ISBN 0-312-86535-X (US hbk)

"By the middle of the twenty-first century the worldwide fertility rate has declined nearly eighty percent. No one knows why. Now the average age in the United States is fifty-four, and children are treasured and spoilt by those lucky enough to have them and coveted by the vast majority who can't.

"Maximum Light is the story of three people from different sections of this very different American society. Nick Clementi is seventy-five years old, a doctor, and an advisor to the Congressional Advisory Committee for Medical Crises. Shana Walders is twenty-six and has just finished her two years in the National Service Corps. Cameron Atuli is twenty-eight, a principal dancer with the National Ballet, and has willingly had a portion of his memory removed; what it was and why he did it, he doesn't know.

"In her last days of National Service, Shana witnesses something so horrible that it is immediately brought to the attention of Clementi's committee, but so shocking that even the committee would like to believe that it can't be true. And what Cameron can't remember may be the key to the mystery." [jacket blurb, US hbk, 1998]

"Told from three different first-person accounts, Maximum Light presents us with a future that could easily be our own. Nancy Kress portrays the very real prospects of a drastically falling sperm count and a majority population of the elderly with an understanding realism.

"Strict laws preventing certain types of genetic manipulation have led to the creation of an illicit market to meet the needs of childless couples. This may also involve a cover-up by government officials. The solution of this mystery becomes the crucial goal of two of the protagonists.

"The critique of 'bioaccumulation of synthetic chemicals...disrupting the human endocrine system' is handled with credibility and a tactical pragmatism. And it all reads like a charm." --Henry W.Targowski (in Mark/Space , 27 January 1998).

Recommended.