Brain Thief

Jablokov, Alexander. Brain Thief. New York City: Tor, 2010.[1]

Reviewed by Janice Bogstad in SFRA Review #292 (Winter 2010): p. 16-17, who describes the plot as "constructed of weird characters, unlikely organizations, and mysterious events involving heads, artificial intelligence, and space travel." Relevant here: the AI, as "another kind of brain, an AI in the form of a fugitive machine" that "complicates the mystery revolving around whether it is mechanical or biological, and whether it will achieve its aim of space travel" — and the strangeness if not mystery of how it can effectively act as a fugitive as "a big machine that seems to have only very rudimentary mechanical parts" (p. 16).[2]

For brains, cf. and contrast William Hjortsberg's Gray Matters.

RDE, finishing 24Mar21