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In the twenty-second century, biomedical nanotechnology has given everyone in the world long life and robust health. It is the New Utopia, and all live in the expectation that true immortality will soon be realized.
Damon Hart, son of the scientist responsible for much of the wonders of the new world, would rather forget his famous father and get on with his own life. But a shadowy terrorist group forces Damon to confront his heritage, launching a cat-and-mouse game that pits Damon against the terrorists, Interpol, and the powerful corporations that control the biotechnology of the future...a game Damon is ill-equipped to survive.
Brian Stableford launched an ambitious future history series last year with Inherit the Earth, to widespread praise. "Stableford has created in this novel a totally believable world, and wrapped it around a series of mysterious events, surprise revelations, double crosses, confused motivations, rumors, lies, plots, and counterplots. . . . Tightly controlled and suspenseful throughout," said Science Fiction Chronicle. Library Journal said, "The ethical questions posed by the prospect of conquering the aging process underscore this fast-paced SF adventure, adding depth to a story that will appeal to fans of high-tech SF and conspiracy theories." This future world is a complex society obsessed with the technology of life extension and on the brink of creating true immortals.
Now, in Architects of Emortality, Stableford gives us a story set hundreds of years in the future, filled with people who can hope for 300-year lifespans and a fortunate few whose lives will be in the thousands of years. This society is on the edge of radical change, where people have the time to develop eccentric lifestyles and personal obsessions, a world sometimes reminiscent of the distant future of Michael Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time series. And there has been a series of murders that threaten the future stability of the world, murders executed by bioengineered flowers. Police officers Watson and Holmes investigate, but the central figure quickly becomes the amateur detective Oscar Wilde, a student of history who has taken on the persona of his namesake. And the question is not so much who the murderer is, but how and why.
Filled with memorable characters and powerful and striking images of the richly altered world of the future, Architects of Emortality is a satisfying and complete story that also adds depth and detail to the evolving series.
This is a science fiction novel of enormous scope and ambition, filled with wonders that expands Brian Stableford's on-going future history series. Hundreds of years in the future, further ahead than the settings of Inherit the Earth and Architects of Emortality, Mortimer Gray is born into a world where he can potentially live forever.
But after a traumatic natural disaster that kills millions, Gray devotes the next five hundred years of his life to the study of death and its effects on human civilization, viewed from a post-death perspective. Through it all we see the broad, large-scale accumulation of change and the growth of humanity on Earth and out to the stars as Gray experiences his boundless lifetime.
Veteran British author Stableford's Emortality series of future history novels (Inherit the Earth, Architects of Emortality and Fountains of Youth, which start in the 22nd century and end in the 26th) receives a near-future underpinning in this mid-21st-century puzzle of maneuvers in the face of impending doom. Police forensic scientist Lisa Friemann wakes one night to armed intruders in her highly secure dwelling. Nothing in all the information storage media the thieves steal seems important, or even work related. Events are hardly clarified by the news that prominent geneticist Morgan Miller, her graduate supervisor and longtime colleague, is missing. Does someone think Miller made a discovery that, contrary to usual practice, he had shared with no one in his field? And why would anyone want to bomb Mouseworld, the half-million-strong genetic library of rodent strains? Lisa's cityplex police and university colleagues enter the story one by one, followed by a confusing (to all concerned) array of other agencies and factions. Could there be a secret that will avert or postpone the expected world catastrophe, or at least give some people advantages over others? Stableford's background in biological and social sciences makes for convincing behavior and dialogue among the scientists, while long practice in the novelist's trade ensures a smooth and involving read. This series should remain more visible in the U.S. than his large stable of unjustly neglected past work.
A sequel to The Fountains of Youth finds "emortality" technology developer Adam Zimmerman awakening in the thirty-fifth century, where his exotic hosts have recruited various immortals, including death historian Mortimer Gray, for the project.
Veteran British author Stableford's Emortality series of future history novels (Inherit the Earth, Architects of Emortality and Fountains of Youth, which start in the 22nd century and end in the 26th) receives a near-future underpinning in this mid-21st-century puzzle of maneuvers in the face of impending doom. Police forensic scientist Lisa Friemann wakes one night to armed intruders in her highly secure dwelling. Nothing in all the information storage media the thieves steal seems important, or even work related. Events are hardly clarified by the news that prominent geneticist Morgan Miller, her graduate supervisor and longtime colleague, is missing. Does someone think Miller made a discovery that, contrary to usual practice, he had shared with no one in his field? And why would anyone want to bomb Mouseworld, the half-million-strong genetic library of rodent strains? Lisa's cityplex police and university colleagues enter the story one by one, followed by a confusing (to all concerned) array of other agencies and factions. Could there be a secret that will avert or postpone the expected world catastrophe, or at least give some people advantages over others? Stableford's background in biological and social sciences makes for convincing behavior and dialogue among the scientists, while long practice in the novelist's trade ensures a smooth and involving read. This series should remain more visible in the U.S. than his large stable of unjustly neglected past work.
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