Description

In post-chaos 2052, a re-programmed investigator seeks to uncover the possibilities for independent human thinking after decades of humankind's addiction to a dominating computer network. This computer network wreaked havoc in society by redefining geographies, segregating populations, and creating catastrophic wars between computer-defined groups.

Amidst the unexplained cessation of the interconnect network, Jared Rohde faces vexing challenges in his search for a dependable truth, bedeviled by personal frailties and psychic seizures, puzzling encounters with traumatized individuals in war-torn cities, professional linkages to a mysterious ReStart organization advocating societal reform, and the pervasive effects of the mind-bending computer super-network. In attempting to restart society based on human cognition, individuals struggle between the hard work of re-gaining independent cognition and an addictive longing for the personal freedom of un-thinking instinctual reactivity to computer stimuli.

In ReStart: Stories of the Cairn Age by Scott Bollens, we experience a near future both eerily familiar and disturbing, an anthropological narrative of the effects of algorithmic sorting, of social engineering gone awry. As his investigation deepens, Rohde's self-identity and the survival strategy of the algorithmic network intertwine, raising shocking implications for the future of human consciousness.

"A fascinating and unique dystopian novel that offers profound thoughts and moments of contemplation, along with genuine, deeply layered characters." - Terri Stepak, ReaderViews.com

"Highly intriguing and compulsively readable. An authentically crafted and frighteningly plausible world." - BookView