Zero K (novel)

DeLillo, Don. Zero K". New York City: Scribner, 2016.[1] See Internet Speculative Fiction Database for award nomination and translation to German (Null K).[2]

Reviewed by Joshua Ferris in The New York Times 2 May 2016, on line at link in note.[3]

In a category Thomas P. Dunn used to call "near-in science fiction," i.e., close to our time and with technology that could be developed quite soon, in this case cryogenic preservation of a person (or pet) to be revived when a cure is — or cures are — possible for whatever killed the individual. But more though. In the words of Mr. Ferris, a billionaire attempts to create a pocket eutopia or a wider one: a "technological utopia. Cells will be refashioned. Nanobots will restore the body and augment the brain. The old factions born of religion and geopolitics will be permanently mooted in a post-death world." They won't, but that science-fictional theme is explored in a novel that is and is not SF, in some sense arguably anti-SF (as is, arguably, much in the tradition of pessimistic SF).

RDE, finishing, 23Aug21