HIBERNACULUM

In Doyle’s SF novel, humanity turns to hibernation as a solution to Earth’s ills.

In 2045, the Earth supports 8 billion people and counting, many of whom live in abject poverty and hunger. Human hibernation has become an accepted mechanism to counter many of the world’s calamities caused by climate change. Enormous, energy self-sufficient Hibernacula spread across the globe, receiving transient sleepers who take themselves out of the world for a short period of time, a few months, for most. Some of them choose to go under for health reasons, awaiting cures for what ails them. Others hibernate to help the environment or to facilitate organ donations; some do it so they can sublet their apartments or simply take a break from life. As the head architect, Anvita Prahbu, says, “The Hibernacula worldwide were built to help us through the freeze—the freeze of old ideas, of a way of life that can go on no longer. We must ‘winter’ belowground, incubate the buds of change.” This cerebral, high-concept novel features an epistolary narrative that collects a myriad of materials to sketch in the background of the events that shaped the reality of the narrative and to indicate the personal and societal expectations around the hibernation solution. Excerpts from the blog of a young man named Seth Macy, whose entries are meandering and philosophical, are interspersed with magazine and newspaper articles about the people who hibernate, documents that relate to the Hibernation Program, a dream diary from a patient who awoke to then experience sleeping troubles, audio file transcripts from a husband who waits for his wife to wake up, and more. Not centering characters in a traditional way, the collagelike story effectively conveys how the Hibernacula started as a brilliant tool to make a future viable for humankind only to evolve into something more sinister.

Thought-provoking SF delivered in an intriguingly panoramic form.