The following review was written by Laura Moreno and appeared in Bay Area Reporter on September 12, 2026.
“The Unfrozen Few, Book One: Welcome to the Future” is a novel that features 11 AIDS patients from the 1980s who escape near-certain death to take part in a controversial medical experiment: cryonic freezing. They awaken decades later once antiretroviral therapy has transformed HIV from a death sentence into a manageable condition, but despite this huge upside they find that the world they have entered leaves much to be desired.
Author Randy Boyd’s return to novel-writing after 21 years is being met with great enthusiasm for good reason. He is a wonderful writer who is unafraid to tackle profound issues. This is a suspenseful read that is sure to keep your attention riveted.
As if catapulted into the future, the unfrozen characters must reconcile their memories of the AIDS plague (regular funerals attended, AZT trials, the activism and grief that defined queer life in the 1980s) and the characteristics that defined the era (extreme secrecy, heavy societal stigma, and the memory of police raids) with a radically different present in which PrEP and cell phones exist, social stigma has significantly decreased, and online dating is a thing.
While the book has an eerie premise and deals with heavy, unsettling themes that are known to attract shady, unethical medical agendas, criminality and abuse, it is not formally considered to be horror. It does, however have fiction elements of mystery and dark social satire.
Above all, “The Unfrozen Few” is a work of speculative science fiction that is firmly anchored in the author’s own experience living with HIV/AIDS at the height of the plague when there was a vastly different medical and social landscape.
Boyd states on his personal author website that his novels are “pieces of me set forth into the world, a reflection of my dreams, a part of my soul.”
With a broadcasting background, Boyd began writing professionally at age 20. As a Black gay man, he has documented the epidemic in essays, short stories, and in his four previous novels: “Bridge Across the Ocean” (2000), “Uprising” (2001), “The Devil Inside” (2002), and “Walt Loves the Bearcat” (2005). Boyd has been awarded five Lambda Literary Award Finalist honors.
Frozen in time
The speculative premise of this book is a brilliant vehicle for Boyd’s profound musings on how identity persists even when everything changes around us. It’s fascinating reading to see how survivors navigate a future that renders their trauma oddly temporal and permanent at the same time.
Most striking of all, the 11 AIDS patients find themselves in a disorienting world they no longer feel a part of. The book has many memorable passages that make us appreciate our world today more. For example, none of the 11 AIDS patients can believe the United States has already had a Black president.
Nonetheless, the question keeps coming up: What does survival mean when the world you knew vanished while you slept? The novel refuses easy redemption arcs; characters who expected salvation instead find a world that has continued without them, one that offers medical miracles but cannot restore lost decades or resurrect friends who have passed.
Black gay physician Dr. Nathan Black, the estranged son of the unprincipled family of ingenious scientists behind the biotech firm conducting this experiment, is the nucleus of the book. He acts as a bridge for the newly awakened patients as the narrative explores survivor’s guilt, how queer identity has evolved, and the complexities that exist between the generations in today’s queer landscape.
Add to that the layer of corruption taking place at the biotech firm now run by Nathan’s ruthless stepmother, Dr. Brenda Black, and the corporate cover up to hide it, and you have a very compelling page-turner of a story.
A similar book is Joe Haldeman’s “The Forever War” (1974) in that it uses science fiction’s time-dilation mechanics to explore how a soldier rendered ageless returns home only to experience alienation. Boyd’s characters confront a more intimate alienation from a queer community that survived the plague and is now unrecognizable.
Even if tangentially, this book also provides indelible insight into the degree to which media and technology have shaped our culture, habits and even our beliefs over time.
“The Unfrozen Few” was named an American Fiction Award Finalist for LGBT+ Fiction by American BookFest. No doubt, this is a thought-provoking book that will be of great interest to all generations as much for what it teaches us about gay history as for what it reveals about life today.
‘The Unfrozen Few (Book One: Welcome to the Future)’ by Randy Boyd, West Beach Books, 598 pages, Kindle edition $6.99, paperback $20.95
— Laura Moreno, Bay Area Reporter