Old Twentieth

by Joe Haldeman

Overview

The twentieth century lies hundreds of years in humanity’s past. But the near-immortal citizens of the future yearn for the good old days—when people’s bodies were susceptible to death through disease and old age. Now, they immerse themselves in virtual reality time machines to explore the life-to-death arc that defined existence so long ago. 

Jacob Brewer is a virtual reality engineer, overseeing the time machine’s operation aboard the starship Aspera. But on the thousand-year voyage to Beta Hydrii, the eight-hundred member crew gets more reality than they expect when people entering the machine start to die.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101220221
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/02/2005
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	279 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Joe Haldeman is a Vietnam veteran whose classic novels The Forever War and Forever Peace both have the rare honor of winning the Hugo and Nebula Awards. He has served twice as president of the Science Fiction Writers of America and is currently an adjunct professor teaching writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Editorial Reviews

Immortality can get boring after a while, especially when most of Earth's population and many of its treasures have been destroyed in a war between the haves and the have-nots. Jake Brewer, a virtual reality engineer, decides to liven things up by agreeing to run a virtuality machine on a starship looking for Earth-type planets. The passengers use the machine to roam through the recreated past, experiencing repeated virtual deaths because they have no expectations of real ones, until suddenly the oldest among them start dying seemingly of natural causes and the machine tells Jake, "We have to talk." This makes for an odd sort of locked-room whodunit. Is the newly sentient machine causing these deaths, or did the immortality treatment simply fail? Hugo- and Nebula-winner Haldeman (The Forever War) makes these questions tremendously compelling with his usual brilliant knack for detail and characterization. He draws the reader in even through a surprisingly boring expository first chapter, and the increasingly fascinating bulk of the tale makes the abrupt ending all the more shocking and unsatisfying. Haldeman's numerous fans will eagerly snap this one up, but few will reread it. Agent, Ralph Vicinanza. (Aug.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

In the distant future, humanity has learned the secret of immortality and, after a devastating war between mortal and immortal humans, a small population of immortals survives on a sparsely populated Earth. When a group of immortals travels to the stars in the hopes of founding a colony on a distant Earth-like planet, they amuse themselves by using a virtual time machine to travel to different years in the 20th century-until they start dying, and one man must confront the AI within the machine to discover the startling cause. This cautionary tale by the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of The Forever War and Forever Peace reflects his concern with the big issues-life and death, war and peace, good and evil. Filled with vignettes from the past century yet as timely as today's scientific discoveries, this belongs in most libraries. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

One of science fiction’s most reliable practitioners, solidly entertaining.”—San Francisco Chronicle

The time machine has become sentient. Obsessed with humanity, it wants Jacob Brewer to enter its confines—and discuss this fragile state of being called life…“Fun.”—Philadelphia Weekly Press

“In [Old Twentieth, Haldeman] does a creditable job of maintaining suspense through chapters that alternate between historically accurate yet fictitious encounters in virtual reality and more mundane conflicts aboard a ship.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Haldeman’s vivid prose captures . . . tense, violent encounters . . . [He] knows from personal experience the grunt’s-eye view of combat; that lends a power and impact to the passages. He doesn’t glorify war but, instead, shows its ugly, human face.”—The Baltimore Sun

“The back story to Haldeman’s latest foray into future history is delivered with wham-bam Wellsian nonchalance . . . [His] virtues are all present here. Tight plotting, believable (and believably flawed) characters, sharp dialogue, bravura leaps of future history, affirmations of the human spirit. Everything we enjoy about his books.”—Science Fiction Weekly “Haldeman makes [Old Twentieth] compelling with his usual brilliant knack for detail and characterization . . . Haldeman’s numerous fans will eagerly snap this one up.”—Publishers Weekly

“Worthy of Hugo and Nebula nominations.”—Midwest Book Review “Reality and virtuality aren’t as well-defined as we may assume they ought to be in Haldeman’s nicely circular story concerned with the consequences of immortality and the potential of a truly convincing virtuality.”—Booklist

From the Publisher