Julian Solo

Julian Solo is a novel about a brilliant scientist who died...and yet lives, and who, having experienced this impossible transition, seeks to recreate the circumstances again and again. His purpose is to conquor death; his passion is to save the life of the woman he loves; and his journey is into the void. He wants us to come with him.

Julian Solo is a research psychobiologist pushing the limits of scientific knowledge by delving into the "forbidden" area of life after death. Unlike Mary Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein, who created a living being from inanimate body parts, Julian seeks to discover a way for humans to enter and leave the death state at will. At first, his motivation is knowledge for knowledge's sake. How wonderful it would be, he reflects, to discover a mechanism to fool the body into thinking that all bodily functions had ceased. Rather than go to sleep at night, we would "die." When we wake up the next morning, instead of being eight hours older, we would not have aged a bit. But when his wife is diagnosed with an incurable degenerative disease, Julian Solo's research takes on a personal urgency. He begins to experiment upon himself, and discovers the secret of biological life after death. Has he made a great scientific breakthrough? Or is he balancing on the edge of a morality he can neither control nor understand?

Shelly Reuben's first novel, Julian Solo, was nominated by the Mystery Writers of America for an Edgar Award and by the Libertarian Futurist Society for a Prometheus Award. Her crime novel, Origin & Cause was nominated for a Falcon Award by the Maltese Falcon Society of Japan. The ideas for many of her books come from the cases she investigates as a licensed private detective and certified fire investigator. Shelly also writes two newspaper columns, and regularly contributes short stories to The Forensic Examiner Magazine. She lives in New York City.