A sharp and perceptive SF meditation on the blessings and curses of old age.
Social, economic, and ethical upheaval ensues after a viral mutation causes people to stop dying of old age in McWalter’s SF novel.
In the early-to-mid-21st century, a widespread, infectious “Methuselah syndrome” spreads, affecting more than half the populace. For those infected by this quasi-plague, death by old age takes a holiday: “Negligible senescence resulting from the reprogramming of the human epigenome by a virally delivered artificial protein package.” Unless an infected person was already dying from a deadly disease, such as cancer, their mind remains sharp and their body generally remains spry and serviceable as they age. Natural death rates plummet, and the population rises to 10 billion as a consequence. Economies can no longer expect inherited wealth, with long-lived “Lifers” (also known as “Lingerers” and “triplers”) aging past 120 and continuing to draw on their savings. In the social and economic chaos that ensues, younger generations begin to see their once-cherished elders as detrimental parasites—and an undesirable minority. As a result, violence increases and murder rates rise, and anti-Lifer politicians, including the president of the United States, call for some type of organized response—one that could involve internment camps and/or organized euthanasia. Readers know that it was a few rogue geneticists who unleashed the original Methuselah contagion—and one of them subsequently died by suicide, rather than face the results. The rest of humanity, though, perseveres in thinking that this virtual immortality evolved naturally, or is a gift from God—or, conversely, is some kind of religious abomination.
McWalter sets a cast of interconnected characters on a search for a solution to the crisis. They include Adele Pritchard, a semiretired CIA biowarfare specialist; Adele’s former lover, Dan Altman, and his wife, Marion, who try to form an armed, protective all-Lifer sanctuary city in Colorado; and Dan and Marion’s granddaughter, Claire, who’s been appointed to lead the government’s ominous new Department of Longevity Management and tasked with stripping the ultra-aged of all legal and human rights. Dan and Marion’s son, Nolan, oversees the implementation of a pro-death medical treatment—a potentially lucrative corporate commission. Although McWalter’s novel opens on a tense abduction scenario and distinguishes the third act with a pulse-pounding drone attack, it’s largely a slow-burn narrative of policy-change descriptions and year-by-year updates of the bizarre new paradigm. Various characters deal with issues of betrayal, survival, illness, loss, treachery, and diplomacy in psychologically insightful prose with details that are often disturbingly persuasive. Readers only get hints about the dystopian successor to the United States in which this social revolution unfolds; apparently, the country partially disbanded, with blame falling on Donald Trump, who died before he could contract Methuselah; part of the resulting backlash involved the deliberate dismantling of the internet. The science-minded will be reassured that the biomedical aspects are comprehensible; SF regulars, meanwhile, may wish to compare McWalter’s savvy speculative visions to author Philip José Farmer’s classic novella Seventy Years of Decpop (1972).
A sharp and perceptive SF meditation on the blessings and curses of old age.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781684632763
Page Count: 328
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.
A processing plant manager struggles with the grim realities of a society where cannibalism is the new normal.
Marcos Tejo is the boss’s son. Once, that meant taking over his father’s meat plant when the older man began to suffer from dementia and require nursing home care. But ever since the Transition, when animals became infected with a virus fatal to humans and had to be destroyed, society has been clamoring for a new source of meat, laboring under the belief, reinforced by media and government messaging, that plant proteins would result in malnutrition and ill effects. Now, as is true across the country, Marcos’ slaughterhouse deals in “special meat”—human beings. Though Marcos understands the moral horror of his job supervising the workers who stun, kill, flay, and butcher other humans, he doesn’t feel much since the crib death of his infant son. “One can get used to almost anything,” he muses, “except for the death of a child.” One day, the head of a breeding center sends Marcos a gift: an adult female FGP, a “First Generation Pure,” born and bred in captivity. As Marcos lives with his product, he gradually begins to awaken to the trauma of his past and the nightmare of his present. This is Bazterrica’s first novel to appear in America, though she is widely published in her native Argentina, and it could have been inelegant, using shock value to get across ideas about the inherent brutality of factory farming and the cruelty of governments and societies willing to sacrifice their citizenry for power and money. It is a testament to Bazterrica’s skill that such a bleak book can also be a page-turner.
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982150-92-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.
As Ireland devolves into a brutal police state, one woman tries to preserve her family in this stark fable.
For Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist living with her husband and four children in Dublin, life changes all at once and then slowly worsens beyond imagining. Two men appear at her door one night, agents of the new secret police, seeking her husband, Larry, a union official. Soon he is detained under the Emergency Powers Act recently pushed through by the new ruling party, and she cannot contact him. Eilish sees things shifting at work to those backing the ruling party. The state takes control of the press, the judiciary. Her oldest son receives a summons to military duty for the regime, and she tries to send him to Northern Ireland. He elects to join the rebel forces and soon she cannot contact him, either. His name and address appear in a newspaper ad listing people dodging military service. Eilish is coping with her father’s growing dementia, her teenage daughter’s depression, the vandalizing of her car and house. Then war comes to Dublin as the rebel forces close in on the city. Offered a chance to flee the country by her sister in Canada, Eilish can’t abandon hope for her husband’s and son’s returns. Lynch makes every step of this near-future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific by tightly focusing on Eilish, a smart, concerned woman facing terrible choices and losses. An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017).
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802163011
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
