The Forever Formula by Frank Bonham

The Forever Formula Reviews

• 
  Scott

  I bought this book from a grade school book fair when I was 8 or 9 years old. Not sure why, but it's always stuck with me. I'm now 37 and the plot seems to pop into mind any time something even remotely related comes up. Vividly remembering a novel 29 years after reading it doesn't happen with many books. :-)
  
  It's too bad Frank Bonham isn't on GoodReads. I'd like him to know how much I appreciate his work - both as a kid, and today.
• 
  Cheryl

  Terrifically detailed world-building, gracefully revealed (no annoying info-dumps). Definitely all about the Sense of Wonder and What If for which I read SF. The main character is indeed 17, but I believe that children as young as 10 would like this, and adults who grew up on the works from the Golden Age of SF.
  
  Ok done. Nice 'double whammy' ending. Brief author's note. Highly recommended.
  I almost want to save and reread it, but really I do have to get books out of the house before our next move. So, I'm offering it up on paperbackswap.
• 
  Shawn Thrasher

  Frank Bonham started writing this book 40 years ago, eventually publishing it in 1979. The main character, Evan, is a teenage boy from 1984. Yet the book doesn't feel dated at all. Bonham was extremely prescient about the future; he's written a dystopia almost of a
  The Hunger Games variety, but more a thinker rather than full of action packed violence. His ideas about a permanent older class living longer and longer, with a younger class working to keep them happy and healthy, and dropping birthrates adding to this problem, is something that's happening now in several countries throughout the world. His changed climate crashing down upon the earth, devaluing the dollar and changing the politics and economies of the world, was also eerily farsighted; this is beginning to happen as well. All of this thought provocation in a 181 page book, with an actually riveting adventure little thriller as a backdrop. 25+ years ago, my 16 year old self enjoyed this book, enough that I remembered parts of it vividly all these years later. With a new cover, I think this could come back into print and sell pretty well. It's still very good!
• 
  Mary Scott

  I read this book when I was in elementary school and images from it have stayed with me. Impressions upon rereading: I have always loved me a good dystopian novel!! Interesting discussion about aging and what it means to live a full life, especially strange for a YA novel. Quite cinematic. The writing is a bit stilted and the plotting simplistic, but I had fun revisiting this one.
• 
  Pat Buchanan

  One of the best books I read as a youth. I still remember it today, which I can't say for many other books. Well, other than The Stand. Pieces of this story still pop into my mind now and then.