This is my try at writing a book in the style of teenage dystopian fiction. Readers should know that this book has a smidgen of adult content, and virtually all of that is in Chapter One. There is an acknowledgment that sexual and personal relationships exist, without descriptions of sexual acts. One sentence has two bad words.
In some sense, this is a parody of dystopian teenage fiction, since the central battlefields are an ordinary, unmodified, American high school and a tech startup. The author applauds high academic achievement. He urges students to meet and exceed expectations of their time and place.
This book is meant as a reflection of our own times. Sometimes we focus so much on the day-to-day experience that we forget that a credit bubble always pops. No one seems to ask what will come next. This book is and always will be the work of a cranky sixty-year-old who ponders our future.
Readers who are impatient about learning the “backstory,” the boring part where the author fills in the gap between our present era and the time period of the narrative, can start reading in the middle of Chapter 9. More patient readers can start at the beginning.
-- David Holladay, writing in 2016
I have written this book in 2072-2073, well after the events depicted took place. Where needed, I invented some dialogue to make the text more interesting. I used diaries, recollections, and historical events to write this. I regret any errors; these will be removed in a later edition.
Since I am a key character in this story, I had a decision to make. I could have written in the first person. Instead, I have written in the third person as if I were not one of the participants. I felt more comfortable writing this way. The voice in this book is mine alone.
– Deb Coulter-Jackson