Old Twentieth by Joe Haldeman
Published by Gollancz, 2005.
ISBN: 978 0 575 11162 2
300 pages
Review by Mark Yon
In the future humans have managed to create the Becker-Cendrek Process (BCP) pill, a treatment that leads to their near-immortality. With such a gift initially available only to the rich, there is a war and the release of a virus, Lot 92, kills over seven billion of the world’s population. Of the remaining couple of hundred million people, humans begin to use their longer lifespans to travel the stars.
Jacob Brewer is one of eight hundred colonists who are chosen to travel on a group of space ships to Beta Hydrii, a journey that will take over one thousand years. As part of their recreation, not to mention to maintain their sanity as well as to remember what they have left behind, the ship has a holodeck that gives the user the chance to apparently go back in time to places and times in Earth’s twentieth century. Our heroes’ job on the trip is to go and check each year, to check that it works properly and ensure that there are no ill effects on the part of the user.
This is all told in the first person, with Joe managing to do his trick of creating a three-dimensional character (albeit it rather flawed) and at the same time fill in background details on the spaceship’s environment, society and culture. A lot of the fun is in the places Jacob goes to in the twentieth century: Gallipoli in the First World War, the US of the 1920’s, Paris in the 1940’s, Vietnam in the 1970’s and so forth. Many of the places involve war and death, for despite whatever injuries the user may gain in the simulation they return fit and healthy afterwards.
The jeopardy of the tale is caused when, all of sudden, some of the Immortals die, often whilst using the ‘time machine’ on the spaceship or on Earth. Jacob has to find out whether it is just natural causes or ‘the machine’ that is somehow doing it, which involves him talking to some quite complex AI that run the simulations.
Anyone who’s seen Source Code (admittedly 2011) will recognise the plot twist by the end of the tale, and whilst that may create a “Huh?” type moment, and possibly lead to the reader’s suspension of disbelief falling apart, the novel up to that point has been quite a ride. It all ends a bit too quickly, though it must be said rather appropriately.
Whilst it’s not perfect, Old Twentieth is an entertaining read that shows Haldeman’s skills at telling a tale. It’s not The Forever War, but it’s nice to read a tale that revels in just doing that.
Mark Yon, September 2014
