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The Martian Stole my Body (Monsterbus p.193)

This is a charming tale, and shows how Kirby is at home with heartwarming stories about platonic friendship. It's also well constructed, with the dog fulfilling dual roles (leading the hero into the action, then solving the problem in the end). And it shows that Kirby understands dogs!

This blog is "Kirby the Prophet" because even in a charming tale like this there's a serious message about the future of humanity, and it acts as a prophecy of the future. This is a story of identity theft. If somebody steals all your details and makes everybody online think that YOU did certain things, what can you do? And the answer is in community relations: the more that people know you in everyday life, the harder it is for somebody to completely imitate you.

And like all Kirby stories, this raises serious philosophical questions: what exactly is identity? At some future date we will be able to replace every part of a human with a better technological version: cars begin to replace legs, writing and TV makes immediate eyesight less and less important, databases remove the need to memorise things, etc. What happens when this accelerates and, like the ship of Theseus, there is nothing of the original human left? The answer is in the pet dog. He represents our touchy-feely animal past. As long as we are connected to the past then we are, well, connected to the past. If there comes a time when nothing from the past has any use, even to identify us with the past, then we will all truly be Martians.

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