Dr. Sarah Halifax decoded the first-ever radio transmission received from aliens. Thirty-eight years later, a second message is received and Sarah, now 87, may hold the key to deciphering this one, too . . . if she lives long enough.

 

A wealthy industrialist offers to pay for Sarah to have a rollback—a hugely expensive experimental rejuvenation procedure. She accepts on condition that Don, her husband of sixty years, gets a rollback, too. The process works for Don, making him physically twenty-five again. But in a tragic twist, the rollback fails for Sarah, leaving her in her eighties.

 

While Don tries to deal with his newfound youth and the suddenly vast age gap between him and his wife, Sarah struggles to do again what she’d done once before: figure out what a signal from the stars contains.

Praise

Praise for Rollback:

 

“A novel to be savored by science-fiction and mainstream readers alike.” —Toronto Globe & Mail

 

"This is what SF is supposed to be about: Discovery as carried out by real people.  A joy to read; a superb novel." -- Jack McDevitt, author of Odyssey

 

“Likeable characters facing big ethical dilemmas . . . [a] smoothly readable near-future SF novel.” –Publishers Weekly, starred review

 

“Sawyer’s near-future speculative fiction reveals many advances in medicine and robotics. But it’s the humanness of the closeness (and the distance) between Sarah and Don that makes Rollback an early candidate for sci-fi book of the year.” –Kansas City Star

About the Author(s)

Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. Sawyer was born in Ottawa and lives in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. He has won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel.

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Excerpt

Chapter One

Sunday, February 2, 2048

It had been a good life.

Donald Halifax looked around the living room of the modest house that he and his wife Sarah had shared for sixty years now, and that thought kept coming back to him. Oh, there had been ups and downs, and the downs had seemed excursions into the flames of hell at the time—the lingering death of his mother, Sarah’s battle with breast cancer, the rough periods their marriage had gone through—but, on balance, when all was said and done, it had been a good life.

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