The Fountains of Youth [Hardcover]

The earth is inhabited by a New Human Race built on Utopian principles in an attempt to stop it meeting its end like the previous one. People are emortal, which means that they are unaffected by either illness or ageing. This vision is similar in some ways to that of the Culture in the novels of Iain M. Banks. There are also definite differences between these two visions of future society, however. For example, in the world portrayed in this book, it is believed that our bodies are what make us ourselves. That if a mind was to be uploaded into a computer and then put into a different body, it would no longer be the original person but a new one. Which is unlike the Culture, where people freely switch between bodies because the mind is thought to be the essential self.

Because of their emortality and in-built Internal Technologies, some feel that life has been unacceptably sanitised and, like in Banks' "Look To Windward", some people purposely seek out dangerous pursuits for the thrill, claiming that Virtual simulations of such experiences just aren't the same. A cult called the Thanaticists is born where people take this to the extreme - they kill themselves; to them, death is seen as a luxury, something that they may never experience. Others deliberately inject themselves with viruses for similar reasons.

In spite of their emortality, the New Human Race can still die by accident or misadventure: from natural disasters such as drowning. This is something that nearly happens to the book's narrator, Mortimer Gray. He was at sea when what was known as the Coral Sea Disaster occurred - a major schism deep within the earth's crust that cost around 400 million people their lives. Surviving this major catastrophe inspires Mortimer to commence on a very ambitious project - the writing of a ten part History of Death.

Mortimer Gray's writing of The History of Death enables Stableford to meditate on religion, war, science, medicine and the power of the media, as well as the nature of history itself. A key phrase in the book is that of "History is Fantasy"; the assertion that no history is purely objective - that it is affected by the perspective of those that recorded it, so the line between fact and fiction is confusingly blurred. It also leads to the central assertion that to understand life, we first need to understand death; that it is death that actually makes life possible.

Humans are still the only known intelligent lifeform and, as previously mentioned, travel freely through space. This has maybe made them somewhat complacent. The unexpected revelation in the penultimate chapter shows the New Human Race that in spite of all their progress the universe, like nature, is something that is beyond their control.

This is a book that is very wide-ranging in scope. It is an extremely thought provoking and, at times, mind-boggling read. While being firmly rooted in the sci-fi genre, it is also about evolution, society and philosophy - a contemplation of humankind and the notion of progress, of both history and the future. A truly inspiring read.