Zero K

In Zero K, Jeffrey Lockhart’s father, Ross, is a billionaire in his sixties, with a younger wife, Artis Martineau. Her health is failing. Ross is the primary investor in a remote and secret compound where death is exquisitely controlled. Bodies are preserved until a future time when biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to life. Jeff joins Ross and Artis at the compound to say “an uncertain farewell” to her as she surrenders her body.

“We are born without choosing to be. Should we have to die in the same manner? Isn’t it a human glory to refuse to accept a certain fate?”

These are the questions that haunt the novel and its memorable characters. It is Ross Lockhart who feels a deep need to enter another dimension and awake to a new world. For his son, this is indefensible. Jeff, the narrator of Zero K, is committed to living. He wants to experience “the mingled astonishments of our time, here, on earth.”