Unwholly

Neal Shusterman

In the follow up to Unwind, Shusterman continues with his story of teens who are scheduled to be Unwound (have 99.44% or more of their body transplanted). The interest for me in these stories are looking at questions of identity and soul. Questions where the science of biology meet up with the religion of biology. Shusterman pushes the envelope here by introducing Cam, the first ever fully composite human. This leaps past the ethical issues of cloning or abortion or genetic modification. To assemble a functional person from "organ donors". As in Unwind, the premise is so far out that we can ignore the practicality (as all good science fiction draws us to) and jump straight to the immanent moral/ethical/personal catastrophe that is unfolding. Does the composite have a soul? Does an unwound person die? Presumably no, so where is their soul? On a larger scale, we are also beginning to explore how a society/culture gets to a place where the status quo might be crazy. And how do you expose the craziness or begin to move a society/culture beyond to a better place? And can you do this only via violence? Shusterman sets up a third novel in this series to be able to look closely at these questions. Looking forward to it.

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