Transhuman

One of the strategies we readers adopt in trying to decide which book to read next is to pick up the latest book from the old master. This is the man who used to deliver back in the day. We hope he can do it again. Except, with Transhuman by Ben Bova, the strategy fails. Forget the idea of a Golden Age SF classic like Slan; this book features a seventysomething researcher whose granddaughter gets cancer. Because the big C runs in his family, he’s been working on a cure, but no one believes he’s anywhere near perfecting it. So our old guy kidnaps his granddaughter and goes on the run so he can experiment on her. Because there’s a variation of the treatment that will potentially reverse aging, he injects himself – as a seventysomething, it’s really really tiring to go on the run.

So, guess what, his cure for cancer and the anti-aging formula work. What a surprise. And the government gets all excited about the population problem when we have people cured of cancer and living longer lives. Sadly, this is a tired plot from an author who should have known better. Unless you’re a diehard fan, give this a miss.