Longer

April 1, 2019
A cerebral story about the ethics and emotional impact of extending the human life span. Cav and Gunjita are scientists. They're conducting research on the space station Gleem One, testing a cutting-edge drug to see how it responds to zero-gravity conditions. They're also married--for 50 years already, and Gunjita's looking forward to another 60. She has just "juved" at the age of 82, returning her body to youth and health. But Cav is waiting, considering, asking himself whether three lifetimes is more than a person ought to need. More than he needs. When a deep-space mining probe returns to the station with an asteroid sample that has a mysterious yellow-green lump of something--something alive?--attached to it, the scientific mystery will affect both Cav and Gunjita deeply, testing their relationship even as they wrestle with the question of whether or not Cav is going to extend his life a second time. Blumlein (All I Ever Dreamed, 2018, etc.) is tackling the biggest possible questions in this slim volume: If it were possible to live three or more lifetimes, would you? Should you? What do we owe the people we love? What makes life worth living? The story itself is spare and demands close attention, as whole worlds and lives are sketched with a few well-chosen details. The result is thought-provoking, if not always emotionally affecting. This intriguing thought experiment will please readers who like to contemplate the meaning of it all.

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April 15, 2019
This tragic, unsatisfying novel recalls Robert Sawyer’s Rollback (2007): a long-married couple has the opportunity to regain youth and pursue first-contact science together. Gunjita and Cav live and work alone in a space lab, where they are corporate flunkeys purportedly doing zero-g research on a drug that failed on Earth but might facilitate rejuvenation in space. At age 82, Gunjita rejuvenates, recovering her youthful body and appetites, but 84-year-old Cav is procrastinating. Their real preoccupation is an asteroid fragment apparently splattered in vomit. Cav is convinced the splatter is organic, even sentient; Gunjita is adamant that it isn’t. Their obdurate disagreement in the absence of evidence mocks their characterization as highly creative scientists. The marriage is a similarly shallow, polarized thing, especially for Gunjita. Youth is caricatured as untrammeled, impatient libido and age as painful incapacity; the narrative assumes that a marriage without penetrative sex is doomed to fail. Blumlein (X, Y) peppers the story with levity—dad jokes, flights of alliteration, and pastiched footnotes—but also gratuitous body horror involving embryos and babies. At heart, this discomfiting novel is a bitter depiction of the disintegration of an unhappy relationship, and readers hoping for more science in their science fiction will be disappointed.

May 1, 2019
Bittersweet and thought-provoking, Longer asks questions about quality of life, aging, and the ethics surrounding death. Married scientists Gunjita and Cav are researching unlimited rejuvenating, a process that causes unaging back to the patient's twenties but that, done more than twice, causes horrifying results. Gunjita has juved for the second and last time, but Cav is dragging his feet. Blumlein cleverly uses an sf backdrop to explore the implications of living several lifetimes, and soon, the research takes a backseat to the ramifications of Cav's choice. The end, while unsurprising, is both poignant and hopeful. This is an excellent book for book clubs and anyone who enjoys a story that generates more questions than it answers, allowing for colorful discussions.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)