The title Zero K refers to a unit of temperature associated with bionic cryostorage. People choose to get themselves preserved in such a way that they will emerge at a future date in a better world. Which begs the question: if we don’t freeze ourselves, what can we do to ride out the apocalypse?

Let me just start out by saying don’t let yourself be cryogenically frozen.

by Don DeLillo

reviewed by Suzann Kale

Jeffrey, the protagonist, is the observer – the “privileged witness” – and it is through his eyes that this chilling story unfolds. Jeffrey’s father Ross is a billionaire who helped fund this cutting edge facility, so Jeffrey gets to stay there for a time and take it all in.

Until reading Zero K, I thought every aspect of the question of who-am-I had already been explored. But DeLillo delves into it in a whole new way. If people can be frozen and then unfrozen, does that mean they can live forever? One of the facility’s founders says, “With individual death no longer inevitable, what will happen to the lurking idea of nuclear destruction?”

Zero K can’t be categorized. On what shelf could you possibly put it? Narrator Jeffrey explores the issue of the nature of consciousness as Artis is finally “taken down to the lower levels” and prepared by a team of futuristically surgical-looking white-coated scary people.

And then, in the one chapter not through Jeffrey’s eyes, we are inside Artis’ mind. She has been frozen, but we’re not sure if that means she’s alive, or conscious, or dead, or sleeping, or what. And in this chapter we don’t know if Artis is thinking, if her brain is thinking, if words are floating through some sort of mind. It’s absolutely brilliant.

“Am I just the words,” we think Artis thinks, “or is there someone thinking these words… Why does the brain keep going like this?”

This is why I say don’t get yourself frozen.

Also in this super futuristic underground facility, Jeffrey tries to figure out what part of us makes up our identity. This question of course has been asked for centuries, but in Zero K, it is new. How much of my name contributes to my identity, and what happens if I change my name? There are living sculptures hidden in back rooms; weird performance art in the otherwise cold, lifeless hallways; otherworldly statues asking whether they are form or content.

Reading Zero K is like being on an intellectual cross-fit course, a mind playground. And yet, I wouldn’t call it science fiction or fantasy. It’s futuristic, but it’s in the present.

DeLillo’s writing style is breathtaking. There’s not one unnecessary syllable, not one tiny nano-description that doesn’t have ten more meanings buried beneath. It’s perplexing and chilling. The book is indescribable, breaking new grounds between story and philosophy, and the nature of visionary art.

The story begins just before the protagonist’s step-mother, Artis, is to be taken down to a secret sub-level cyber-secure area in a hidden facility in a forgotten corner of the planet, and put into a cold capsule to wait things out.