We’re excited to share the cover for Longer, a new novella from Michael Blumlein that asks big questions about mortality, aging, the persistence and changeability of love, and the search for meaning in our lives.
Gunjita and Cav are orbiting in space performing R & D pharmaceutical studies for Gleem Galactic. They are wealthy enough to participate in rejuvenation: rebooting themselves from old age to jump their bodies back to their twenties. You get two chances. The third time is a calculated risk.
Gunjita has “juved” for her second and last time, but Cav is reluctant to join her. Instead he’s obsessed with the unidentified object that they encounter out in space. Is it alive? He believes that it just might be. The prospect of first contact is possible, but their marriage may not survive the challenge…
Longer is available May 28th from Tor.com Publishing.
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Longer
Author Michael Blumlein had this to say about the book:
Ethical scientific behavior is always on my radar (It’s on the world’s radar now, given the recent shocking news from China of embryonic genetic engineering. As an issue, it couldn’t be more timely.) I’m tuned not merely to ethical scientific behavior, but ethical social, political and personal behavior too, to right and wrong and the gray area between. All this concerns me. It’s in my daily feed.
The most obvious example in Longer revolves around juving (rejuvenation): on the surface a remarkable medical achievement and advance. But dig just a little deeper and the problems, or challenges, become apparent: How to handle the huge impact on the planet’s finite resources that human “recycling” will have? In a world of haves and have-nots, who gets to juve, if only so many can? How will juving affect the traditional family, when age—and all the perks and responsibilities that go with it—gets turned on its head?
I’ve written about death and dying before, but never quite so directly (save for my essay, “Thoreau’s Microscope”). Longer is not a how-to book, but rather the story of one man’s attempt to face the inevitable with dignity, humor, and courage.
At the same time it’s a story of living life to the fullest, both in our youthful salad days, when the juices are flowing, and also in our final, waning hours. Life is a miracle and full of surprises. I wanted to capture this.
