Interlibrary Loan

Interlibrary Loan picks up the story begun in A Borrowed Man. Centuries from now, civilization has contracted but carries on, in a world shaped by artificial intelligence, robots, and cloned people. E.A. Smithe is a "borrowed" person whose mind is a recording uploaded from a mystery novelist who has since died. The law treats him as property rather than a person, so his owners may lend him to other branches.

Smithe is sent to Polly's Cove along with two other reclones, one modeled on a cookbook author and one on a romance writer. There he meets a little girl determined to save her mother, and he learns about a father who is dead, or possibly not. He also encounters a second E.A. Smithe, the original from whom his own mind was copied, who is very much alive.

Gene Wolfe, the author, is best known for The Book of the New Sun.