'As we got closer I could see behind the sandstone a curved concrete building: a purpose-built structure. But still no fence, no wire. Not a bar in sight. For this, I’d been told that morning, I should be grateful. This was a ‘lifeline…a last chance’. That is what the judge said.
'Daniel is a sixteen-year-old drug dealer and he’s going to jail.
'Then, suddenly, he’s not.
'A courtroom intervention. A long car ride to a big country house. Other ‘gifted delinquents’: the elusive, devastating Rachel, and Alex, so tightly wound he seems about to shatter.
'So where are they? It’s not a school, despite the ‘lessons’ with the headsets and changing images. It’s not a psych unit—not if the absence of medication means anything. It’s not a jail, because Daniel’s free to leave. Or that’s what they tell him.
'He knows he and the others are part of an experiment.
'But he doesn’t know who’s running it or what they’re trying to prove. And he has no idea what they’re doing to him.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'We inhabit a moment where reality seems increasingly malleable, a construct that serves the interests of the powerful by eliding and obscuring the truth. From police demanding journalists submit to fingerprinting to the rejection of science by lobby groups and politicians, the control and manipulation of information has become so normalised that most of the time we no longer even notice it.'(Introduction)
'Why are dystopias more popular than utopias? The growing genre of cli-fi, for instance, is almost universally pessimistic, and the TV phenomenon of The Handmaid’s Tale will continue to air its nightmares in a third series. And why, even when we imagine a utopia, does it typically slide into a dystopia? Think of Minority Report and Jurassic Park, in which a vision of an ideal world – where crimes are solved before they are committed, or where dinosaurs are brought back to miraculous life – quickly degenerates. Of course, this storytelling trope is hardly new: it can be traced back to Genesis, and the tale of Adam and Eve. Narratives of human failure, of corruption and greed, of promise going to seed, are foundational to Western culture.' (Introduction)
'Why are dystopias more popular than utopias? The growing genre of cli-fi, for instance, is almost universally pessimistic, and the TV phenomenon of The Handmaid’s Tale will continue to air its nightmares in a third series. And why, even when we imagine a utopia, does it typically slide into a dystopia? Think of Minority Report and Jurassic Park, in which a vision of an ideal world – where crimes are solved before they are committed, or where dinosaurs are brought back to miraculous life – quickly degenerates. Of course, this storytelling trope is hardly new: it can be traced back to Genesis, and the tale of Adam and Eve. Narratives of human failure, of corruption and greed, of promise going to seed, are foundational to Western culture.' (Introduction)
'We inhabit a moment where reality seems increasingly malleable, a construct that serves the interests of the powerful by eliding and obscuring the truth. From police demanding journalists submit to fingerprinting to the rejection of science by lobby groups and politicians, the control and manipulation of information has become so normalised that most of the time we no longer even notice it.'(Introduction)
