HOPSCOTCH

Ingenious SF fantasy about bodyswapping. With many awards and 27 novels to his credit, Anderson (the inspired Dogged Persistence, 2000, about a black Lab made immortal through an injection of nannorepair units that rebuild injured or diseased bodies forever), a bestseller several times over, has written for the Star Wars, the X-Files, and the Dune series In Julio Cortázar’s groovy 1966 Hopscotch, all chapters can be rearranged at whim for a new storyline. In Anderson, three adult orphans, set free at last from their sheltered upbringing at Falling Leaves, descend on the Club Masquerade center for body swappertunities. There, a big Hopscotch Board that lets one swap bodies with another club member. Garth weighs delivering a baby by swapping with a pregnant woman in her eighth month. Eduard makes a fast buck lending himself out as a patient and going through unpleasant experiences for others: surgeries, colds, dentistry. One’s bank account can swell while one undergoes miseries for the elderly who hop about on your youthful hormones. Meanwhile, the orphans’ straight friend, the freakishly intuitive Daragon Swan, works at the Bureau of Tracings and Locations, which keeps track of who’s in what body.

Like to join a society where physical appearance and identity mean nada? Then enter Hopscotch. But beware of being bodynapped, as happens to Eduard, who then must race about swamped by paranoia while seeking his old existence.