Scorch

A.D. Nauman
231 pages (Fall 2006); 1.8MB download
Soft Skull Press; ISBN: 1-887128-64-6

DESCRIPTION

How could this happen?

In near-future America, three huge conglomerates have taken control. Everything has become privatized -- from the city streets to the public schools. The landscape is a chaos of flashing advertisements and millisecond images. There is no overreaching federal authority, no Big Brother; there is barely any government at all. Instead, Americans are tightly controlled by the unseen hand of the marketplace.

A dystopian novel in the spirit of 1984 and Brave New World, Scorch is the story of Arel Ashe, a 30-ish woman stuck too long in a cubicle in an Adstories department. Arel believes what everyone else believes -- that happiness comes with material success -- until a disturbing event makes her begin to question the culture's common wisdoms. Pitted against the Corporacracy and a deranged self-help author turned religious zealot, Arel hatches a plan to save the world based on something most people haven't seen in years -- books.