A BRIEF HISTORY OF LIVING FOREVER by Jaroslav Kalfar

5 stars

This provocative, deeply intelligent, philosophical, and too-close-for-comfort near future dystopian novel grabs your attention from the get-go. The setting is America in 2030, in which an unnamed Senator from Florida embracing DeSanto’s MAGA views has been elected President and immediately implemented an authoritarian, anti-immigration philosophy. The story centers around a mother-daughter reunion between Adéla, who lives in her deteriorating small-town Czech family home and faces a terminal illness just want a chance to meet her daughter who gave her daughter up for adoption in America decades earlier, and wants to meet her American scientist daughter Tereza before dying.

In America, our country has implemented the Reclamation of America policy, scattering unwanted refuges out of the country as well as withdrawing from all international affairs in full-out isolationist politics. Hard to get short-term visas get issued only to white Europeans, such as Adéla.

American’s science community now focuses on extending the lives of privileged Americans. But in doing so, three factions have arisen at odds with each other. One faction believes that only pure biological advances count as life and have been derogatorily called the Meat Grinders by the others. Another faction wants to upload the human mind digitally, and they’re called The Digits as others see them wanting to reduce life to 1’s and 0’s, and only achieving simulated life. In between is a faction who wants to focus on tech enhancements to the body, or even cell repair nanobats, and they’re stuck with being called The Borgs (after a compelling Star Trek race that who’s bodies get fully tech enhanced as they’re absorbed into the Borg Collective.)

Tereza is a genius and leading researcher with an enormous lab financed by the VITA company. Tereza, whose adoptive parents have died, works round the clock to achieve advances in enhanced biology and drug therapies to extend life spans. She’s under tight NDA’s and passionate about her work, despite VITA’s increasing mistreatment of her human test subjects. She’s close to achieving what has been dubbed “The God Pill” it will go first as a luxury item to wealthy elites and be used as a bargaining chip to increase VITA’s endless quest for more power.

When Teresa meets Adela, they share one night of bonding during which Teresa decides to beg the two brothers who run VITA to allow her to give her Mom her life-saving drug discovery.

What follows is a dark, all-consuming thriller.

There are so many brilliant insights that I found myself highlighting sections on every other page, just so that I could go back and re-read them!

I cannot wait for more from this brilliant author!!

Thanks to Doubleday Books and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

Stacy DeBroff

Stacy DeBroff, founder and CEO of Mom Central.com and social and digital consultancy, Influence Central, is a social media strategist, attorney, and best-selling parenting author. A sought-after expert for national media, she trend-spots regularly with national brands and speaks frequently to national and international audiences on a wide range of subjects, including influencer marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, and consumer trends. A passionate cook, gardener, reader, and tennis player, she adores this new chapter of post-college-age parenting.