listened to this for free via Serialbox app. Was really a silly, fun, quick story. Just when I thought it was getting going, it ended abruptly with a really good laugh.
May 3, 2020
No. It's like each author was trying to trip up the next author, which I'm sure was lots of fun to write, but is not lots of fun to read. It's just too much of a disjointed jumble.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews