Quinto’s Challenge
Dawn of Immortality Book 1
A neurodivergent scientist takes up the challenge to defy death in the intricate science fiction novel Quinto’s Challenge.
In Peter McChesney’s sweeping science fiction novel Quinto’s Challenge, a brilliant young outsider’s theories change the trajectories of physics and philosophy.
In 2098, decades after the US presidency of Vince Quinto, who advocated for a future where scientific advancements might put an end to death, Deeley is a neurodivergent physicist who was rejected by doctoral programs. She self-publishes what could be the sought-after Theory of Everything. She is then hired by CAPR, the Center for Advanced Particle Research, where her experiments using the eighty-mile-long supercollider attract powerful forces who seek to weaponize her pure science.
Deeley is an enigmatic heroine whose internal contradictions speak to the ethics of science, the line between life and death, and the rights of sentient beings, even when those beings are manufactured. With her hyperfocus and gift for abstract thinking, she is a superior, erudite physicist, but she is less self-possessed in her interpersonal relations. At CAPR, her cutting-edge theories are furthered by genius android colleagues who possess rapid, complex computational skills. She is thrilled to be working with them and trusts their altruistic programming without question—trust that runs contrary to the Shenzhen Treaty, which blocks the development of new sentient creatures out of fear. When Deeley’s experiments require faster computational skills, she and her android colleagues consider defying the treaty to meet President Quinto’s challenge to defy death.
Complex scientific concepts are integrated into the narrative in a smooth manner, as with details of the SecondSight lenses Deeley and others wear for instant access to communications, vast libraries, and technical functions. Hard science is also explained in the course of organic conversations. But because Deeley’s social development is light-years behind her intellectual development, some of her exchanges—especially between her and her android colleagues—are stilted.
While Deeley is the center of much of the book, which fleshes her out not just in terms of her successes, but in terms of the trauma caused by the loss of her parents when she was a child, the story is more concerned with big ideas than it is with character development and emotional depth. President Quinto, who comes out of seclusion to meet with Deeley when he is over one hundred years old, is distinctive, but people’s motivations otherwise fall along two tracks: greed and the drive for power versus the power of ideas and pure science.
In the ambitious science fiction novel Quinto’s Challenge, hard science meets timeless questions of life, death, and identity.
Reviewed by
Michele Sharpe
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
