The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley (American, 1977)

Summary:
Humanity has been expelled from Earth by powerful aliens known as “the invaders”. In this way, survivors are forced to scatter among the other planets of the solar system (which they call “The Eight Worlds”), aided by an anonymous interstellar benefactor's transmissions, known as "The Ophiuchi Hotline". 
 Even though the information received from The Ophiuchi Hotline includes material on biological modification, experimentation with human DNA remains forbidden. 
 Related to this, Lilo-Alexandr-Calypso, a genetic engineer, has been sentenced to death for violating these laws and experimenting with human DNA. However, the night before her execution, a lunar politician named Tweed offers her the chance to escape replacing her with a clone killed in her place. Lilo accepts and starts collaborating in exchange. 
 Lilo realises that Tweed is the leader of a movement that intends to get back Earth from invaders and has been manufacturing illegal clones and forcing them to work to further his goals. Lilo attempts to escape from Tweed twice, but each time she is killed by a guard named Vaffa and another clone of her is revived with her original memories. 
 The third clone of Lilo is sent to Jupiter’s moon Poseidon, where she meets Cathay, a teacher who is an illegal clone. Lilo and Cathay try to escape together but fail and Lilo is apparently killed, so Cathay escapes to Lilo's a secret laboratory and revives another clone of her. 
 Eventually, the plot reveals to us that Lilo's first clone is not dead and the Invaders have transported her to Earth, where she learns to live among the few humans left there on a pre-industrial society. 
 Meanwhile, Tweed has sent another Lilo clone to Pluto to research a message coming from the Ophiuchi Hotline, which is understood as a payment demand for the scientific information that humanity has received. Lilo and Vaffa find a second clone of Cathay on the way, and the three of them eventually hire Javelin (who is one of the most successful black hole hunters) and reveals them that the black hole hunters have discovered where the beam of the Hotline originates and offers to take them there.
 At the same time, Cathay and the Saturn Lilo clone return to Poseidon and succeed in taking control of the colony. They also use a black hole space drive to propel the moon transforming it into a ship to travel to Alpha Centauri to find a new world to colonize, but reveal Tweed's dangerous activities to the Eight Worlds, forcing Tweed to go into hiding.
 When Javelin's ship reaches the source of the Hotline, they are received by semi-human aliens who explain to them that they have been providing technology and knowledge, expecting in culture knowledge of the people they are helping in exchange, and if they do not give them anything in return, they will further attack them. They also tell Lilo that the Invaders will expel humans from the Solar System soon.
 At the same time, the Earth Lilo clone is meeting the Invaders, who transport her to the semi-human aliens meeting site and explain to her that although humanity will be forced to leave its home, the Invaders will provide the tools for them to search another place for living. 
 At the end of the novel, Lilo meets her clone and somehow the memories and knowledge of all of their clones (including those killed by Tweed) are mixed.

Another summary:
In the scenario in which Lilo lives, human beings live scattered around the solar system after being exiled from the Earth by the Invaders, an alien race devoted to expel natives from their planets and take over them, and that has also taken over Jupiter. Humans occupy The Ophiuchi Hotline to exchange information on forbidden or sensitive topics, such as modification and genetic experimentation, throughout the Eight Worlds (planets of the solar system). Experiments discussed include memory recording by implanting the memories of a person in a clone; it is a fairly regulated procedure with certain rules and exceptions. Lilo is sentenced to death after it is discovered that she experimented with human DNA, something forbidden and condemnable, but she is saved from that fate by Tweed, who is planning a rebellion to recover the Earth and who gives her the option to escape and let an illegal clone of her be the one who suffers the sentence so that Lilo joins Tweed’s plan. Lilo accepts and escapes with him, although she never agrees with the idea of ​​working for Tweed in a group that is mainly responsible for manufacturing illegal clones like the one they made for her, so she tries to escape; but whenever she does it she is discovered and murdered, and immediately her memories revive in one of the clones made for her. She is assigned the mission of traveling to Poseidon, one of Jupiter moons in order to find out how to kill the inhabitants of that planet. There she meets a teacher, Cathay, with whom she starts a relationship and together they manage to stop Tweed when he tries to attack the Invaders. That version of Lilo is sent to the future on Earth, where she spends 25 years and is worshipped by humans for the appearance of her clothes, so Tweed wakes up another clone of her to keep working. Lilo is sent on a new mission with a Vaffa clone and a Cathay clone, they start working with the black hole hunter Javelin and embark on a long journey through space until they reach the source of the Hotline, where they meet some aliens and explain to them the situation that many planets have been experiencing because of the Invaders’ actions. Cathay's first clone goes in search of one of Lilo's clones and rescues her, after which they embark on a journey to Alpha Centauri and end up revealing the illegal activities that Tweed has been doing, so he escapes. The aliens help humans to survive because they want to have the possibility of living within their minds and knowing what is in their minds, if not, they will attack all humanity at different points of the solar system in which they can be found. The Lilo clone that was sent to Earth is transported to the source of the Hotline, where she realizes that all of her clones mix together. The aliens announce to their guests that the Invaders plan to expel humanity from the solar system definitively, so Lilo's clones and their companions embark on the journey to give notice to humanity and ask them to leave the solar system as soon as possible.

Another summary:
The book is set around five hundred years in the future of humanity. Sometime in the twentieth century, a race of mysterious aliens only known as the Invaders arrived on earth claiming it for themselves and the ocean mammals, like the dolphins, that, according to the Invaders are the highest forms of inteligence in the planet. Humans suffer though great famines and eventually catch a signal they call the Ophiuchi Hotline that, for the following hundreds of years, transmits to them great technological advancements that allow humanity to leave earth and live on the other planets of the solar system. Humans have now evolved past our present and are able to conduct major surgical modifications to their own bodies at home as well as saving their own consciousness to be reuploaded to a clone whenever the body dies or deteriorates. Regardless of all the information given to them, it is against the law to alter in any way the human DNA, a crime punishable with permanent death. 
 The story revolves around Lilo, a genetic engineer whose job is to create foodstuffs. She is found guilty of tampering with human DNA and is condemned to be permanently terminated. A politician named Boss Tweed arrives at her cell with two bodyguards called Vaffa, which are just male and female clones of the same person, just before this he offers her a way out. She accepts and a clone that Tweed had is left to be killed instead of the original Lilo. She is sent to a sort of boot camp that shows her the necessary skills to survive in any kind of earth environment. After this a save is made of her consciousness. When she awakes again, she realizes a lot of time has passed and knows something must have gone wrong. The original Lilo tried to escape and was killed in the move. The second Lilo also tried to escape but was killed as well. The third Lilo is warned against trying that again, seeing how, by now, Tweed knows exactly how she thinks and what her actions will be before she does. In this manner she is convinced to behave. She is sent to a small moon called Poseidon that circles Jupiter, the planet where the Invaders originally arrived. Boss Tweed is making an attempt to fight back the Invaders and to achieve this he has stolen and illegally cloned a lot of scientists and specialists and stuck them in this moon guarded by an uncertain number of Vaffas in hopes of being able to come up with a way to destroy these mysterious aliens that nobody has seen. 
 While on Poseidon Lilo meets Cathay with whom she develops a strong bond. Together with other people from the moon they come up with a plan to outsmart the Vaffas and break free from their imprisonment. Tweed buys a micro black-hole in hopes of using it against the Invaders. While they attempt a test run by passing the black hole through Jupiter Lilo and Cathay attempt their escape which results in a dead Vaffa and Lilo falling into Jupiter. During her fall she encounters what seems to be an Invader and then she suddenly appears on a beach in North America. 
 Believing her to be dead Tweed gets another Lilo clone and immediately sends this one to Pluto along with a female Vaffa to investigate an odd recording that the Ophiuchi Hotline has broadcasted claiming that the human race needs to pay for all the knowledge they have been given. Once there they look for the original Cathay that is working as a clandestine teacher and the three of them set out to find a black hole hunter that is willing to give them a ride to where the Ophiuchi Hotline broadcast has the best reception. They convince an ancient woman called Javelin, who has modified her body to such extreme that she is optimal for space travel but is basically just a pair of limbs. She has come to the conclusion, after many years, that the Ophiuchis are not actually seventeen light years away and could be reached in a twenty-year trip. The trio agrees to this and the four of them set off to meet the Ophiuchis.
 The Cathay clone has left with the ship in which he and Lilo intended to make their escape and after losing her he goes to find a hidden base in the rings of Saturn where Lilo has stored a secret clone in case she was ever killed. There he finds a symbiont called Parameter/Solstice, who Lilo had commended with the task of waking up her clone if the situation ever arose. The three of them use the ship to go back, crash into Poseidon and broadcast Tweed’s plans onto the Eight Worlds. This forces him into hiding and allows the prisoners in Poseidon to prepare the moon for interplanetary travel using the black hole that powers everything they do there. As Tweed goes into hiding he sheds a layer of fake skin to reveal what could possibly be a female body and in this manner he/she manages to escape, also revealing that Vaffa could very well be a clone of his very own son. 
 The trio traveling with Javelin finally arrives to the broadcast center of the Ophiuchi Hotline where they are received in a conference room by human looking being that could very well be part of the old earth. There it is explained to them that the Ophiuchites intend to broadcast a video in which they explain very little of themselves and a very confusing request of what they want in exchange for all the knowledge they have given humanity. In essence these beings are all a multitude of consciousnesses in a single body. Their race has lived for thousands of years helping other beings who have also been exhiled from their planets by the Invaders. In exchange for their knowledge they want the culture of humanity. Which would mean that a number of humans would, for a while, house one of these beings in their consciousness to learn and absorb their culture. 
 The third clone of Lilo was sent to what seems to be a future version of earth where she lives for twenty five years as a nomad. The few people that still live in earth believe her to be the goddess Diana. After all those years she finds herself tired of life and goes on to try to fight an Invader as it comes her way and she ends up snatching up a cube. This cube allows her to see into her own future and past. In this way all the Lilos living see at the same time all of their lives, including the ones of the Lilos that are now dead. Diana appears in the conference room with the Ophiuchites and leaves along with the other four travelers to tell the Eight Worlds what is going on.

World view: The world portrayed in the story is an hypothetical society which seems to be worse than the one the author lives in.
Future projections: It’s a negative emotional reaction against technological (transcendental, evolutive) or social progress. As such, It shows the horrible consequences of utopia or at least portrays skepticism or disappointment in regard to scientific or technological miracles.
Ideology: The control or suppression of futuristic technology is used as a means to maintain dominance and stability.
Characters, plot and writing style: The story features a rebellion against the adverse circumstances (revolutionaries may exploit newer technologies for these ends).
Classification: Non-dystopia