Human consciousness can’t be saved and stored electronically — yet. But Ken MacLeod envisions just such a time in his latest novel, Newton’s Wake, on the coming nexus of man and machine.

The story unfolds in the 24th century, 300 years after “the Hard Rapture,” when machines powered by AI turned on their human creators in a nuclear war for control of Earth. The machines were victorious. The winners scanned the brains of the human dead and stored the contents electronically for possible reconstitution in the future….