Lifers

Electric with compelling action and trenchant social commentary and perfect for fans of Nikki Erlick’s The Measure, this genre-straddling work of speculative fiction examines ageism from a new and challenging perspective. In the year 2050, the man known as Zinn is on the run from the consequences of his greatest creation: an artificial genome that wildly increases the human lifespan. His “Methuselah gene” has gone viral, and he’s being hunted by Adele, a semi-retired CIA biowarfare specialist who hopes to find a way to reverse the genome’s effects before it’s too late. As the longevity plague spreads, populations explode, economies are upended, and intergenerational resentments boil over. Adele searches for a cure while her former lover, Dan Altman, and his wife, Marion, wealthy political operatives both, become leaders of a movement of hundred-plus-year-old “lifers” and fight to create a sanctuary for the ultra-aged in the wilds of Colorado. Meanwhile, the Altmans’ son, Nolan, thinks he has the answer to the longevity crisis: a suicide pill that kills after one year, a death wish algorithm that will influence the super-aged to take it, and his beautiful daughter, Claire, who is a spokesperson for the growing anti-lifer backlash and the head of the federal government’s new Department for Longevity Management. Combining a hugely topical premise with a vein of social-political satire, Lifers evokes a world where society’s ingrained ageism turns lethal and the fear of death is replaced by the challenge of living on . . . and on.