Sharon Webb was a science fiction writer and nurse. This novel, Earthchild, is the first entry in her Earth Song trilogy. It was followed by Earth Song in 1982 and Ram Song in 1984. She wrote a few other books, but they're all relatively difficult to find.
Earthchild concerns itself with a corporate solution to the problem of human mortality. At an undisclosed point in the near future, a corporation releases a chemical into the atmosphere, and the result is a race of people who will grow to physical maturity and stop aging thereafter. Those mortals untouched by this process descend into a state of relative barbarity, often lashing out against those they perceive as a threat to all that humanity stands for.
It gets off to an excellent start -- the concept is the kind of thing that Arthur C. Clarke would have written to perfection -- and then loses momentum about halfway through. I can't tell if this is because the author was building up to the book's sequel, or if she just didn't realize this concept as fully as she could have. The book's central premise, that immortality is the death of human creativity, is a fascinating one, but this premise isn't explored in any meaningful way. Exacerbating this critical flaw is the fact that the antagonist's motivations are never really explained, and at the end of the book he simply vanishes from the scene without facing any kind of consequences for what he's done.
Maybe the author got to that part in the sequel. I'll probably never know, because I'm not likely to come across Earth Song at any point in this (or any other) future.
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