THE BRADBURY REPORT

What would you say if you were tasked to harbor your own clone?

Debut novelist Polansky (Dating Miss Universe, 1999) returns to the publishing fold more than a decade after his first book of short stories with an inventive, cerebral thriller about a man faced with the ultimate moral quandary. “I am a man who doesn’t matter,” professes the narrator, a 67-year-old widower who adopts the moniker of the legendary sci-fi novelist Raymond Bradbury to tell his tale. “Bradbury” recounts his story from the year 2071, in an identifiable but deeply altered United States where human cloning has not only become possible but has also been made the focal point of a controversial governmental health-care system. Still mourning the death of his wife Sara, Ray is startled to hear from his old girlfriend Anna, now a member of an insurgent group that wants him to fulfill a most unusual request. “Here’s what my group wants you to do,” Anna says. “They want you to meet your clone. Face to face. They want you to spend time with him. Then they want you to write about how that feels, to write about what that means. To you.” Before long, the reluctant writer is on the run with Anna and clone 1123043468, a 21-year-old version of himself with zero knowledge of the world. The clone, dubbed Alan by his keepers, is one of the only known escapees from “The Clearances,” a massive dead zone in the upper Midwest where America’s copies are tended until they’re needed. Polansky does a fine job of wrestling with the moral dilemmas posited by writers like Philip K. Dick and others, and his characterization of Alan is sublimely witty and soulfully sympathetic. But readers may find the novel’s contrived moral crises and bleak denouement unsatisfying.

A reflective sci-fi story that overthinks its taxing ideas about copycat humanity.