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Love, Loyalty, and Moral Choice
The Accelerates: Forty Days to Dust follows a genetically engineered child and his teenage brother and protector, who struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic society that is in collapse. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Years ago, in a shopping mall, I watched a boy, perhaps seven years old, aggressively demanding something from his parents. When they refused, he lay down on the floor and began pounding it with his arms and legs. That image stayed with me and led me to wonder what the world would look like if children were born fully developed and, within forty days, began demanding from adults their jobs, homes, and everything earned over a lifetime. I noted the idea without knowing where it would lead.
My wife and I both grew up in households rooted in love and devotion to siblings, and we raised our two sons the same way. I have one brother, three years younger than me. Growing up in the former Soviet Union, the streets were tough, and we learned early to watch each other’s backs with loyalty and care. Now, in our seventh decade of life, that bond remains unchanged. I also witnessed the same devotion among my wife and her four siblings.
A few years ago, a tragedy struck our family when my wife’s oldest brother passed away in his mid-fifties. After his death, my thoughts returned to childhood, especially to memories of a young boy’s devotion to his baby brother during a serious illness. From there, imagination took over, and the emotional core of the story formed.
When I took early retirement, I finally had the time to do what I love most, telling stories on canvas, on paper, and through words.
That is why I dedicated this novel: For the ones we love, and for those in memory.
The supporting characters in this novel, I felt, were intriguing and well-developed. Who was your favorite character to write for?
All the characters are drawn from my family, so choosing a single favorite is difficult. Leo is inspired by my younger brother and by my brother-in-law, who passed away in his mid-fifties. Ethan reflects both my brother-in-law and myself. Clara is based on my wife’s older sister, as well as my wife. Mia is inspired by my niece.
Writing these characters felt less like invention and more like remembering. Each one carries a piece of someone I loved, which made them especially meaningful to bring to the page.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Many of my family members are doctors, including my wife, my older son, my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law, and her two sons, as well as many close friends. Because of this, I have spent years surrounded by conversations about moral and ethical questions in our society.
Those discussions shaped the heart of this novel. The most important themes I wanted to explore were morality and ethics, along with love, devotion, and family loyalty. In a collapsing world, I wanted to ask what values remain, and how human responsibility toward one another survives when structures and systems fall away.
What is one thing that you hope readers take away from The Accelerates: Forty Days to Dust?
I hope readers come away with a renewed sense of responsibility toward one another. In a world that often feels fractured and rushed, I wanted to remind readers that love, loyalty, and moral choice still matter, especially in times of collapse. If the book leaves them thinking about how we care for family, protect the vulnerable, and honor memory, then it has done its work.
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When Clara gives birth to Ava, a genetically altered child, the echoes of a failed experiment ripple across time.
Leo is one year old, trapped in a five-year-old’s body, carrying the mind of someone a century old. Fragile, brilliant, haunted, he bears the weight of humanity’s final gamble.
Beside him stands Ethan, his reluctant protector, and Mia, hardened by loss and fury. Together, they scavenge what’s left of a world that forgot how to breathe. But in the shadows, a presence waits. Ava, part girl, part code, all vengeance, hunts them from the fire they tried to escape
Time is unraveling. The infected dream in equations. And every breath could be their last.
The Accelerates: Forty Days to Dust is a poetic, post-apocalyptic reckoning: part genetic horror, part elegy, part love letter to the children grown too fast.
For readers who believe memory is a weapon worth wielding.
The Accelerates: Forty Days to Dust
The Accelerates: Forty Days to Dust is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel about a world collapsing under the weight of a genetic disaster. It follows Ethan, a teenager trying to protect his rapidly aging baby brother Leo, whose accelerated growth is part of a larger outbreak created by GeneCorp. As society unravels, the story weaves through multiple characters and timelines to show how the world ended and what tiny, flickering pieces of hope might still remain.
The writing is intense, sometimes brutal, but always meant to push you deeper into the emotional core of the story. I kept feeling pulled along by Ethan’s quiet determination and the surreal horror of watching children become both victims and agents of destruction. The author leans hard into sensory detail, and while some moments feel almost overwhelming, they also give the story its heartbeat. Scenes like the hospital sequence with Clara and her daughter are vivid enough that I had to pause and breathe before moving on.
The shifting viewpoints create a mosaic of grief, fear, and stubborn love, and even though the world is crumbling, the relationships feel grounded. I was especially struck by how the book treats childhood. The accelerated children aren’t simple monsters. They’re mirrors held up to human ambition, or maybe human negligence, and that choice keeps the story from slipping into a standard “virus apocalypse” plot. There are moments that feel almost mythic, especially later in the book as characters begin to understand what Leo represents, and those moments give the bleakness a strange, luminous edge.
This is a heavy story, but it’s also a hopeful one in its own quiet way. I’d recommend The Accelerates: Forty Days to Dust to readers who enjoy emotionally driven science fiction with dystopian and horror elements. If you like stories that explore both the collapse of a world and the fierce love that refuses to disappear with it, this one will speak to you.
Pages: 325 | ASIN : B0F6HMC3SW
LITERARY TITAN 