The novel “One Million Tomorrows” by Bob Shaw was published for the first time in 1970.
In the XXII century, aging is a problem overcome thanks to a drug that stops it. The problem is that men who undergo the anti-aging treatment become impotent. For this reason, men generally wait until a certain age before undergoing the treatment.
Will Carewe works for the company that produces the drug that gives immortality and one day he’s proposed to be a guinea pig to test a new version of the drug that has no side effects on men’s sexuality. Will agrees but soon starts suffering from strange accidents which are potentially fatal. He manages to survive but concludes that someone’s trying to kill him.
The theme of immortality is a classic of science fiction. In “One Million Tomorrows”, humans have invented a treatment to get it but the price that men pay in exchange for immortality is impotence. The novel shows us the various changes that inevitably occur in society as a result of the possibility of becoming immortal but also because of the fact that men become impotent.
The protagonist Will Carewe and his wife are traditionalists and for this reason they have chosen the single marriage. He wants to wait before undergoing the treatment to become immortal because he knows that his wife would abandon him. Will works for the corporation that manufactures the drug of immortality and one day he’s proposed to test a new version that has no side effects. It’s a risk but it’s also an opportunity to become immortal and at the same time keep his marriage alive.
For Will, it’s also a career opportunity within the corporation. To prevent the immortals from always maintaining their positions in the workplace, there’s a periodical rotation in which the highest ranked executives are demoted while others have a chance to advance. Will is promised an advancement in the next rotation in exchange for secrecy, because he must pretend to be impotent like all the men who become immortal.
Unfortunately for Will, his wife doesn’t believe the story of the new treatment with no side effects and abandons him. Depressed, Will decides to go to Africa, where part of the population refuse to undergo the treatment for immortality, joining an organization whose member forcibly inject the drug to local adults.
In Africa, Will is a victim of the first in a series of strange accidents that convince him of the fact that someone wants to kill him. The only explanation he finds is that someone discovered the existence of the new immortality treatment and wants to take him out to cause delays to its trial.
In my opinion, the main problem with “One Million Tomorrows” is that when Will has to deal with the attempts to kill him the novel becomes an action story. It’s OK to have some action and in other of his stories Bob Shaw had already demonstrated that he could handle it well. The author, however, is at his best when his stories keep on developing a basic idea to its end, also through action.
In “One Million Tomorrows” we have a rather interesting first part that explores the idea of immortality and the transformation of society and a second less interesting part where the protagonist must escape a series of attempts to kill him and try to figure out who wants his death.
As an action story, “One Million Tomorrows” isn’t extraordinary so I find it a half-successful novel, definitely not the best by Bob Shaw. For this reason I can only recommend it to the fans of this author and of stories about immortality with the caveat of not having high expectations.
