The Immortals - ISBNLookup.com

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

It's 2010, and an attempted cure for AIDS has mutated into a deadlier disease, V-CIDS. The U.S., under martial law, has set up "quarantine centers" in the Southwest. Searching for his gay son, Jon, media mogul Michael Barris smuggles himself into one of centers only to discover that it and the other centers are actually extermination camps. With a strange assortment of allies, including the leader of the camp's gay barracks, an army officer and a local cowboy, Barris precipitates an inmates' rebellion that promises the unraveling of the death-camp system and the overthrow of the government that established it. Here, Hickman is working with a classic SF theme that's been popular since the days when the Great Menace could be the Yellow Peril or invaders from Mars. It shares some its predecessors' common faults-sentimentality, a dubious scenario, questionable technology-but boasts some considerable virtues, including superior characterization, a carefully built setting and excellent pacing. This novel represents a radical departure for the author, who's known for more easily popular SF and fantasy (the Deathgate Cycle, etc.). He's to be commended for his daring and vision. (May)

Library Journal

The year is 2010. The V-CIDS virus, once thought to be a cure for AIDS, has mutated into an even deadlier disease and is ravaging the United States. While scientists struggle to find a cure, victims are rounded up and isolated in government camps. Their numbers increase at a staggering rate, and the camp officials treat the victims like so much cordwood to be shipped to local crematoria. Outside the camps, paranoia and homophobia run rampant. Michael Barris, an outspoken TV executive, bucks the paralyzing fear and seeks to visit his estranged son at one of the camps. Once inside, he too becomes a prisoner, and his efforts to deal with his own feelings as well as the overwhelming lack of humanity and compassion that he witnesses make this a powerful, disturbing, and depressing story. Hickman is coauthor with Margaret Weiss of the "Dragonlance" sf series (e.g., Dragonlance: The Legend Becomes Reality, Random, 1986). For popular collections.-Susan Gene Clifford, Hughes Aircraft Co. Lib., Los Angeles

Kirkus Reviews

Solo venture for the coauthor (with Margaret Weis) of the fantasy Deathgate Cycle, etc. By 2010, a new and deadly viral epidemic, V-CIDS, threatens the US, and a beleaguered President has ordained the creation of isolated camps to quarantine those infected—anyone suspected of contact with a victim is also rounded up whether he or she is sick or not. Particularly under suspicion is the gay community, whose members are treated with special harshness. Television executive Michael Barris finds that his estranged gay son, Jason, has disappeared into the camp system, so he arranges to join the next shipment of internees; the legitimate prisoners are implanted with transponders, so that they're instantly spotted if they try to escape. Michael finds Newhouse Center a disgusting and degrading place, with bodies stacked like cordwood—a place run with ruthless brutality by a prisoner elite. He struggles to survive and make contact with Jason, though the gays are ghettoized and treated worst of all. The military spy on everyone—but what the inmates don't know is that they're in an extermination camp: Anyone surviving the purposefully murderous regime will be firebombed and their remains bulldozed into the desert sands.

A praiseworthy attempt at consciousness-raising, but with same gross flaws—in plotting, characterization, backdrop, and development—as Hickman's previous offerings.