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The Not Yet Reviewed
Aug. 12th, 2012 01:59 pmHi,
The other day I finished up The Not Yet by Moira Crone. It's an interesting little book, but I don't think it quite develops as much as it should.
The short version is that we follow the life of Malcolm de Lazarus a Not Yet. In this alternate-history future, human longevity treatments were developed in the 1960's and at the start of the 21st century, the President revealed this fact to the world (along with truth that he and many other high-ranking government officials had been treated). This slowly dissolves and reforms the United States into the United Authority where only the Treated have a life of privilege and where everyone else works like a dog in a world where sea level rise and ecological disaster is isolating people.
Malcolm was an orphan found and raised on the New Orleans Islands, part of a demilitarized zone on the edge of the UA. Malcolm's sponsor is trying to help Malcolm and the other orphans build up a big enough Trust so that they can get Treated and live forever. Malcolm is the best of the bunch but he's still a Not Yet (as in "not yet treated"). When the story opens, Malcolm is returning to New Orleans to talk to his sponsor because his Trust has been frozen and he wants to know why. In the process we alternate back and forth between the events of Malcolm's past which brought him to this point and his ongoing struggle to reclaim his Trust and get back on the path to immortality.
The book has a lot of good ideas, and uses it's setting to reinforce ideas about privilege in Amreica but the ending is a little abrupt and it's unclear how far Malcolm has yet to go in his eye-opening journey on how the other half lives. I'm less enamored of ambiguous endings so this might be my bias talking. The book does clip along and deftly handles exposition without a lot of info-dumping.
later
Tom
The other day I finished up The Not Yet by Moira Crone. It's an interesting little book, but I don't think it quite develops as much as it should.
The short version is that we follow the life of Malcolm de Lazarus a Not Yet. In this alternate-history future, human longevity treatments were developed in the 1960's and at the start of the 21st century, the President revealed this fact to the world (along with truth that he and many other high-ranking government officials had been treated). This slowly dissolves and reforms the United States into the United Authority where only the Treated have a life of privilege and where everyone else works like a dog in a world where sea level rise and ecological disaster is isolating people.
Malcolm was an orphan found and raised on the New Orleans Islands, part of a demilitarized zone on the edge of the UA. Malcolm's sponsor is trying to help Malcolm and the other orphans build up a big enough Trust so that they can get Treated and live forever. Malcolm is the best of the bunch but he's still a Not Yet (as in "not yet treated"). When the story opens, Malcolm is returning to New Orleans to talk to his sponsor because his Trust has been frozen and he wants to know why. In the process we alternate back and forth between the events of Malcolm's past which brought him to this point and his ongoing struggle to reclaim his Trust and get back on the path to immortality.
The book has a lot of good ideas, and uses it's setting to reinforce ideas about privilege in Amreica but the ending is a little abrupt and it's unclear how far Malcolm has yet to go in his eye-opening journey on how the other half lives. I'm less enamored of ambiguous endings so this might be my bias talking. The book does clip along and deftly handles exposition without a lot of info-dumping.
later
Tom
