Halperin, James

• The Truth Machine (8)

  • This book is very similar to the work of Nancy Kress and Julian May, both of whom are reviewed elsewhere in this site. The novel tells the story of a super-genius named Pete Armstrong (complete with sort-of snide commentary by the author, who is telling the story in retrospect, like Uncle Rogi in May's works) who sets out to change the world. This novel of the near future (spanning roughly 1990-2050) deals with the invention of a machine that can absolutely determine whether or not someone is lying.

    It doesn't sound like much of a big deal, but Halperin plausibly lays out the consequences of such a device. Granted, the main character's Utopian vision and some of the plot developments are a bit far-fetched, but the point is that it makes you think. Some fascinating moral dilemmas are raised in the book, so much so that the somewhat under-developed characters take a back seat to a discussion of such problems (all of the major characters except for an obvious couple are the kind that make Mother Theresa look like a piker).

    Basically, if you've read and enjoyed Kress' "Beggars" series or May's "Galactic Milieu" novels, you're certain to enjoy this. It's a great example of speculative fiction set in the near future, certainly one of the best I've seen.

• The First Immortal (8)

  • This book is set in the same milieu as Halperin's first novel, "The Truth Machine", only it follows a different cast of characters. The main character in this novel is a wealthy old man who learns about cryonics as he nears death (the book opens in our near future, as with "The Truth Machine"). He decides that he has nothing to lose, so he has himself frozen and contributes a lot of money to cryonics revival research.

    His gamble pays off as he is awakened in the future when nanotechnological breakthroughs are advanced enough that the cellular damage caused by the freezing process can be reversed along with the aging process and other physical maladies. So this novel largely is about the changes in society that may result from a revolution in nanotechnology (as opposed to truth machine technology). Again, lots of very interesting ethical questions arise here, including thoughts about a world in which immortality is commonplace.

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