David McCloskey

The crew has also developed a technology to transfer a person's soul electronically to a new body.

Again, very Silicon Valley.

Yeah, yes.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, this is what – I mean, so we're ragging on this screenplay.

I mean, the novel won the Hugo.

I mean, this novel was a big deal in the sci-fi world of the 1960s.

So this reincarnation by mind transfer has created a race of potential immortals and allowed the former crew members –

to institute something like the Hindu caste system with themselves at the top.

Eventually, the crew used their now amazing powers to subjugate or destroy the native non-human races, whom they characterize as demons, while setting themselves up as gods in the eyes of the many generations of colonist progeny.

Wow.

I'm skipping over some parts here.

Yeah, please do.

Okay.

The protagonist, Sam, has developed the ability to manipulate electromagnetic forces.

He's a renegade crewman who has rejected godhood, Gordon, taking for himself essentially the role of Buddha.

And Sam believes that this technology should be available to the masses and that reincarnation should not be controlled by the elite.

It is basically Hinduism versus Buddhism in space.

In some of the interviews he's given since the Argo operation was declassified, Barry Geller, the producer who had the rights, was kind of pissed that they didn't buy it from him because they essentially just kind of took it.

I mean, so there's actually some IP theft at the center of this story.