In the middle years of the twenty-first century, the discovery of the secret of immortality has been made. The Becker-Cendrek Process means no one need die every again, providing of course, that they can afford to undergo the treatment. This leads to immortality for the elite and the wealthy.

This has the effect of starting a world-encompassing war, a war that ends in the most terrifying way – when a biological agent wipes out all human life. All life, that is, except for those who had undergone the immortality process, leaving a world populated by film stars, business leaders, politicians and the like – but without anyone who did the little jobs.

Moving forward a few hundred years and mankind has recovered somewhat, the population has been rebuilt and stabilised, and people have been adapting to longer lifecycles. One of the aspects of this longevity has been the romancification of the twentieth century, the years immediately before the Immortality War. The century has been re-imagined as "Old Twentieth", a full immersion virtual reality system, an it has established itself as the most popular entertainment of this society.

The main character in this novel is Jacob Brewer, one of small percentage of the human race born in the years before the Immortality War, and he is a virtual reality engineer – one of the people who maintain "Old Twentieth".

He has left the Earth behind and taken his place on the starship Aspera, a thousand-year voyage to another world (around Beta-Hydrii) undertaken. But on this voyage the unthinkable happens – someone dies in "Old Twentieth", and it seems the machine is starting to evolve.

I wouldn't say this book is Haldeman's best by any means. It's certainly an entertaining book, but it feels too familiar. Everything here has been done before in other books, the immortality drug, the virtual reality environment, the thousand year voyage concept. Haldeman makes a good job of bringing these elements together into an acceptable whole, but it didn't excite me.

I suppose part of this slight disappointment was my expectations. I've read Haldeman books in the past, and thought them excellent. This was good but when you compare it to his earlier work it's of a lesser standard. That said, there are a good number of authors who would be more than happy to reach this level.