About Rosewater
Rosewater
By Tade Thompson
Published by Orbit (20 September 2018)
Publisher's description
Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry and the helpless—people eager for a glimpse inside the dome or a taste of its rumoured healing powers.
Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome, and doesn't care to again—but when something begins killing off others like himself, Kaaro must defy his masters to search for an answer, facing his dark history and coming to a realization about a horrifying future.
Technology by Tade Thompson)
For the most part science fiction is pretty bad at predicting the future, although one should make a distinction between saying “this is future tech” and being an inspiration in the mind of a scientist. For example, the late, great Jack Kirby’s Mother Box technology is very similar to what we call a smart phone. There’s nothing wrong with grown scientists wanting to create things they saw on Star Trek when they were kids.
Knowing all this, I still went ahead and tried to extrapolate a future: that all humans would be given a chip ID in the future, similarly to what we do for pets right now. Growing up in an area of Nigeria where Christian Fundamentalism is rife, discussions of various incarnations of the dreaded Mark of the Beast were one of our favourite pastimes. The Mark being related to computer identification is one of the more accepted interpretations, and I just included it in ROSEWATER as something Nigerians would recognise is coming.
And it probably is coming, what with identity theft, password fatigue, election hacking and other problems of identity management.
In the world of ROSEWATER you are chipped as a baby and the government follows you everywhere, from waking hours through sleep, sex, to entrance examinations. This vast information is gathered in servers which can be mined for patterns. Insurgents can be found.
Is this so far fetched?
About Tade Thompson
Tade Thompson is the author of the sci-fi novel ROSEWATER, a John W. Campbell Award finalist, and The Kitschies Golden Tentacle Award winning novel MAKING WOLF. His novella THE MURDERS OF MOLLY SOUTHBOURNE has been optioned for screen adaptation. He also writes short stories, notably THE APOLOGISTS which was nominated for a British Science Fiction Association award. Born in London to Yoruba parents, he lives and works on the south coast of England where he battles an addiction to books.
Find Tade Thompson on Twitter - @tadethompson
Find Rosewater on Amazon here.
