AGE OF RESOLVE

Grydsuk’s debut SF thriller explores a future made seemingly perfect.

Everett Steele just can’t imagine living in a time before the Correction, the event that a century earlier wiped out the “incorrigibles” who perpetrated war, addiction, famine, and other social ills and established the Biodome as the ruling force on Earth. Now, if someone engages in incorrigible activity, they get sick with the existential virus, called EV for short. In this environment, Everett graduates high school at 17 and becomes susceptible to EV, which does not affect children. She goes to work in her chosen field at the Department of Animal Welfare. It doesn’t take her long to go astray—she finds a mysterious path that leads her to a concrete building with blacked-out windows, a throwback to the “ancients” that should have been destroyed when the world was remade. Inside, scientists work on a research project that will challenge everything Everett and the rest of world know about EV and the Biodome.The author deftly captures the voice of teenage Everett, eager to start her new life in the world the Biodome has created (“I thank my lucky stars that I was born in the Age of Resolve. I’ve had seventeen years to think about my purpose, my part in the AOR. Now it’s time to deliver”).When her beliefs are challenged, the reader is compelled to follow along as she struggles to understand why anyone would want to oppose that perfect world. The author’s prose is clean and precise, and there are few extraneous scenes. The science concerning genetics is convincing, befitting Grydsuk’s day job as a research fellow. The story might move faster without the quotes from the Bible and various philosophers at the beginning of each chapter and the more than 30 captioned photos of such atrocities as the Vietnam War and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster included here—they are distractions.

A worthy start to a new SF series mildly encumbered by extraneous supplemental materials.