| A thousand years in the future, society is run by computers, with not a gesture or activity unnoticed by their all-seeing detectors. Spacescrapers—three miles high, 1,000 stories, 1,000 people per floor—house 1,000,000 people. The divorce rate having climbed to 100 percent, the computers have made marriage almost illegal but adultery compulsory, with a resultant zero divorce rate.
In this setting, Bil and Alce meet, marry, and, their sense of history whetted by a few old books and photos, decide to rebel. They set out to find the central computer bank and pull the plug. Captured and imprisoned on a Floating Island (where the computers put criminals to get their just desserts), Bil and Alce escape. Their odyssey is gripping suspense and wonderful entertainment, with an ingenious depiction of man vs. machine.
Arthur Herzog is an award-winning novelist, non-fiction writer and journalist, renowned for his best-selling novels The Swarm, Orca (both made into popular movies), Earthsound, Heat and IQ 83, hailed by the British press as one of the best science fiction works ever written.
His non-fiction best sellers include Vesco, which Publishers Weekly hailed as A brilliantly researched story one of the year s remarkable biographies and The Woodchipper Murder. A New Yorker, avid reader, and world traveler, Herzog continues to write fiction and non-fiction books. |
