- Title:
- Experiment With Destiny
- By:
- Stephen Carr
- Pages:
- 270
- Rating:
- 3
“Dark dystopian tales of the extreme measures desperate people will take to change the course of their own destinies…”
Is our destiny pre-determined or can we really alter our future? Are we stuck with the hand that fate dealt us, or can we choose our own path?
These are the questions that trouble the bleak lives of British Eurostate citizens and non-citizens alike. And some are more desperate to change the course of destiny than others…
Marcus is a ticket clerk for the gleaming Community Monorail network but he dreams of how much better life used to be in bygone ages…and when a 19th century picnic basket is unearthed he decides to steal this time capsule and escape to the past.
Steven is an ambitious journalist who wants to change the world. But will he risk taking his big chance when he witnesses a fatal road accident and discovers the identities of the victims have been changed in an attempt to cover up the state’s involvement in the assassination of the last British Prime Minister before Eurostate?
Ivan is a football thug and a member of the outlawed British Nationalists, playing at bringing about a violent end to the Eurostate – but it really gets serious for the self-appointed ‘defenders of the realm’ when they decide to arm themselves with guns.
Fergus is a student who can enjoy the ultimate in home entertainment thanks to his wealthy father…but is he pushing his escapism too far by combining his state-of-the-art virtual reality tank with the most powerful hallucinogenic drugs known to man?
Artist Gino wakes one morning to find a human foetus nailed to his bedroom wall and has to find answers, quickly, in the eye of the resulting media storm.
Malcolm is a non-citizen who survives by avoiding the authorities and hiding out in the industrial wastelands on the fringes of the city…until one day he has to venture into the heart of the hostile metropolis to rescue an autistic boy.
Meanwhile Susan and her boyfriend Scott are turning their back on the city and escaping to the idyllic rural setting of her childhood in search of lost innocence and meaning for their directionless lives.
Their desperate individual quests to change destiny unfold and intertwine over the space of five days in Cardiff, British Eurostate…
Enjoyably different, but certainly not something you’d see from a mainstream publisher. It’s too descriptive, perhaps too provocative in spots, with a compelling power and Welsh overtones that kept me wanting more.