Love Minus Eighty

In the future, love is complicated and death is not necessarily the end. Love Minus Eighty follows several interconnected people in a disquieting vision of romantic life in the century to come. In this daring and big-hearted novel based on the Hugo-winning short story, the lovelorn navigate a world in which technology has reached the outer limits of morality and romance.

Author Will McIntosh's new novel, Love Minus Eighty, is the book you give to your friends in hopes of igniting a passion for science fiction. With its focus on deeply connected interpersonal relationships, the novel draws in the literary fiction reader and with its ever-present science fictional elements it also holds a strong attraction for fans of genre fiction.

Worldbuilding? This world is already built. With a deft touch Will McIntosh has imagined a highly-interactive future that is built so solidly on the foundation of our present internet-driven, social-media-obsessed culture that it succeeds in being both imaginative and accessible. The oft-despised info dump is non-existent. This future and the characters who inhabit it are initially quite shallow, but as circumstances stir the waters McIntosh plumbs the depths of several interesting characters. The reader will find themselves having conflicting emotions regarding various characters as the story unfolds, making the act of reading Love Minus Eighty an engaging experience.

In my review of the January 2013 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction I mentioned that Will McIntosh was "fast becoming one of those short story authors whose name on the cover will make me buy a magazine". Love Minus Eighty has made me want to read everything the author has ever written.

If you appreciate novels about the complexity of relationships, featuring a variety of interesting characters-and just so happen to get excited about slick technological advances-Love Minus Eighty will not disappoint.

What follows is an entirely non-spoiler review. If you haven't already rushed off to your favorite internet site or local bookstore to purchase a copy of Love Minus Eighty, I would caution you to avoid the temptation to read the cover copy or any description of the book. The opening quote for this review was culled from the Amazon description, heavily edited to remove anything that would spoil reading experience.

In Will McIntosh's future, those rich enough and/or fortunate enough to have good insurance can pay to have themselves revived after death, time and time again. While this medical advancement does not lead to immortality, it does extend life for a very long time. This future Earth is no less dominated by big corporations than our present, and one company in particular has capitalized on this advancement by creating a service whereby women who meet a certain level of attractiveness, but cannot afford to have themselves revived, can opt for a second chance at life by being a part of an expensive dating service. Unaffectionately dubbed the "bridesicle" program, woman are kept cryogenically frozen, their minds and faces awoken to consciousness for brief windows of time when rich men and women can afford to pay to "date" them in order to determine compatibility. If a bridesicle is lucky enough, she will find herself revived by her new spouse.

Will McItosh's future also showcases the advancement of technology to the point where those who can afford to do so wear fully interactive systems which overlay the mundane world and allow the wearer full access to the world at large. Imagine being able to have your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. audience and all the internet access that you could want surrounding you at all times and you will get some idea of the immersion of our lives into technology that McIntosh has imagined. It sounds both exciting and horrifying, doesn't it? Will McIntosh plays with these feelings throughout the novel to create an inspired view of the future that is both fanciful and plausible at the same time.

What makes Love Minus Eighty such a treat is that those tantalizing science fictional elements are fully present throughout the story while allowing the majority of the novel to focus on the characters, which hearkens back to earlier comments about spoilers. Love Minus Eighty follows the alternating viewpoints of three main characters, one of whom is part of the bridesicle program. We experience this future through the eyes of Rob, Veronika and Mina but at the same time we are introduced to several other characters all of whom become more real and tangible as the story unfolds. Early on in the story Rob is involved in a life-changing event that is the catalyst for everything that happens afterward and descriptions I have read quickly point out that event. As it happens early in the novel it might be argued that this is not a "spoiler", but for my money I enjoyed going into the novel with no clue where it would lead.

Though each chapter is revealed through the eyes of one of these three main protagonists, the larger cast of Love Minus Eighty is drawn into a complex web of relationships that bring them into contact with one another. This creates the interesting phenomenon of seeing the characters through different eyes, allowing the reader to form and re-form opinions about each character as their lives intersect. Often throughout the story the reader will find their opinions of characters challenged. You might be rooting for someone one minute and then writing them off as hopelessly self-obsessed the next. In a novel about relationships it is not surprising that hopes and expectations will arise as to which characters may end up together when all is said and done and it is a credit to the storytelling ability of Will McIntosh that those expectations grow and change throughout the novel.

The only complaint to be leveled at Love Minus Eighty is a feeling that things were rushed at the end. At a little over 400 pages, there is adequate space to tell an involved, fully-realized story and Will McIntosh does this, leaving the reader with a good deal of closure. There is no feeling of being cheated at the end. However, the climactic events read as if there was some hurry to bring things to a close with no apparent reason as to why this would be the case. Please do not misunderstand. This is not one of those novels that surges ahead with great promise only to see the wheels come off at the end. There is no doubt that Will McIntosh knew where he wanted to take the story and he brought it there intact. It is simply this reviewer's opinion that a little more time could have been taken with the climax and denouement.

Love Minus Eighty comes highly recommended. You will care about these characters, or at the very least some of these characters, and will find your imagination stimulated by Will McIntosh's vision of the future. There are books that you pick up and do not want to put down. Love Minus Eighty is one of those books.

Love Minus Eighty is an SF rom-com-drom that knocks it out of the park. After Soft Apocalypse I wasn't expecting much, but wow, this was a charming story that could be a Sundance movie with lots of tantalizing future society nuggets thrown in and seen from the user's viewpoint with little technical description, which somehow makes it more realistic. You'd have to be pretty jaded for this book not to grow on you.

This book was pretty good, not great but better than okay. It kind of reminded me of a future Love Actually or something like it. The world the author created was probably the most intriguing aspect of the whole book. The way humans interact with the technology around them was very believable. The characters were nicely created and I thought their interactions with each other were written very well. The storyline was unfortunately a little weak for me. It just didn't have a strong enough plot to keep me turning the pages in anticipation, it was a little bit of a struggle to get through at the end. Also, the ending of all the storylines was a little disappointing and seemed sort of rushed and pretty cliche. But I will admit I'm a tough critic. I could see a lot of people finding this book very enjoyable.

A non series book, the third novel by McIntosh. Could be viewed as set in the same universe as his first novel, _Soft Apocalypse_, which I found to be excellent. The book is a well formatted trade paperback with a translucent cover, the first that I have seen on a trade paperback.

This novel is a major expansion of McIntosh's 2010 Hugo winning short story, _Bridesicle_. The novel starts in 2100 and finishes in 2130. It
explores how social media drives and overwhelms everything in human society. At least the society inthe way over crowded cities.

Along the way, the human race gained the ability to freeze people upon death for future revival. Then they gained the ability to revive people. At twenty million dollars per revival.

I very much enjoyed this one. So much so, that I put the author’s other book Soft Apocalypse on my library list because such a thing was mentioned by one of the characters in this book and I am eager to read more.

In this story we follow a group of people who become more entwined as things unfold. Rob, Mira, Winter, Veronika, Nathan, Lycan & Lorelei. They inhabit a future world where mathematically beautiful women who’ve died before their time are basically put on ice until such time as some wealthy man will have them repaired and resurrected. There’s a technology that allows them to be awakened for “dates” in brief intervals but they’re immobile and confined to their coffin at the creche. It’s quite the morbid & cruel set up. Mira, is one of the “bridesicles” and as if it’s not bad enough that she’s long dead, she’s stuck going on “dates” with men in hopes of being reanimated though she’s gay. It seems no one checked that out before dropping her in at CryoMed & all she wants is to see her love, Jeanette. I was so invested in her story & her’s had me sad there was no epilogue at the end. I’ve read that Mira is the main character of the short story that spawned this full length novel, so I’m glad I got to meet her & Jeanette here.

Rob, Winter, Veronika, Nathan, Lycan & Lorelei were interesting to follow with varying degrees of rootability. Though I was never much a fan of Nathan or Lorelei their endings felt honest and real. Rob, Winter, Veronika & Lycan were most interesting in watching how their stories crossed paths with each other & evolved. They were the most transformed characters and I was very satisfied with their endings.

Overall, this is an almost-favorite for me (both characters & the world-building captivated me). The only thing keeping me from giving it five stars is that I’ll likely not read it again but this will remain with me for quite some time & I am a little regretful that I borrowed this one from the library & so don’t own a copy. I enjoyed it that much. 4.5 stars.

This is what science-fiction was meant for. A futuristic society that reflects our own values and times back at us.

McIntosh has created a dazzling, intricate and layered world that will make you think about issues like what it means to be alive, to die, to love, and what's so special about doing things IP i.e. in-person. Class is also a big issue tackled in the book, and McIntosh makes us think about it without getting preachy.

Details of the this communication/information-obsessed future are worked seamlessly into the book - you won't find information dumps or over-explanation. A character might drop a word, and you won't figure out what it means for a few more chapters. There's a nice balance between explaining the world's technology and history and the character's own development. Because make no mistake, while this is a sci-fi book, McIntosh's main interest isn't in creating a lot of neat tech, but in telling us a story. Even the way the tech works is subservient to giving the reader a good visual of the underlying message. For instance, the "screens" that are floating all over the city representing people remotely viewing an area are visual more so the reader can "see" just how plugged-in this society is, not because such tech seems realistically like where we're heading.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who ever reads sci-fi from the before the 60s and wonders why no one writes stuff like that anymore. I also hope that McIntosh continues to write books in the rich and thought-provoking world he's created.

The lives and deaths of characters weave into a fascinating vision of relationships in the future. I normally read nonfiction, but this book tells me that I need to broaden my reading to other novels. I'll start by reading more from McIntosh!

I didn't know what to expect,but I was very happy with the result. It began as a bit of a "slow read" for me, finding myself too easily distracted by other influences. However, as I dove deeper in the read, I fairly quickly became very engaged in the story and found it very difficult to put the book down. I found myself feeling very deep compassion for the characters and felt totally wrapped in their pain and experiences.

I really enjoyed this book until the ending. Loved the plot and characters and felt addicted to the book, but the ending was too tidy and didn't match the rest of it.

Love this book!