Interlibrary loan - gene wolfe

Interlibrary Loan is the brilliant follow-up to A Borrowed Man : the final work of fiction from multi-award winner and national literary treasure Gene Wolfe Hundreds of years in the future our civilization is shrunk down but we go on.

There is advanced technology, there are robots.

And there are clones.

Smithe is a borrowed person, his personality an uploaded recording of a deceased mystery writer.

Smithe is a piece of property, not a legal human.

As such, Smithe can be loaned to other branches.

Which he is.

Along with two fellow reclones, a cookbook and romance writer, they are shipped to Pollys Cove, where Smithe meets a little girl who wants to save her mother, a father who is dead but perhaps not.

And another E.

Smithe.

who definitely is.