Anybody over the age of 25 knows the terror of the following five words: “You’re not getting any younger.” Some have even heard the horror in the warning: “Past 30, you lose one thing a year,” where “thing” means bodily efficiency, process, or, heaven forbid, part.

What’s there to lose? Quick metabolism. Sex drive. Endless energy and quick recuperation. Hair where you want it, and lack of hair where you don’t. Muscle power. Skin tone. Lack of sag. Pain-free exertion. Pain-free rest. Vision. Hearing. Taste. Bowel and bladder control. Kidney, liver and heart function. Memory. And, finally, life.

But what if you could get it all back, roll it all back to age 25 of peak performance, plus the benefit of your years of knowledge and wisdom (youth is wasted on the young, and wisdom on the old)? And all it would cost would be a fortune ... and your natural connection to everyone you’ve ever known?

Such is the alpha and omega of Robert J Sawyer’s latest novel Rollback, which spelunks the scientific, social and ethical implications of the technological age we’re entering, in which medical advances in surgery, tissue regeneration, stem cell application, gene therapy and nano-technology will allow the rolling-back of physical age. And who better to delve into the subject than Sawyer, a Canadian Michael Crichton with an Asimovian concern for scientific detail and accuracy?

Sawyer is also one of the nation’s top writers, having had a Canadian mainstream best-seller, won every major international award (prestige-wise and financially) in science fiction, and being the only author ever to win the top SF awards in the United States, Japan, France and Spain. Maclean’s says of him: “By any reckoning, Sawyer is among the most successful Canadian authors ever.” And he’s written—get this—17 novels. Sawyer will be at Audreys Books on May Day to read from Rollback and to delve into the issues he raises.

The novel examines what happens when an octogenarian and her husband are offered free rollbacks by the mid-21st century’s equivalent of Bill Gates as a quid pro quo for access to the wife’s scientific genius; the only problem is that her rollback doesn’t take. The novel charts Don Halifax’s misery at watching his brilliant wife drift towards death while he discovers that new vitality has opened him up to new realms of pain. He’s a 25-year old with an active sex drive, but his frail wife can’t possibly meet him even halfway. He wants to work, but he’s a half-century past relevant job training or experience, having retired decades before. And he’s alienated from his family and friends who are jealous of his second chance at life.

The ethics of rollback medical interventions—which, of course, are the logical outcome of all medicine—are complicated and rife with conflict, and mirrored in our current global crisis of medicine for the wealthy and early death for the rest. Who will be able to pay for such treatments? Will aging become the newest symbol of class division? What will become of mandatory retirement? What becomes of the human experiences, thus far relegated to a maximum of 120 years, when people might live to 170 or 180? Will people discover they won’t even want to live to that age once they’re there?

China’s one-child policy has socially engineered hundreds of millions of people to have no living memory of aunts, uncles or cousins. What kinds of effects would inexpensive “rollback” technology have on Western society a hundred years after its introduction?

Rollback, like many of Sawyer’s novels, deals with a completely recognizable world in which humanity faces opportunities and crises caused by scientific discovery. Sawyer prefers populating his worlds with realistic people—journalists, researchers, students—rather than SF clichés of beautiful, buxom scientists and lantern-jawed heroes. It’s that humanity and familiarity, combined with Sawyer’s passionate pacifism and endlessly engaging revelation of scientific marvel and inquiry—that make his work so enjoyable and memorable.

Such qualities have also endeared him to audiences that think they’re too good for “that sci-fi stuff,” granting him access to the same people who read Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake), Michael Crichton or Kurt Vonnegut, without realizing that they’re imbibing the very SF they tend to dismiss out of hand.

The best of SF continues to be acutely relevant because of its dedication to asking difficult questions without resorting to reaction or pastoral fantasy, embodying what US social critic Michael Eric Dyson calls a toleration for uncertainty, rather than a demand for black-and-white clarity.

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