Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Sheffield, who won the 1993 Nebula and 1994 Hugo awards for his novelette, Georgia on My Mind, fleshes out another piece of short fiction, At the Eschaton, to create this story of love's triumph over illness and mortality. The talented 21st-century composer Drake Merlin leads a seemingly charmed life; that is, until his wife, Ana, is stricken by a mysterious and incurable illness. Desperate, Merlin has his wife placed in cryostasis and sets about amassing a fortune to keep her there until a cure can be found. Then, like the Arthurian character for whom he's named, Merlin joins her prolonged sleep. The years pass, and while Merlin is awakened at various times--500 years later, to discover the solar system undergoing massive terraforming; then 20,000 years later--the news about his wife remains as bleak as ever. The future Sheffield envisions is fairly familiar, until Merlin awakens some 14 million years hence. Here, he sees the sun has burned down to red, and humanity has branched off into numerous subspecies capable of surviving in hostile environments. While this setting is truly alien, the reasons for Merlin's revival is a bit cliched--a docile humanity faces a terrifying enemy, and so Merlin's ""primitive drive and aggression"" is the last hope. The novel does not generate a consistently compelling narrative, in part because Merlin's love for his wife is portrayed as tender and sincere but lacks the passion that would motivate such heroics. Also given the sprawling canvas, Sheffield offers only tepid surprises. Sheffield, a mathematician and physicist by training, offers a laudable appendix discussing the scientific cornerstones of the novel. (Jan.)