Rogue Moon

Author: Algis Budrys

A massive alien structure is discovered on the moon. In order to explore it, volunteers are scanned in a matter transmitter on Earth and their doppelgangers are projected onto the moon while the original is able to experience everything that the doppelganger does. Unfortunately, the doppelganger is killed almost as soon as they enter the structure, and experiencing vicarious death is enough to send the volunteer mad. Then an adventurer, Al Barker, comes forward. The doppelganger is killed, but Barker retains his sanity. He goes again, and gets a little further into the structure before being killed. Then a little further, and a little further. But the experience of dying, over and over again, has an effect. Against this stark background, Budrys weaves a story of manipulation, sexual jealousy, a quest for thrills and a quest for power, all of which are reflected in the solitary experience of dying and dying and dying again for the sake of a few more feet inside a structure that remains enigmatic to the end. Rogue Moon is one of those stories that stays with you. The repeated agony of death remains as a powerful image that you can never quite get out of your mind. It may not be a story that you re-read much, but it's a story that you'll always remember.

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Budrys was never a prolific writer, but he wrote a handful of powerful and disturbing novels that are unlike the work of anyone else.

Alternative Choice
Who? Is a Cold War thriller that keeps its secrets right to the end. There is an explosion in an American research establishment close to the Soviet border, and a Soviet rescue mission gets there first. They take away for treatment Dr Martino, the head of the secret project. Months later, they return a man they claim is Martino. But he now has an artificial hand and arm, his head is enclosed within a featureless metal skull; there is no way of identifying him conclusively as the real Martino. The struggle to work out who is behind the iron mask is complicated by the fact that the person who may be Martino has undergone an existential crisis and is no longer sure of his own identity.

Another novel well worth reading is Michaelmas, in which a popular newsman is secretly in control of the world through an evolving AI he has created. But the world peace he has established is threatened by an alien presence.