Whiteout
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Sage Walker's suspenseful, Locus Award-winning first novel, Whiteout, takes us to a twenty-first century Earth where government means multinational corporation.
And daily living means a struggle to survive the effects of overpopulation, poverty, pollution, and hunger.
One last hope remains: Antarctica, the only source of pristine water and food left on the planet. Antarctica is protected from human exploitation by international treaty—and that treaty’s due for renegotiation.
The people who have the talents to influence the outcome of these negotiations run Edges, a company of media manipulators. They’ve been hired by one of the corporations for whom the current situation suits them just fine, and they’d like to keep it that way. This team knows that they have the skills to make whatever they want happen. But they also know that if they succeed, they might doom the planet.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Breaking new ground in novels about virtual reality, Walker's first novel treats VR more as a means than an end, focusing less on the technology itself than on those who use it. Signy Thomas is a member of "Edges," a group of men and women of varying special talents (and a medley of past and present intimacies) who have formed a VR research company. They accept a commission from the Tanaka Corporation, ostensibly to get the world's leaders to agree to maintain current limits on the harvesting of krill in the Antarctic. The job seems too easy until discrepancies arise and one of the Edges team, Dr. Jared Balchen, is kidnapped from a Tanaka ship. Even after his disappearance, Jared's spirit and virtual presence hover over the actions of his colleagues. While their primary contact is often through VR, the individual members of Edges travel frequently through "real" space--though Walker deliberately eschews describing most of the locations. While the author builds a complex yet credible web of inter- and intracorporate treachery and double crosses (and reveals Tanaka's real goal in the process), every death she limns is a noble one, with even death ultimately contemplated as a life-giving experience. This is an impressive debut, rich in ideas and feeling, told in a voice all its own.
