Spoiler alert: (but for a very early part of the book) The core technology that drives the plot The

Spoiler alert: (but for a very early part of the book) The core technology that drives the plot The Electric Forest is consciousness transfer. A body can be put on life support and its consiousness can be transplanted into a simulated body that lacks consciousness. Then the person who that consciousness belongs to will experience life through that new body.

However, the trick is, it needs its body in life support to stay alive. That's where the actual experiences are really happening. The experiences of the simulated body are being sent back to that body. It's basically in a lucid dream state, except in the real world.

• (after the internet, I feel like people think about consciousness as something that can be copied, like a file, like data — in fact I think that's how John Scalzi presents consciousness transfer in this book Old Man's War — which I had to quit reading, but I suppose should be counted as BrainFi)

Lee had a fixation on the idea of moving consciousness around.