Review of "The Cryonauts" by A.C. Kabukuru

Score: 92/100 (9.2 out of 10)

The Cryonauts marks A.C. Kabukuru's huge return to the Outstanding Creator Awards after four years, back when Kabukuru became the first sci-fi author to enter and win an OCA contest!

Before we go any deeper, we'll preface this by saying that this book is very thought-provoking and compelling. It tackles issues with real-world implications for the near-future. If you thought radio, cars, planes, smartphones, nukes, A.I., the Internet, and social media snuck up on us and rewrote the playbook on life, could you imagine what cheating death via cryogenics could do?

The Cryonauts is the sequel to THAW, Kabukuru's previous book. Similar to the previous book, Cryonauts's strength is its world-building and thought-provoking questions, particularly in regard to the ethics and moral dilemmas of transhumanist cryonics and other such technologies that are almost certain to emerge in human society (if they haven't started to emerge already).

This really gets at the core of what it means to be human. That's somewhat ironic because our biggest complaint about the book isn't the somewhat-meandering/wandering plot, the world-building, or anything like that. What really struck us is how inhuman and almost robotic a lot of the characters seemed to us. It's hard to explain or describe, but there are things they say and do that really seem alien, foreign, or unnatural to most of us living in the 21st century.

For example, Dr. Gwen Quinn argues that reanimating a cryogenically frozen serial-killer named Iron Connor Linktree may not be that bad of an idea because death and NDEs (near-death experiences) like those that led to these people being frozen can cause people to change... or something like that.

Saying that Linktree is a "serial-killer" is an oversimplification and doesn't do this argument justice. He isn't just a serial-killer, her is an outright monster. He was convicted in 2125 after participating in a robbery that escalated into the murder of Hans Davis followed by the kidnapping and killing of two witnesses who had been hiding and cowering behind a fruit stand: a 45-year-old woman and her 19-year-old daughter.

And it's not like he just walked up to these two women and shot them in the back of the head. He held them captive for two hellish days in a restroom, probably without food or water, before doing so. These aren't the actions of a redeemable person. They are the actions of someone who deserves to go to hell.

Yet, Gwen, one of the main characters and someone we're supposed to get behind, decides that reanimating this irredeemable, dangerous monster is fine. Kelley joins in with another alien-sounding response: “Look, the guy was sentenced to life in prison, and he spent his life in
prison. He paid his debt. He should be given another chance.”

When Owens tells them that Linktree may still be dangerous, Gwen tells him:

"If. We don’t know what he’s going to do. Studies show people with near-death experiences demonstrate a complete change of attitude and outlook in the best possible way. I think there may be evidence to suggest this extends to those who go through actual death experiences and come back.”

We'd love to ask what planet these people are on and how they can be so monumentally stupid, but... this is the future of Earth after all. Humanity is already becoming stupid.

To us, these statements by Gwen and Kelley doesn't read as hopeful or enlightened. They read as disturbingly detached. It's like the book’s characters are stripped of the natural gut-level reactions that make us human. Instead of recoiling at horror, they theorize, rationalize, and intellectualize it. Sure, that creates a tension in the reading experience: the book is asking profound questions about life, death, and second chances. However, it sometimes does so at the cost of what we in the 21st century would classify as authentic and believable human emotion.

Seriously, reading how these characters think and act is almost like observing an alien species. And perhaps that's intentional. The world, society, humanity, and the way that people think, act, and feel will surely change dramatically over the course of 150+ years.

Everything seems disturbingly foreign, wrong, and backwards. For example, it's revealed that male children who are unfrozen are partially-starved (by having their food rations restricted) for the first four years, supposedly to prevent cardiovascular disease. George, who is more like us in this situation, finds this to be barbaric.

Yet... it's scary how this kind of makes sense. If cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death, particularly in males, then wouldn't you want to do something to prevent it?

What's extra terrifying is how apathetic Astra and Figure are about it, saying things like, "You can eat all you want at thirteen."

Alpo outright says, "Life's not fair."

Geez Luiz, are these supposed to be protagonists or are they members of the Panem Capital from The Hunger Games?

It really gives you those apocalyptic, dystopian vibes.

By the way, George was our favorite character from the previous book. He's more likable than some of the other characters in this book for sure, but he still kind of bothered us.

His whole relationship with Priya is bizarre. Talk about foreign and alien... that relationship is like watching a Xenomorph and Predator perform a mating ritual.

Priya is one of the most complex and conflicted characters in the book. She’s not just George’s partner, she’s also a linchpin inside Cryonicor, caught between loyalty, guilt, and personal choices that haunt her.

Now we're just gonna come out and say it: what Priya did is F'd up and wrong. Essentially, she did what the crazy lady from Gone Girl did to herself.

Like, come on, girl! Come on! What is wrong with you?! And what's wrong with Gwen, Kelley, and some of the other people in this book? They're out of their minds!

You know what... maybe this book is trying to say something cautionary about science and technological advancement. Look at the Resident Evil series and how a pharmaceutical company (Umbrella Corp) went from making medicines for people to outright making bio-weapons and other monstrosities. It's kind of the same thing.

Let's talk a little bit about some of the other odd things about the universe of this book:

- Handshakes are out of fashion as a side-effect of pandemics
- Breakfasts are out of fashion and everyone intermittent fasts (congratulations Ori Hofmekler, Martin Berkhan, and Brad Pilon... it worked)
- Male kids have major food restrictions (as mentioned before)
- They eat weird stuff like lab-grown fish, red corn (that somehow tastes like Flamin' Hot Cheetos), and rose water
- There's a 10-year marriage contract, which we remembered from the previous book
- Pregnancy is a luxury
- There's a lot of virtual reality stuff
- Cloning exists but is illegal
- Reanimating happens (perpetrated by the main characters) but is technically illegal

Oh, and there's still a U.S. Department of Basic Income, which we think was also in the previous book. How hilarious is that. The U.S. government going out of its way to make sure the little guy has enough to not be destitute and homeless. How thoughtful.

We are tempted to almost say that this book doesn't have a plot in the traditional sense, but that's wouldn't be entirely accurate. Eventually, there are some big reveals and tension near the end, but a lot of this book is just reanimating different people and seeing what happens.

You know what it reminded us of? Those hospital dramas like Grey’s Anatomy or ER where every week a new patient comes in with some strange condition, and the doctors, nurses, and staff not only treat the medical issue but also wrestle with the ethical, emotional, and relational fallout. The Cryonauts works in much the same way. Each revival is essentially a “case of the week” that forces the characters (and us as readers) to confront fresh questions about identity, grief, fairness, and what it really means to have a second chance.

It's interesting to see how different characters respond to being reanimated. Do they feel lost? Do they feel kidnapped? Do they attempt suicide to escape the renewed experience of being human?

Anyway, one of the great things about this book are the huge questions it forces us to chew on. Should a murderer be given another life? Is a person still the same after dying and coming back? What responsibilities does society have toward people who were preserved decades or centuries ago? And maybe the biggest one: if you could get a second chance, would you actually be ready to live it, or would you just be bringing your old baggage into a new world?

Perhaps the passage that sums of the book is this one which explores the passage of time, which is ironically spoken to Linktree:

"It's not about knowing who wins the super bowl or who becomes president. It's about
winning that war with yourself earlier. Would you be able to tame your more destructive
compulsions, balance adventure with stability, stay away from a certain element, lean in with all
you have to the better parts of you? Let go of the wrong girl and hold on to the right one? It's a
fantasy—a thought experiment with no answer, right? A way to flagellate ourselves with the
whip of bitter regrets. Until now. Only we’re not going back—we’re going forward. A different
kind of do-over.”

Kayla is an interesting character. Kayla's situation is especially thought-provoking and compelling because she was frozen by her parents when she was brain dead with the hope that someday she could be revived and restored to full health. Ironically, her parents are already long dead and gone, meaning that she outlived them despite her terminal state. Strangely enough, this is something that someone actually thought about doing. Australian actor Clare McCann launched a public fundraiser to cryogenically preserve the body of her 13-year-old son, Atreyu, who had tragically passed away by suicide. She was asking for around $200,000–$300,000 to proceed with the preservation. Can you imagine that turning out good?

Like, seriously. Think about it.

Imagine if you froze a cancer patient, then unfroze them when a cure was found? That's truly trippy!

The writing in this book is hit and miss at times. Sometimes, we get eloquent passages like the one that Mylo Goodstein gave to Linktree above. There's another great passage in which George reacts to Krystal not knowing what Netflix is because they're from different times:

"Truthfully he felt sorry for himself too. What becomes of individual identity when shared culture is totally eroded? Still, it was nice being out with someone in his situation, even if they were from different times. He considered the wisdom in the old adage: birds of a feather flock together."

At other times, you get these really awkward and unintentionally funny passages like:

"'These people are, in fact, formerly living citizens who entered cryonic preservation upon death—and now walk among us.' He paused for dramatic effect. 'That is all.'”

Wait, why would he pause for dramatic effect, then say "That is all." Wouldn't you pause for dramatic effect earlier in the speech? Or wouldn't you say something more afterward? Think about it. That's like putting a period after a period.

Framed like this, it just reads like the guy ran out of things to say.

Anyway, we enjoyed the world-building and the big questions this book raised.
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This book has not yet been released. Stay tuned...