IMMORTALITY BYTES: Digital Minds Don’t Get Hungry

Near-future science fiction can be an interesting sub-genre to straddle: you don’t want things too easy because that won’t be a compelling story, but you also don’t want things to be too dystopian. So you have to walk the fine line of cool new tech and crazy stuff happening that is both believable and thrilling to read about. Immortality Bytes by Daniel Lawrence Abrams does just this, and has a strong unique voice to boot.

It’s some point in the future, but not too far. All the tech we take for granted today has been ratcheted up to eleven! Artificial Intelligence reigns supreme; drones deliver everything to you. One itty bitty problem with that is AI robots have taken most of the jobs and there’s not much left for everyone to do. Fortunately, anyone can get “free money” in the form of universal basic income, with one tiny caveat: they can’t ever have children. No biggie right?

Stu Reigns enjoys doing his livestreams and getting as many viewers as he can; his super-hot and incredible girlfriend who’s too good for him, Maria, gets way more views, but he’s not bitter about that. Well, not much anyway.

Meanwhile, Stu’s ex-girlfriend, Roxy Zhang, has just about figured out a new level of reality: electronic immortality, the possible solution to a lot of things. A rich oligarch wants Stu to steal this revolutionary tech so he can personally benefit from it.

What grabs you right away with Immortality Bytes is Abrams’s voice. It fits so well with the story: fast-paced, slip-stream, hilarious, catchy, jargony… It’s got it all. At times it feels like an American Douglas Adams, which makes you keep reading because you want to know what’s going to happen next, and you’re very entertained.

The other great facet to the book are the referenced documents, whether it’s something Stu did in his past or related to another character’s achievements. The author provides a bordered box with the mentioned document (in the ebook edition this is also hyperlinked, so you just click it and get magically whisked over to reading it), which can be read fully at the back of the book. But if you’re too hooked in on what’s going on, Abrams gives you a quick TL;DR so you don’t have to be thrown out of the flow. It’s a very cool idea that would be great to see used in other books.

Immortality Bytes is the perfect beach read, ebook while commuting, or fun story to get hooked into while you’re killing time. If you like snappy, fun, and funny sci-fi books, this is the one for you.