Welcome to Forever

Lore & Background

The novel is set in a world where the megacorporation NIL/E offers memory copying and editing services. Fox is a memory editor; his husband Gabe is a personal trainer. A terrorist attack on a NIL/E office wipes out most of Fox’s memories and kills Gabe permanently. Fox checks into the Field of Reeds Center for Memory Recovery, where therapists recover his memories. Fox recalls ambiguous memory fragments involving Gabe and a client’s fiancé. Fox and Gabe began seeing a marriage counselor, Darius, and eventually separated. Fox attempts to escape Field of Reeds and learns the center is a simulation. He recovers memories of a man named Greg, an elderly janitor whose husband Zeke died. Greg dated a memory editor named Hector, who was a simulated personality based on Zeke. Greg’s memory editing fails, his mental health declines, and he undergoes repeated memory excisions before bringing a gun to his office and killing several staff members. Fox realizes that “Greg” was his own alter ego: after separating from Gabe, Fox downloaded into Greg’s body, editing his own mind to preserve happy memories of his relationship. Field of Reeds therapists give Fox a “scrape”—a fictionalized version of Gabe created from Fox’s memories. The scrape begins recovering Gabe’s memories.

Reader's Guide

Welcome to Forever is significant for its exploration of memory editing as a technology that challenges identity and permanence in relationships. The novel uses a nonlinear narrative to examine how memories shape selfhood and love, drawing on Egyptian mythology and the Orpheus myth. Its publication history reflects a long development process: begun as a graduate assignment in 2010, expanded by 2012, and rewritten after Tavares’s 2022 novel A Fractured Infinity. The initial draft focused on a heterosexual couple, which Tavares called a business decision; the final version centers a same-sex couple. Reception praised the romance and the high-stakes science fiction. The novel’s legacy lies in its treatment of memory editing as both a cure for death and a source of tragedy, and in its ambiguous ending that questions whether love can survive repeated erasure.

Did You Know?

• The novel began as a graduate school assignment in 2010 and was expanded into a full-length novel by 2012.
• The initial draft focused on a heterosexual couple, which Tavares described as 'almost like a business decision.'
• The novel makes frequent allusions to Egyptian mythology, including the Field of Reeds, and draws inspiration from the Greek myth of Orpheus.
• The character Khadija Banks was forced out of NIL/E by other executives and disappeared.