But thanks to you, I have a few books I can read now which will stimulate my mind far better than Netflix ever could. I think it has aged very well, and seems to pose a mirror image of our current era, which is so mired in everyday entertainments. I also thank you for including Brave New World. I was also very taken by the Netflix adaptation of Altered Carbon.* You’ve also told me about a few novels I’d never heard of, and will now track down and read as time permits. I was pleased that Left Hand of Darkness was included I consider it LeGuin’s masterwork. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.” Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism… Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books.

It’s a utopian society that maintains its peace by removing the humanity of its members, and only one man is brave enough to vocally challenge the status quo.īoth Brave New World and 1984 saw dystopian futures, but Huxley seems to have gotten much of it right (though Orwell did nail the surveillance state). “This complex, literate and intensely felt tale, which recalls both William Gibson and Ian McDonald at their very best, will garner Bacigalupi significant critical attention and is clearly one of the finest science fiction novels of the year.”Ĭhildren are genetically programmed in the womb and sent through indoctrination programs, preparing them for lives in predetermined castes. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe. One of the New People, Emiko is not human instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature.

Undercover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok’s street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history’s lost calories. Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen’s Calorie Man in Thailand.

Adrenaline Secrets by Carolyn Reilly