What would it be like to share your mind with another consciousness?  Would you be willing to give up the privacy of your own mind in exchange for the ideal brainstorming partner, an automatic fresh perspective on new challenges?  Over the past few years, multiple science fiction authors have offered their takes on the idea of brain sharing.  Here’s a look at a few of those stories.  Before we begin, I’d like to make a friendly shout out to my colleague Carol, who was kind enough to share her own thoughts on brain sharing in sci-fi, fantasy, and YA, and whose inspiration and encouragement inspired the brief overview you’re reading right now.

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

Mahit Dzmare is the new ambassador from small, tenuously independent Lsel Station to the heart of the politically and culturally dominant empire of Teixcalaan.  As she is thrust into a highly delicate situation, one of the tools at Mahit’s disposal is the imago, which allows her to share her consciousness with a younger version of the previous ambassador, Yskandr Aghavn.  Yskandr is able to assist Mahit, but only so much.  Since he has been effectively frozen in time, his own knowledge of the rapidly shifting political situation in Teixcalaan isn’t exactly up to date.  This is sci-fi by way of the political thriller, and the sequel, A Desolation Called Peace, raises the stakes even higher.

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

Captain Kel Cheris of the Hexarchate has one chance to bounce back from ruin.  She must share her consciousness with a figure of far greater infamy, the late Shuos Jedao, an unpredictable genius who has already proven to be as dangerous to his own side as he is to the enemy.  This is dense military sci-fi that asks a lot of the reader, but in exchange is able to depict a world that really feels like a glimpse of a truly strange and vast universe.  Ninefox Gambit is the first installment of the completed Machineries of Empire trilogy, so readers who fall in love with the intricate world it presents will be able to pick up the rest of the series right away.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

Ambitious, hard-nosed Kyr would be the golden child of the military dictatorship Gaea Station, were it not for her equally exceptional brother Magnus.  On the cusp of adulthood, Kyr’s life falls apart seemingly overnight: her brother disappears, and she herself is given a nightmare assignment where she would spend her life giving birth to the next generation of Gaea Station’s soldiers, squandering the talent she worked so hard to achieve.  Kyr bucks authority for the first time as she seeks to right these wrongs, but in so doing her perception of the world and the place and people who shaped her begins to irrevocably shift.  Thanks to multiple wild plot twists, even discussing the brain sharing aspect of this book would require a lot of spoilers.  This is a pretty different take on the trope than the previous two books on this list, using brain sharing to explore the different paths a life might take and the ways in which people are shaped by those diverging experiences.  At first, I wouldn’t have even thought to include it, but when I saw that other blogging sci-fi fans were making it part of the brain sharing conversation, I knew I had to take the opportunity to talk about one of my personal favorite books I’ve read this year so far.