''The Immortals'' is a 1996

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

novel by American writer

Tracy Hickman Tracy Raye Hickman (born November 26, 1955) is an American fantasy author. He wrote the ''Dragonlance'' novels with Margaret Weis. He also wrote role playing game material while working for TSR, Inc., TSR and has cowritten novels with his wife, ...

, originally published in hardcover by Roc. The novel describes a future America in which a

virus A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsky's 1 ...

similar to

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...

has panicked the U.S. government into setting up

internment Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...

camps to contain the sufferers. The AIDS-like disease serves as backdrop and plot device to examine human relationships in circumstances of extreme duress.

Plot summary

When a cure for AIDS turns out to be more virulent than the disease, the U.S. establishes quarantine camps in the desert southwest. Michael Barris, a TV producer, masquerades as one of the infected and travels to the camps in search of his son. He finds horrific conditions, and learns that the so-called quarantine camps are death camps where the infected are gathered, purposefully brutalized, and ultimately cremated alive, their ashes bulldozed into the desert sand. Barris's son escapes the camp before the cycle of immolation, carrying the evidence he needs to expose the governmental mis-information campaign.

Adaptations

In 2006, DragonHearth produced the work as a podcast novel, and made it available as a free download from Podiobooks.com.

Awards and nominations

* Winner 2007

Parsec Award The Parsec Awards were a set of annual awards created to recognize excellence in science fiction podcasts and podcast novels. The awards were created by Mur Lafferty, Tracy Hickman and Michael R. Mennenga and awarded by FarPoint Media. They were ...

for Speculative Fiction (Novel Form)

References

External links

*
''The Immortals'' on Tracy Hickman's site

''The Immortals'' on the Podiobooks site
1996 American novels American science fiction novels Dystopian novels Novels about HIV/AIDS Novels by Tracy Hickman Roc Books books {{1990s-sf-novel-stub