From Publishers Weekly
Immortality can get boring after a while, especially when most of Earth's population and many of its treasures have been destroyed in a war between the haves and the have-nots. Jake Brewer, a virtual reality engineer, decides to liven things up by agreeing to run a virtuality machine on a starship looking for Earth-type planets. The passengers use the machine to roam through the recreated past, experiencing repeated virtual deaths because they have no expectations of real ones, until suddenly the oldest among them start dying seemingly of natural causes and the machine tells Jake, "We have to talk." This makes for an odd sort of locked-room whodunit. Is the newly sentient machine causing these deaths, or did the immortality treatment simply fail? Hugo- and Nebula-winner Haldeman (
The Forever War) makes these questions tremendously compelling with his usual brilliant knack for detail and characterization. He draws the reader in even through a surprisingly boring expository first chapter, and the increasingly fascinating bulk of the tale makes the abrupt ending all the more shocking and unsatisfying. Haldeman's numerous fans will eagerly snap this one up, but few will reread it.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
In a world in which mortality has been defeated, people seek thrills and meaning with great dedication. Virtual-reality technician and cook Jacob Brewer joins the crew of
Aspera on a thousand-year trip to Beta Hydrii and a new world to settle. The past accompanies them in a computer that lets them visit earlier times, when people's lives were shaped by the promise of death. The most popular destination is the last century of mortality, the twentieth. Trouble first shows in inconsistencies in the data from certain periods, and when someone dies in virtuality, there is understandable concern, especially because word from Earth is that something strange is going on there, too. Then an avatar of the machine, which has achieved sentience and is deeply curious about humanity, contacts Jacob. Reality and virtuality aren't as well-defined as we may assume they ought to be in Haldeman's nicely circular story concerned with the consequences of immortality and the potential of a truly convincing virtuality.
Regina SchroederCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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