The year is 2075 and the human race is dying. Decades of war, famine, and bio-engineering have finally taken their toll, and birth rates have declined to near zero. The leaders of two of the solar system's largest corporations believe they can save humanity, but they will have to break the law to do it.
When Doctor Evan Feldman decided to have his body frozen immediately after his death, he always hoped that one day the technology would exist to cure his cancer-ravaged body. But he never imagined that his granddaughter, Aubrey Harris, would be the one to restore him to life, nor could he imagine how much the world would change in fifty years. He doesn't know it yet, but he is at the center of a secret plan to save the human race from extinction.
After General Secretary Dianne Merkel, head of the government agency charged with enforcing Earth's anti-cloning laws, learns that Evan has been restored she will stop at nothing to bring him, and those that restored him, to justice. Unfortunately for her, Evan has a lot of help and she soon finds that capturing him is easier said than done.
Aubrey and her co-conspirators are determined to succeed at any cost and they quickly get Evan off of the Earth, sending him fleeing across the Solar System in a frantic race against time. With an elite team of soldiers closing in on them, the conspirators are forced to improvise. Has restoring Evan cost them everything they've worked for?
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Restoration will challenge your beliefs about what makes us human while taking you on a wild ride to the Asteroid Belt and beyond. Spanning more than five decades, Restoration explores the moral, physical and ethical consequences of using advanced technologies without fully understanding their effects and implications for our species. It also challenges our definition of what it means to be alive, and it asks us to consider whether the entirety of who we are can be digitized and transferred from one body to another without losing any part of ourselves.
Ultimately, Restoration is a fast-paced, sci-fi adventure that will leave you wanting more.
I read a lot of books. A lot. Very few make me rave. Restoration by Daniel C. McWhorter does and makes me feel like grabbing people and shoving it into their hand. I felt invested in the plight of Evan Feldman, a likable, intelligent man who had a vision long ago of a world without hunger, war or disease. There’s a unique plot, action scenes so good they stay with you, and twists that I guarantee you won’t see coming.
The year is 2075 and Dr. Evan Feldman, who died in 2023, has been restored into a new body from cryogenic suspension. He’ll have a lot of adjusting to do, including learning all the events, innovations and crises of the last fifty years through videos, as well as getting used to his new, youthful body and face. To his astonishment, man has established permanent colonies on the Moon “Luna” and Mars because conditions on Earth have deteriorated to the detriment of health and growth. People are getting sick and food sources are not steady.
The ethics of restoring the dead are no longer deemed acceptable as the original purpose of helping mankind has not stayed on point. When he founded Telogene Life Sciences, his dream was to make mankind better and save people from life-changing illness and permanent death. Now, he’ll get the chance to see if he came close to achieving that. He finds his granddaughter, Aubrey, a toddler when he died, is now a grown woman and runs Telogene, today, a multi-trillion-dollar company.
To his sorrow, he learns his wife, Christina, was not successfully restored and his daughter, Lily, died a year before his restoration. Evan has some problems adjusting to everything, both psychologically and physically, but everyone expects he’ll overcome everything after a short time of adjustment. But, they have a bigger problem.
The world government, the Global Federation of Nations (GFN), condemned full body replacements 30 years ago, so bringing back Evan was illegal. If discovered, Aubrey and Telogene, and all those who work for it are finished. The GFN would make an example out of the top scientists and staff and hard labor for their enhanced lifespans would be just part of the punishment.
When the GFN discovers a full body replacement has occurred, Evan and family must make a run for it to Mars, the only place GFN has no legal power. They say that getting there is half the fun, but not for Evan and crew. While Evan is trying to come to terms with being brought back from the dead and getting his head around all the new technology and world, a desperate flight from Earth to Mars takes place. GFN is not going to let them go easily and people’s reputations are on the line there to get them back.
This book was one I read until I had to stop for something silly like work or food. Every chance I got to pick it up, even for only 5 to 10 minutes, I took. The story is unique and written beautifully. The technology that would be used is believable and I had some aha moments thinking how logical some of it is (why don’t we have injectable nanites that fix health problems, and clothing that monitors and regulates body functions and temperatures? I want those!).
The action is addicting with its novel weapons and unexpected turns. The descriptions of space travel are so well described you feel you are there. There is an AI personality that raises more questions about life and ethics and that feels like a book in the making to me (hint, hint to the author). The characters, both government, and Telogene, are believable and mostly likable.
I felt I had been on a wild ride when this book ended and hope there’s going to be a sequel from this author. Even if you’re an on the fence action/thriller/sci-fi fan, buy it, you won’t be sorry.
A scientist in the late 21st century awakens her cryogenically frozen grandfather for his expertise—an illegal act that puts global authorities on her trail—in this sci-fi debut.
A few years after losing his wife in a plane crash, terminally ill Dr. Evan Feldman hopes he can return from the dead someday. This is a possibility, as his company, Telogene Life Sciences, has secretly developed cryogenic suspension technology. Fifty years after Evan’s death, in 2075, his granddaughter, Dr. Aubrey Harris, is there at his restoration. But there are a few snags. For one, damage to a storage facility resulted in loss of genetic material, so Evan’s “engramic archive”—essentially his digitized memories, thoughts, and feelings—is in another body. More significantly, as the Human Dignity and Decency Act passed anti-cloning legislation two decades earlier, Aubrey and Telogene are breaking the law. While Aubrey is ensnared by the authoritarian Global Federation of Nations, her colleagues Dr. Chen Li Hao and Yin Li evade GFN’s jurisdiction by taking Evan to Luna (aka, the moon) and later Mars. The restored Evan can assist in overcoming a lethal genetic mutation among humans, but the real reason he’s awake involves abundant secrets and may leave him questioning the repercussions of his extended life. Though McWhorter’s novel thrives on mystery and unveiling twist after twist as the story progresses, it also boasts sci-fi trademarks. For example, Earth has been ravaged by worldwide drought and famine, and there’s plenty of chic tech, such as minidrones linked to optical implants. Furthermore, the plot shrewdly tackles the oft-posed question about humans (Do they have souls?), highlighted by Chen’s convincing argument that people are defined by their energy, not their physical forms. The author establishes a steady tempo (intermittently inserting bits of backstory rather than revealing it all at once) and provides most characters with personalities, including the GFN police, or Peacekeepers, pursuing Evan and the others. Despite some finality by the end, there’s a clear setup for a sequel.
Insightful dystopian tale with dynamic characters and a surfeit of surprises.
