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From: Ahasuerus <ahasuerus@email.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: (ReacTor) Five Books About Duplicating Human Beings
Date: Thu, 8 May 2025 13:16:00 -0400
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On 5/8/2025 10:38 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
>>
>> Five Books About Duplicating Human Beings
>>
>> For some reason, cloning or copying people never goes according to plan...
>>
>> https://reactormag.com/five-books-about-duplicating-human-beings/
> 
> I have a copy of
> 
>    Blish, James and Lowndes, Robert _The Duplicated Man_ (1953)
> 
> Which I picked up from a rack in, IIRC, a K-mart back in
> the 70s.  Don't remember much other than I didn't like it
> at the time.

Don D'Ammassa's 2017 mini-review 
(http://www.dondammassa.com/R1B2017.htm#Duplicated_Man_) starts with:

 > This is a mess from beginning to end.

and ends with:

 > Awful. Unreadable.

"Unreadable" may be a slight exaggeration since I managed to finish it, 
but I remember wondering why I bothered.

As an aside, whenever I read a poorly written collaboration by otherwise 
capable authors, I wonder if there may be a story behind it, perhaps 
something like the story behind Simak/Campbell's _Empire_ -- 
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2873162