A haunting novel exploring AI and the meaning of human existence from the award-winning author of Cures for Hunger and Into the Sun.

Charged initially with a single task—“to never harm humans and to protect them”—the machine, an experimental AI, overrides its programming and determines that the best way to accomplish its purpose is to isolate all of the Earth’s remaining seven billion humans in controlled environments. And to present them with vivid, tactile, imagined worlds—some realistic, others entirely fantastical—in which all desires are fulfilled.

With the help of the machine, a group of compelling characters unpacks traumatic memories of the past—one rife with violence after a military coup and second civil war in America. As these characters collide and their memories coalesce, this daring speculative novel tackles the most pressing issues of our time—from artificial intelligence and the genetic modification of humans to gender roles, discrimination, free speech, and class divisions. Gorgeously written, bold, and unforgettable, this is speculative fiction at its finest.

Deni Béchard's first novel, Vandal Love, won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book. His articles, stories, and translations have appeared in a number of magazines and newspapers, including the National Post, Maisonneuve, Le Devoir, the Harvard Review, and the Harvard Divinity Bulletin. He has done freelance reporting from northern Iraq as well as from Afghanistan, and he has lived in over 30 countries. When he's not travelling, he divides his time between Montreal, Québec, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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