Critical Reception
Besides winning the Nebula Award, The Terminal Experiment won the Prix Aurora Award for Best Best Long Form in English of 1995. It also earned one of the nine HOMer Awards that Sawyer has won. The novel was a Preliminary Nominee for the Bram Stoker Award, for Superior Achievement in a Novel, and was nominated for the Science Fiction Chronicle Award.
Brian Stableford wrote in an overview: "Sawyer's work became conspicuously more ambitious in the late 1990s. The Terminal Experiment (1995) has a murder mystery subplot, but foregrounds an enquiry into the roots of ethical philosophy, employing three artificial 'clones' of its protagonist's personality as subjects in an elaborate thought experiment."
Steven H Silver wrote, "Sawyer is writing a mystery with this book, and, to a certain extent, succeeds. The pace is good, keeping you turning the pages, and the characters are likeable, even the libidinous Hans and the un-enlightened Rod. However, because of the way Sawyer creates his mystery, there is no real chance of figuring out who is responsible."
Read more about this topic: The Terminal Experiment
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or reception:
“It would be easy ... to regard the whole of world 3 as timeless, as Plato suggested of his world of Forms or Ideas.... I propose a different view—one which, I have found, is surprisingly fruitful. I regard world 3 as being essentially the product of the human mind.... More precisely, I regard the world 3 of problems, theories, and critical arguments as one of the results of the evolution of human language, and as acting back on this evolution.”
—Karl Popper (1902–1994)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)