It’s just that in the case of DeLillo I couldn’t help but think of John Ashbery, one of America’s most celebrated poets, who died at age 90 in 2017. I don’t want to claim old writers are necessarily good writers: there are plenty of authors that aren’t able to rise above the level of their debut. It somehow deepens the text, as we associate old age with wisdom and experience. Knowing an author is 79 instead of 49 or 28 obviously is a big deal. It entirely changed the way I framed the book: DeLillo was 79 years old when Zero K was published. When it slowly turns out this book is not really a science fiction novel, but something entirely of its own, I couldn’t care less about its classification, and was entirely hooked.Ī few chapters in I was more curious about DeLillo himself, and I read up on him before I continued. The subdued sense of wonder is real, and the scenes, like the compound’s structures itself, are strange, detached, and at times even reminded me of Kafka. We are introduced to The Convergence, a remote and secret compound where wealthy people choose to be frozen. The book’s structure is set up to lure the regular SF reader in: the bulk of the world building – so to say – happens in the first half of the book.

Not that this matters much – SF readers with an open mind will find much to savor here. There is an amount of scientific speculation in Zero K, but do not expect the technology or the science to be the focus. I thought White Noise was funny and profoundly human, a rare five star book really, so what would he do with a book on cryogenics? Most reviewers agreed that this new book was DeLillo’s best since Underworld – his big American masterwork – so that only made me more eager.Ĭalling Zero K science fiction is a bit of a stretch: companies that offer to freeze your body in the hope of future medical advances do exist, and have for quite some time. When I learned that the author of White Noise – a staple of postmodernism – had written a science fiction novel, I was delighted.

Zero k book review