Appliance: Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2022

Description

A novel for our times- the story of how technology and our addiction to innovation is eroding our human rights and freedoms **Finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2022 ** From the Costa Award winner, a highly inventive and and humane novel about our relationship with technology and our addiction to innovation. 'Are they paying you extra for this? You'd better be getting something. For the inconvenience, I mean. Here for the whole weekend is what they said. What if we'd had guests? They never asked. And in any case what are the dangers? Being tested like lab rats, we are. Did they even try to provide any assurance it was all perfectly-' This is the prototype. The first step to a new future. A future that will be easy and abundant. A future in which distance is no longer a barrier to human contact. And all it takes is a simple transport unit, in every home, every street, every town. Quick. Clean. Easy. A future driven by data, not emotion. And so begins the journey of a new technology that will soon change the world and everyone in it - the sceptics and the converts, the innocents and the evangelists. A scientific wonder that quickly becomes an everyday aspect of life. But what of our inherent messiness? In a world preoccupied with progress, what will happen to the things that make us human- the memories, the fears, the love, the blood, the contradictions, the mortality? As we push for a sense of perfection, what do we stand to lose? Questioning, innovative and shot through with a rich humanity, Appliance is much more than a novel. It examines our faith in technology, our hunger for new things and the rapid changes affecting all our lives. It challenges us to stop and reflect on the future we want, the systems we trust, and what really matters to us.

J. O. Morgan is a Scottish author. His 2018 work Assurances, looking at the RAF's early involvement with maintaining the nuclear deterrent, won that year's Costa Poetry Award. He has been twice shortlisted for both the Forward and the T. S. Eliot Prize. Appliance is his second novel.

Appliance is a work of peculiar genius that gives the truth about modern technology. * The Times, *Sci-Fi Book of the Year* * These deceptively simple tales... reveal how magical technology does people absolutely no good whatsoever... superb. * The Times, Science Fiction Book of the Month * A serious-minded examination of the instinctive human ambivalence towards innovation. * Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2022* * A clever book, delivered confidently, that will have you thinking about the machines in your own life. * Sunday Times * Such a super book. -- Wendy Erskine, author of Sweet Home and Dance Move Superbly unsettling... Reading Appliance, I was put in mind of Asimov's I, Robot, for the way each story sheds light on a different moral angle of the book's world, and of ours... gripping. -- Tristram Fane Saunders * Daily Telegraph * Compelling... sketched with acid precision... Morgan's real skill is in finding the poetry of the conundrum -- Stuart Kelly * Scotsman * Compelling... It is the Bindungsroman of something inhuman, and it is terrifying. * Scotsman, *Summer Reads of 2022* * Smart, subtle and blissfully jargon-free sci-fi stories from one of Britain's most acclaimed poets. * Daily Telegraph, *Summer Reads of 2022* * [With] poetic precision... Appliance most succeeds is in its little riot of the real in the face of digital abstraction. * Times Literary Supplement *