One Day in the Life of Alexa

by Lisa Mason

How long do you want to live?Alexa Denisovitch, a refugee from Kosovo during the 1999 war, is just seventeen when she is accepted by GenGineer Laboratories as a Tester for Longeva, a revolutionary additive that may significantly extend her longevity.But becoming a Tester has unintended consequences and Longeva causes devastating unforeseen side effects.Confronting environmental, political, and personal perils of the future, Alexa must grapple with the tough questions of life, love, and death.Lisa Mason has published eleven novels including Summer of Love (a Philip K. Dick Award Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book), The Gilded Age (a New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book), Strange 7 Stories (a collection of previously published short fiction), and three dozen stories and novellas in magazines and anthologies worldwide. Her Omni story, “Tomorrow’s Child,” sold outright as a feature film to Universal Pictures.Her latest novel is CHROME, and her second collection is 22 Stories.

222 pages, Paperback

Published May 17, 2017

About the author

Stay safe and well in 2021! Please visit my website at http://www.lisamason.com for all my print books, ebooks, screenplays, Storybundles, interviews, blogs, my husband Tom Robinson's bespoke jewelry and artwork, cute cat pictures, and more!

My second collection, ODDITIES: 22 Stories, is available now as an ebook on Kindle worldwide and as a print book in seven countries, including the U.S. and the U.K. The collection includes stories previously published in OMNI, Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Full Spectrum 5, and others, plus six new stories. A Locus Magazine Notable Book.

I've got eight other books available as beautiful trade paperbacks (and ebooks): CHROME, Summer of Love, The Gilded Age, The Garden of Abracadabra, Arachne, Cyberweb, One Day in the Life of Alexa, and Strange Ladies: 7 Stories.

Summer of Love was a Philip K. Dick Award Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book, The Gilded Age was a New York Times Notable Book. My Omni story, "Tomorrow's Child," sold outright as a feature film to Universal Pictures and is in development.

Reviews

[Deborah Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

One Day in the Life of Alexa, by Lisa Mason (Bast Books, 2017) incorporates lively prose, past/present time jumps, and the consequences of longevity technology. Kosovo refugee Alexa enrolls in a secret pilot program designed to extend her life span. Her best friend, Marya, is not accepted, but Marya’s infant aka “Little Monster” is. As the decades roll by, Alexa adapts to a life of constant measurement and surveillance. And youth, for she ages only very slowly (and Little Monster takes years to achieve what normal babies do in months) and in her mid-fifties still appears as a very young adult. Every so often, disaster strikes, whether the Moon fracturing into “lunettes” or a supervolcano eruption or a terrorist bombing, but Alexa always manages to survive. Although the Testers are carefully separated from one another, she manages to connect with one, the only man who can understand what her life is like; after a period of pastel, childless marital bliss, he falls over dead due to a “lethal gene.” In reflection, the book is as much about the enduring trauma of war as it is about longevity technology, and in this it feels more like mainstream than science fiction. Mason’s skill as a writer sustains what might be better executed as a novella into a short novel. Still, it’s a quick, absorbing read with an appealing narrator and subtly powerful emotional rhythms (like the repeated refrain, “No matter how long I live, I will always remember this”).

[John Loyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

GenGineer Laboratories created Longeva. A drug that promises to stave off the effects of aging. Alexa was in the first trial group to get it and eighty years later she is still sending in her daily test results. Told in a series of flashbacks we learn how Alexa went from refugee to tester and how she survived war, Marya, side effects, terrorism, natural disaster, accidents and life in general.

Short novel, it went fast. Well paced. So many dismal things happen that it could have just been depressing, but it never reached that point. Is it about greedy drug companies? No. Is it about denying empty calories in order to stay healthy? No. It's many interesting scenes that kept the pages turning and explain how she went from refugee to where we find her in chapter one. 4.5 stars.