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Just finished "Martian Knightlife" by James P. Hogan, which I bought from Baen in 2001. Pretty good SF, although it does have the theme of "scientists too blinkered to recognise the truth" that pdurrant refers to in his previous post. Personally I don't mind this, but I can see how it could be annoying to some.
The book consists of two intertwined short stories featuring private eye Kieran Thane. In the first of them, the theme of matter transmission has a twist: a scientist has invented a matter transmitter and tested it on himself. The process involves "scanning" a person and then sending their genetic code and memory patterns to a receiver which "rebuilds" the person. The idea is then that the original person (put into suspended animation during the transmission process) is destroyed, but what if he gets scared prior to the experiment and decides that he doesn't want to die even if his existence does continue in another person? A very good story indeed. In the second story, Thane gets involved with a group who has discovered remnants of an ancient civilisation on Mars, but the site is owned by an industrial conglomerate who wants to build a spaceport on the site. Not as good as the first half of the book, but still worth reading.
Recommended.
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