You can live forever but you'll have to give up sex. That's a familiar dilemma for most of us at a certain age, but the choice facing humanity in Bob Shaw's novel is more literal and immediate. But that's really just the background to a tense murder mystery/industrial espionage thriller. The story doesn't hang together particluarly well, the narrative goes all over the place with characters and themes dropping in and out and the denoument is a little rushed. But there are lots of witty scenes and ideas that keep the story interesting throughout it's short duration. ( )

I'm rating this book as 3 although I'm not finishing it. I will, however, hand it on to my nephew, whose tastes in science fiction will be better satisfied than mine by this book.

I bought One Million Tomorrows because I have never read anything by Northern Irish SF writer, Bob Shaw, and I was curious. I didn't really look at the cover blurb, so I was disappointed when I realized in my haste I'd bought a book about a guy who gets to have immortality and still be able to have sex. Oh, brother, thought I.

The story is better than the bare plot suggests. Shaw has an interest in the human heart as well as an informed imagination when it comes to science and technology, so the book is broader than I feared it would be. It is, in the end, a science fiction adventure thriller and does well in that. I stopped reading it, though, because I don't actually like the protagonist, his wife, or any other recurring character, and I have a pile of books with potentially more attractive characters sitting beside my bed giving me the come hither look.

So I'm going thither. ( )