Lee Payne

Jane Again Lee Payne

When W. Somerset Maugham, famed novelist, playwright and critic was asked to select the world's ten greatest novels, Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE was one of his choices. When asked to expand his list to the world's twenty greatest novels, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Balzac and Jane Austen scored again, Jane for her seventh and last novel, PERSUASION. Not bad for a young woman of whom another critic, Marc Schorer wrote, she "lived what was perhaps the most conventional life that any author has ever lived.."Quiet, conventional Jane continues to fascinate her modern fans. Writer, Stephanie Barron, has her solving mysteries in a dozen crime novels. Even P, D. James tried her hand at a Jane Austen who-done-it. Mine is not a tale of gentle Jane's increasingly active past, however. It is of her future. Employing technology almost all now in place, I've brought her forward in time where even the simple task of selecting a modern swimsuit allows her to lament, as she has before, over "the lack of shyness in the world."It begins with the new science of biohacking funded by a bunch of newly-minted billionaires. When men like Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Elon Musk realized that the average human lifespan did not offer them time enough to spend all their money, they turned to the biohackers whose goal is to double the human lifespan. They meet annually in Austin, Texas. The not-quite-hero in JANE AGAIN goes them one better. His Jane, an android, could be immortal. But will she want to be? Was our original Jane content without any recognition of her unique talent? Was her quiet life enough? It may well have been. But from a fan, this is-rather late-the story of a bit more of what she missed in life her first time around.