Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
‘Will send shivers down your spine’
Teen Vogue
‘A work of unforgettable vision and imagination. This book is everything I love about science fiction’
Jay Kristoff
Are you ready for the future?
Black Mirror with a touch of Westworld re-wiring, STRONGER, FASTER, AND MORE BEAUTIFUL is a novel in six interconnected parts about what it means to be human – and where those boundaries lie.
Set in our world, spanning the near to distant future, the author, Arwen Elys Dayton, explores the possible consequences of advanced medical breakthroughs and how they may shape and reshape humanity. From organ donation to plastic surgery to full bodily reconstruction, these stories take you by your (for now, organic) hand and lead you into a future where the line between person and machine becomes increasingly blurred.
Deeply thoughtful, poignant, horrifying, and action-packed, this novel strikes new ground while also seeming so strangely… likely.
Just try to disconnect.
Reviews
A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2018
‘Gripping, provoking and elegantly written, this interlocking suite of stories explores the implications of genetic modification on our destiny. There's something of Ursula Le Guin in its calm, intelligent examination of human nature's impact on technology, politics and religion. An there's a twist at the end worthy of H.G. Wells.’
Daily Mail
‘Powerful, poignant, and action-packed’
Bustle
‘A work of unforgettable vision and imagination. This book is everything I love about science fiction’
Jay Kristoff, New York Times bestselling author
‘A deep and suddenly necessary exploration of the beautiful and terrible futures we face. Every story leaves you desperate for more. Somehow, the further from today Dayton travels, the more real it becomes’
Hank Green
‘Haunting, challenging and provocative — this is an extraordinary book. I can't can’t stop thinking about it’
Amie Kaufman, New York Times bestselling co-author of the Illuminae Files
About the author
Arwen Elys Dayton began her career as a teenage staff writer at a foundation that produced award-winning shows for PBS. Soon afterward, she began writing screenplays and novels, including Sovereign’s Hold and Resurrection, the #1 Amazon bestseller in Sci-Fi in both the US and the UK. Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful is Arwen’s first novel with Harper Voyager.
Arwen spends months doing research for her stories. Her explorations have taken her around the world to places like the Great Pyramid (which she explored by flashlight), Hong Kong and its many islands, and lots of ruined castles in Scotland. She enjoys creating complete worlds inhabited by characters who charm, frustrate or inspire. Arwen lives with her husband and their three children in both sunny Southern California and the rainy Pacific Northwest. You can visit her at arwendayton.com and follow @arwenelysdayton on Twitter and Instagram
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
These six linked tales delve into the question of ethics in scientific and medical human modification. Along the way, they loosely follow the life, career, and afterlife of Tad Tadd, a reverend who popularizes a movement against changing corporeal forms and then, after a family tragedy, wholeheartedly embraces people's right to modify their bodies as they choose. The book begins with semi-identical twins Julia and Evan, whose organs are not growing fast enough to keep either alive; when Julia goes into a vegetative state, doctors advise the twins' parents to harvest Julia's organs for Evan, and Tadd pays a visit to the family in the hospital, calling the boy "a life-devouring creature." Another section follows a teen, significantly modified following a car accident, who hears Tadd's message on the radio. As the stories move further into the future, Dayton (Seeker) explores how each generation slowly blurs the lines between human, machine, and animal. Part cautionary tale and part ode to the inventive human spirit, Dayton's brilliant collection of stories is best described as a scientific Twilight Zone. Ages 14 up.)