Review: Bringing Them Back by Geoffrey Aguirre

Geoffrey James Aguirre's utopian science fiction novel, Bringing Them Back , is well worth a read for any fan of provocative utopian literature. (Disclaimer: I was in a critique group that reviewed an early draft of the book.) Aguirre posits a future Earth that has developed a technology to bring back the dead by reconstructing an exact replica of someone's body and brain. The technology is nearly flawless, the individuals effectively the same as the original people, diseases cured, and so on. These "reclaimed" people are then reeducated to participate in the utopia that has resurrected them. The moral imperative of this society is to resurrect "everyone, every when," all people since the dawn of humanity, starting with the most recently deceased. The resulting massive population is housed in huge "tech arcs" that arch up far above a surface world largely set aside for non-human life. Food can be synthesized from any matter, so hunger is unknown. This society, like our own, allows a mixture of freedoms and prohibitions, balancing stability against a comfortable range of life options for its citizens.

As the story opens, the reclamations have proceeded almost as far as back as the time of Christ, and the idea of resurrecting Jesus is causing philosophical and religious controversy, including backlash against the very idea of reclaiming people. Against this backdrop, a (comparatively) young woman, Kyna Roman, finds herself in possession of the key to a terrorist plot that might overthrow her civilization. As she gets drawn deeper into unfolding chaos, she must explore the foundations of her society and herself.

The premise of Bringing Them Back—the ideal of granting all people, past and present, functional immortality—is as provocative as any utopian idea I've read. When I summarized the book to a friend, he said to me, "It sounds more like hell than utopia," my first impression too. But Aguirre is scrupulous in examining the mechanisms and ramifications of his premise. He addresses to varying degrees overpopulation, ecology, religion, cultural dislocation and indoctrination, suicide, the legacy of colonialism, limits to freedom, reproductive rights and restrictions, bigotry, adaptations to climate change, and technological hazards ranging from the cataclysmic to the subtly psychological. His conclusion is clear: this utopia is not perfect, but it's pretty darn good. Personally, I remain unconvinced, but that's fine. Aguirre's novel is a challenging, rewarding mind experiment and its success measured not in how much we agree with his utopia but in how expansively he pushes the horizons of our thought.

Like much great utopian literature, Bringing Them Back is more about its setting than its human drama. Though it ramps up to pulse-pounding action near the end, its characters and their relationships are painted in broad strokes. The standout character for me is Eddie Slahal, a security agent and reclaimed citizen, who, in his original life, was a twentieth century Native American professor. In the character of Eddie, Aguirre, who is part Native American himself, delivers a refreshingly unstereotyped portrayal of a twentieth century Native American's cultural hybridity, loss and dislocation; his experiences with racism; the psychological turmoil of this life; and the contrast between that existence and his reclaimed life as a fully valued member of society.

More broadly, Aguirre creates social structures that effectively decenter the white colonial narrative of history. It is fascinating to see a future in which the Americas have been have been restored to a predominantly Native American population. In our society, it is rare, indeed, to find a narrative not primarily about Native American experience that, nonetheless, involves many Native Americans in the action. With much of its action set in the Americas, Bringing Them Back does just that. With people of indigenous American origin assigned to housing within American tech arcs, people of colonial ancestry, including Kyna, are assigned to a tech arc constructed in the middle of the ocean. Regardless of one's home address, however, citizens have the freedom to travel throughout the world, including down the surface. Interaction with others and exploration are encouraged. Colonialism has finally ended and ended in peace and prosperity for all.

Bringing Them Back is a self-published title and shows some telltales of this origin, for example, some uneven pacing and typographical errors. On the other hand, it makes good use of the freedom of self-publishing to introduce a truly unusual work aimed a select readership: fans of intensive utopian SF. Though thoroughly 21st century in its social awareness, the novel hearkens back to an earlier age in utopian science fiction, exemplified by authors such as William Morris, Olaf Stapledon, and H. G. Wells, where plot and character are secondary to thought experiment and the chief aim is to challenge us to contemplate the vast possibilities of human civilization. It stands a worthy addition to this tradition of utopian writing.