The New World
A Novel
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3.9 • 17 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
What is the purpose of life?
If you could send a message to the future what would it be?
In 120 characters or less please tell us why you desire to live forever?
Acclaimed author Chris Adrian (The Children’s Hospital, The Great Night) joins the award-winning creators of The Silent History – Eli Horowitz and Russell Quinn to create an innovative digital novel about memory, grief and love.
The New World is the story of a marriage. Dr. Jane Cotton is a pediatric surgeon: her husband, Jim, is a humanist chaplain. They are about to celebrate their eighth wedding anniversary when Jim suddenly collapses and dies. When Jane arrives at the hospital she is horrified to find that her husband’s head has been removed from his body. Only then does she discover that he has secretly enrolled with a shadowy cryogenics company called Polaris.
Furious and grieving, Jane fights to reclaim Jim from Polaris. Revived, in the future, Jim learns he must sacrifice every memory of Jane if he wants to stay alive in the new world. Separated by centuries, each of them is challenged to choose between love and fear, intimacy and solitude, life and grief, and each will find an answer to the challenge that is surprising, harrowing, and ultimately beautiful.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The collaboration by Adrian (The Great Night) and Horowitz (The Silent History) stylishly blends genres. Following a trip to Paris, Dr. Jane Cotton returns home to New York City to discover that her husband, Jim, has died and Polaris, a cryonics company that claims to be able to preserve a person's consciousness until they can be awakened in the future, has taken Jim's head. Jane resolves to recover her husband's skull and destroy Polaris. Meanwhile, in the future, Jim struggles to complete his incarnation, examination, and debut so that he can join the new world. The book zigzags between perspectives and concepts: the present and the future, death and rebirth. Adrian and Horowitz bind the fantastical with a very believable relationship: Jane's resentment, Jim's guilt, and their shared mourning, ground the science fiction tropes. As the story begins to move in a different direction, working backwards, the narrative becomes more introspective. This second cycle lingers in the details of Jim and Jane's marriage. Graphics, color transitions, fades, and even the way in which the text sweeps compliment and contribute to this engaging digital narrative.
