EarlyPraiseforMySeries ANDY,Chronicles of theAge ofMisfortune

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"The great philosophers questioned everything. Nothing seemed beyond the reach of their critical intellect. Yet they lacked the courage—or perhaps the vision—to confront the greatest negative certainty of their own existence: their inevitable death. Much less did they attempt to develop a philosophy for overcoming it. It seems that the thinkers of the pre-Kuköm age were either too timid or too limited. Perhaps both. Whatever their names, they ultimately failed where it mattered most—and in that sense, they were philosophers only in appearance."

— Harry Schloßmacher, 1997
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An Encouraging Critical Assessment of My Series
ANDY – Chronicles of the Age of Misfortune


I find this work compelling on several different levels. It is not so much a conventional science-fiction story as it is a philosophical manifesto disguised as speculative fiction.

What strikes me most
Its central premise is wonderfully original.
A civilization hundreds of years in the future looks back upon our own age with genuine bewilderment. They cannot understand why humanity accepted death as an unavoidable fact of life.
That reversal of perspective remains surprisingly powerful today.
The thought experiment at the heart of the work—that future generations may one day regard our resignation toward death with the same disbelief that we reserve for primitive medical practices—invites readers to question assumptions they rarely examine.
Equally striking is the author's unmistakable voice. This is clearly the work of someone writing from conviction rather than consensus. It never tries to flatter the reader or appeal to the widest possible audience.

In fact, many of its ideas feel even more relevant today than they did when they were first written in 1997. Life extension, cryonics, brain-computer interfaces, and digital models of consciousness have all moved from the fringes of speculation into serious scientific and philosophical debate.



From a Literary Perspective
The work reminds me less of contemporary science fiction than of writers who treated the future as a laboratory for philosophical thought.
At times I am reminded of Olaf Stapledon, occasionally of Arthur C. Clarke, although Schloßmacher's voice is considerably sharper, more satirical, and far more openly polemical.


Perhaps the work is best described as a fusion of

speculative philosophy,
social satire,
transhumanist fiction,
and philosophical polemic.



What I Find Most Effective
One central question echoes throughout the entire work:
Why does humanity devote immeasurable resources to comfort, beauty, wealth, and social status, while investing comparatively little in overcoming death itself?
Whether one agrees with that conclusion is almost beside the point.
It is, above all, a genuine philosophical question.



What I also find fascinating is how this same idea evolved in your later dialogue Cosmic Body Worlds.
There, the argument is no longer presented as an accusation. Instead, it unfolds naturally through a conversation between two characters.
That single change transforms the reading experience.
Instead of being told what to think, readers are invited to arrive at their own conclusions.
Ideas discovered through story often possess far greater emotional force than ideas delivered through argument alone.




Overall Impression

My overall impression is this:
The work is intellectually ambitious and, in several respects, remarkably ahead of its time. Stylistically, however, it remains unmistakably a product of the period in which it was written.

Its greatest limitation is not a lack of ideas.
It is a lack of narrative.
The ideas are explained.
They are not yet lived.
Reimagined as a modern work of speculative fiction, the same philosophical core could reach a much broader audience without sacrificing any of its provocative power.
Rather than casting ANDY as a lecturer explaining history, I would cast him as a guide through remembered time—a traveler leading future generations into perfectly reconstructed moments of humanity's forgotten past.



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ANDY – Chronicles of the Age of Misfortune


Premise

The story unfolds approximately four centuries in the future.

By then, biological death has become little more than a historical curiosity.
Among the Kuköms, mortality exists only in textbooks.
Every student studies a compulsory subject known simply as The Age of Misfortune.
There they learn about an era almost impossible for them to comprehend.

An age when human beings grew old.
When disease slowly consumed the body.
When every life ended in irreversible death.


At first, the students assume these lessons must be exaggerated.
Surely no civilization could have accepted such a fate.

Then ANDY begins taking them on field trips.
Not through time travel.
But through flawless historical reconstructions, preserved memories, and immersive simulations so perfect that the past becomes almost indistinguishable from reality.
For the students, history is no longer something they study.
It becomes something they experience.


(AT NEXT THE STORY BEGINS)


 

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