Mr Mawer has fused pure story-telling with complex genetic theory to produce a fable that is accurate and readable a mature marriage of science and fiction in which scientists are no longer Frankensteins, Strangeloves or nerds.
"It is pure science fiction to say we can change the rate of aging in an organism as complex as ours, " argues Thomas Perls, a geriatrician at Boston University Medical Center who studies centenarians.