Twinmaker (Twinmaker, 1) - Hardcover

Williams, Sean

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062203215 ISBN 13: 9780062203212

Publisher: Balzer + Bray, 2013

Synopsis

M. T. Anderson meets Cory Doctorow in this teen debut from #1 New York Times bestseller Sean Williams, who also coauthors the Troubletwisters series with Garth Nix.

When a coded note promises improvement—the chance to change your body any way you want, making it stronger, taller, more beautiful—Clair thinks it's too good to be true, but her best friend, Libby, falls into a deadly trap.

With the help of the school freak and a mysterious stranger, Clair races against the clock and around the world to save Libby, even as every step draws her deeper into a deadly world of cover-ups and conspiracies.

Action and danger fuel this near-future tale of technology, identity, and the lengths one girl will go to save her best friend.

About this title

Review:

“Real or Fiction? Things I Didn’t Make Up” by Sean Williams

You’d think a novel about teleporters (a.k.a. “d-mat”) would be totally sci-fi, but it’s not, I swear. Just about everything in this book either exists right now or is right around the corner. For instance:

1. Put “teleportation” into Google, and you’ll find hundreds of links to real science experiments showing that in principle it’s possible. The only thing separating us from d-mat is engineering. (Truly a humungous amount of engineering, but we’ll get there. Trust me.)

2. One of the truly cool spin-offs of d-mat is fabbing—taking a pattern of something that’s gone through d-mat and re-creating it from that pattern over and over again. This might sound amazing, but again it’s not fundamentally different from 3D printing, which we have right now.

3. Then there are Clair’s lenses. Contact lenses that work like miniature TVs or telescopes exist today. With a built-in gestural interface, this could give us a Google Glass that works. From there it’s just a short step to using the equivalent of Facebook “likes” to change the world.

4. What else? Oh yeah, the Skylifter. There’s a company that makes UFO-shaped blimps for cranes, cargo lifters, even palatial passenger transport. I want one. (Hint hint, if anyone from Skylifter is reading.) Then there’s beaming concentrated solar power down to Earth from satellites in space, reading speech directly from the mind, having one time zone for the entire planet, and surveillance drones—all things that are entirely possible, if not happening right now.

6. Not all the news is good, of course: the Water Wars are obviously one downside of the impending eco-apocalypse, along with higher sea levels and flooded cities. But there really are schemes to relocate endangered species to environments far from where they evolved. Elephants in Australia could happen one day.

7. Lastly, one of my favorite things in Twinmaker is the Sphinx Observatory, with its Ice Palace and an elevator that goes up the heart of a mountain. It sounds too cool to be true, but I assure you it isn’t. Look it up and marvel, as I often do, at the beauty of all things science.

From the Back Cover:

You can be improved. . . .

Can you really change your body just by carrying around a coded note? Sure—the advanced technology of a d-mat booth will transport you anywhere instantly, but can it also make you taller, stronger, more beautiful? Clair is pretty sure the offer is too good to be true. But her best friend, Libby, is determined to give it a try, longing for a new, improved version of herself.

What starts as Libby's dream turns into Clair's nightmare when Libby falls foul of a deadly trap. With the help of Jesse, the school freak, and a mysterious—but powerful—stranger called Q, Clair's attempt to protect Libby leads her to an unimagined world of conspiracies and cover-ups. Soon her own life is at risk, and Clair is chased across the world in a desperate race against time.

Action and danger fuel Sean Williams's near-future tale of technology, identity, and the lengths one girl will go to in order to save her best friend.

About this edition

• Publisher: Balzer + Bray
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0062203215
• ISBN 13: 9780062203212
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 496