2019 BRAG Medallion Honoree

2019 Eric Hoffer Award, Honorable Mention — eBook Fiction
2019 Montaigne Medal Finalist

In 2068 St. Louis, Missouri, Dr. Douglas (Doug) Michaels finds his lifelong friend, Josh Unger, dead in his home. When law enforcement concludes his death was a suicide, Doug and his wife, Ali, are dumbstruck; they wonder what could explain such a needlessly violent and lonely death in a future where such actions are unimaginable. Trying to unearth a killer, be it either flesh and blood or the cumulative stress of life, Doug creates a mental landscape of Josh’s past, a retroscape, starting in the mid-2030s.

Among its landmarks are:

An illness, sensationalized in the media as the “zombie pandemic” that drives a wedge between husband and wife, parents and children. Cryptic communications between Josh and an “after-life specialist” who peddles immortality services. A mysterious phrase uttered at the assassination of a government official that ties it to Josh’s death 14 years later. Josh’s machine-intelligence wife, Julia, who may hold the secret to his death…if she can only remember.

In the end, determining guilt in a retroscape littered with suspects tells Doug more about humanity, technology, and himself than he ever would have imagined.

Bruce M. Perrin