Life...Only Better

Much like with Watchmen, the trailer that came out for The Surrogates compelled me to buy the graphic novel. Well that and the 40% coupon I had from Borders. At around 200 pages, it's much shorter and accessible than Watchmen. I'd say the themes aren't as complex but they are just as compelling.

Basically, The Surrogates takes place in a world where increasingly few mothers carry their own children as surrogacy becomes more and more popular. ...Wait that's not right. Start over.

The Surrogates is set in 2054. Surrogacy entails a person linking up to an artificial body which they can control. Stimuli is fed through the link so it is pretty much just living through that robotic surrogate which has benefits of human and machine. You can't get hurt as any physical damage to your surrogate can just be repaired and at the same time you still have use of all your senses as you would in real life.

The story is about a mysterious person destroying surrogates and the main character is a cop trying to figure out why. There are a lot of intriguing themes in the novel, mainly our society's increasing reliance on technology and the question of when we cross the line and lose our self to a bundle of wires.

I loved it and thought it was very well-written and compelling. The thing is, it's completely different from what I expected. The trailer shows it to be a thrilling action/mystery type movie. It appears that someone is killing people while they are linked to their surrogates and there is a lot of big action scenes, jumping around the city and explosions and such.

While that looks interesting...most of that stuff never happens. Hopefully this isn't spoiling anything but there's no murderer in the graphic novel. I don't know where the movie is going, but what the antagonist is doing in the novel is more to prove a point rather than with malicious intent, which is what I'd assume about a homicidal villain in a movie.

Anyway I'd recommend checking out the book. Watchmen was more of a political commentary but I'd say The Surrogates is more intellectual and science based. I wouldn't say it's a "fun" read in the traditional sense of the word, but the enjoyment comes from reading something that actually makes you think about your own life.