Old Twentieth by Joe Haldeman

Fiction: Science Fiction. Hardback from The Penguin Group. Published in 2005. 272 pages. On loan from the Kent District Library

My son John read this, enjoyed it and passed it along to me. I enjoyed it, too. The twist at the end surprised me.

Publisher's summary:
The passengers aboard the starship Ad Astra spend most of their time on the thousand-year journey to Beta Hydrii within the virtual reality of twentieth-century Earth. There, they can experience nostalgia for the hardship of a life they've since evolved beyond.

But when people inside the virtual reality chamber start to die, engineer Jacob Brewer finds himself face-to-face with a sentient machine obsessed with humanity. It has put itself in charge of the ship. And it wants to talk to Jacob...

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