Old Twentieth

In this science-fiction mystery by the author of THE FOREVER WAR, an engineer must find the cause of mysterious deaths aboard a starship. After a war demolishes most of the population and property on Earth, a group of wealthy immortals embarks on a 1,000-year journey in search of a habitable planet. En route, the passengers amuse themselves with a virtual-reality machine that allows them to experience life (and death) in the 20th century. As time passes, the machine's engineer, Jake Brewer, notices certain small errors within the virtual environment, and then someone actually dies within the virtuality--something that should be impossible.