The Afterlife Project: Recommended with a caveat

The Afterlife Project by Tim Weed

The Afterlife Project by Tim Weed is a cli-lit book that follows two distinct storylines, one set in the not-too-distant future wracked by climate disaster and a “hyper-pandemic” and the other set 10,000 years later in a vibrant recovered world, one that may or may not have us humans around anymore. The two-track structure is appropriate, as I had two differing reactions to the book, finding the far-future section (mostly) quite strong while having a less favorable reaction to the near-future setting, though it had its moments.

The story begins strong, with Nicholas Hindman desperately crawling through a New Hampshire forest seeking water and food after spending 10,000 years in stasis, with the reader as temporarily disoriented as he is. Eventually, we learn that he was “sent forward” as part of something called the Centauri Project, a last-ditch effort to try and save the human race. As such, his “protocol” is to set up a long-term homebase and then try to find evidence of human existence. We follow his wandering ever farther afield in an attempt to do so, even as he also tries (with mixed success) to keep his sanity as he battles his sense of utter isolation.

Meanwhile, back in 2068 AD, a four-person team from the Centauri Project is trying to fulfill their half of the “save the species” mission. The most recent global pandemic, besides killing off a third of humanity, also left men and women infertile (Hindman so far is the only unaffected one they’ve found), setting the clock ticking on humans. In a desperate attempt to rejuvenate the species, they’ve set out in a small yacht for an island near Sicily, where it’s rumored a small population of still-fertile people live. To get there, they’ll have to battle the elements and the ragtag and desperate surviving humans.

This section is told in journal form, with the primary author being the group’s physician Alejandra Morgan-Ochoa and secondary comments made by a “transcriber” whose identity is unknown to the reader. Because she is leaving a record for some future reader (“Although your existence may be unlikely, I plan to write as if you do exist”), Ochoa conveniently fills in some back history for us, as well as introducing us to the four members of the crew: herself; Dr. Natalie Quist, head of the Centauri Project and inventor of the machine that allowed Hindman to pop out 10,000 years later; Tollie Quist, her impetuous brother and captain of the ship; and James Swamp, the youngest member and ideally the one they’ll rely on for the physical/security requirements.

Tim Weed

The strength of this section is the description of the multiple catastrophes as they struck as well as the world they left behind — the acidified oceans still filled with plastic, the empty and going-to-ruin cities, the barely-there memories of proper food, pleasant weather, and ease of travel. The ticking clock premise adds a nice sense of urgency to the plotline, and Ochoa’s voice is a relatively engaging one to follow along with, particularly in the way the imminent extinction of people doesn’t preclude her from finding moments of beauty and joy: a burgeoning relationship, a sunset, a recovering forest. My issues in this half of the narrative were with plot and characters. Without going into too much detail so as to avoid spoilers, I had a very hard time with several of the decisions made by a group on such an all-important mission. Given that we’re talking the end of humanity here, one would think they’d be laser focused and highly cautious, but neither is the case. Instead we get a series of poor decisions, some of which I just found wholly implausible. It didn’t help that Ochoa herself multiple times reminded the reader of how “do or die” the mission is or how it is “that kind of important.” Which led me often to making notes like, “so why are you …?”

The character issue was two-fold. One, none of the crew truly came alive for me as fully fleshed out characters that felt like real people as opposed to constructs to move plot points along. In addition, two of the characters are simply too good too often. Natalie is brilliant in multiple ways and has the personality and leadership qualities to match: she won several Nobel prizes in physics, speaks multiple languages and (conveniently) picks up a new one on the fly just by overhearing the native speakers, is ever and always unfazed, and the list goes on. Meanwhile, another character conveniently displays previously unknown high-level skills as a coder and a marksman.

I was far more enamored of Hindman’s section, despite (my family might say because) there being far less action. Instead we have a lot of meandering movement as he wanders in his local area in search of food and evidence of humans, wanders over to Boston in search of humans, wanders up north in search of humans, well, you get the idea. Along the way, we’re treated to some beautiful descriptive language of the natural world as well as some poignant ruminations on the past, the future, and humanity’s self-important view of our place in the world. His darker moments, meanwhile, the crushing burden of supreme loneliness, the knowledge that all he knew and loved is long gone, is truly painful to experience. You can’t help but ache for him as you root for him. For the most part, this section is beautiful, moving, and thoughtful. It was marred a bit for me toward the very end by a certain ability he displayed and by a certain plot point, but I don’t want to spoil plot, especially so close to the ending. So I’ll just note the ending segment did leave a bit of a shadow on the book for me (though not the very ending), but those few pages of Hindman’s section were far outweighed by all that had come before in his storyline.

The Afterlife Project therefore ends up being a complicated book when it comes to summarizing my response. I feel a bit like Bilbo giving his speech at his going-away birthday party in that I 100 percent loved 90 percent of half of the book and didn’t much care for 60% of 50% of the book. If you can’t follow the math (I’m not sure I can myself), maybe an easier way to say it is that while the earlier plotline has its positives, if it were a separate book I wouldn’t recommend it, but the later narrative is so good, it raises the whole book to the point at which I feel comfortable recommending it (with the above caveat about the close).