Holy Fire

Memory, morality, and immortality merge in this “haunting and lyrical triumph” from the bestselling author of Schismatrix Plus (Time).

In the late twenty-first century, technology has lengthened lifespans far beyond what was once medically possible. Existence itself has become relatively easy - if boring. In this futuristic paradise, ninety-four-year-old Mia Ziemann longs for something different and undergoes a radical new treatment that restores both her body and mind to that of a twenty-year-old. After her dramatic transformation, Mia finds herself lost in an avant-garde world of passion, designer drugs, and creative expression...

“Ideas - big ideas - lurk beneath Mia’s romp through Sterling’s delightfully imagined newly post-human Earth. Art, artifice, the pursuit of immortality, and youth and aging bounce around the story, the characters, and their conversations in imaginative, engaging fashion.... In the end, Holy Fire is one of the most interesting, imaginative, and subtly humorous - and relevant for it - novels the cyberpunk/post-human era has produced.... Holy Fire may very well be [Sterling’s] best work.” - Speculiction

“An intellectual feat, it is also a treat for the spirit and the senses.” - Wired

“A patented Sterling extra-special.” - Newsday

“The future Sterling traces is plausible and provocative, particularly his consideration of several contrasting cultures, and of the disenfranchised who are unable to become ‘post-human.’ Those interested in serious speculative conversation set within a very strange near-future will find this much to their taste.” - Publishers Weekly