We Are Satellites
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3.9 • 12 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
"Taut and elegant, carefully introspected and thoughtfully explored."—The New York Times
From Hugo award-winning author Sarah Pinsker comes a novel about one family and the technology that divides them.
Everybody's getting one.
Val and Julie just want what’s best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant to help with school, they reluctantly agree. This is the future, after all.
Soon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with her colleagues, leaving Val and Sophie part of the shrinking minority of people without the device.
Before long, the implications are clear, for the family and society: get a Pilot or get left behind. With government subsidies and no downside, why would anyone refuse? And how do you stop a technology once it's everywhere? Those are the questions Sophie and her anti-Pilot movement rise up to answer, even if it puts them up against the Pilot's powerful manufacturer and pits Sophie against the people she loves most.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nebula Award winner Pinsker's cold and cerebral latest (after A Song for a New Day) revolves around technological haves and have-nots who are divided by class, disability, and ideology. Teacher Val and political staffer Julie come from underprivileged backgrounds, and their marriage has immersed them in suburban life, with two kids and a money pit of a house. Enter the Pilot, a new technology for enhancing brain function via a stimulating implant. It quickly becomes a fad: first Val's wealthy students and then Julie's congressman boss sport the Pilot's tell-tale blue lights at their temples, and soon David, the couple's teenage son, has one. The family, though, shies away from the implications of his enhanced capabilities until he announces his decision to join the military's new program for people with Pilots. Meanwhile, David's sister Sophie, whose epilepsy makes her ineligible for implantation, must confront being a have-not in a neural-enhanced world. It's a slow-developing narrative, marred by slight characterization and check-the-box inclusion of topical issues. Pinsker raises fascinating questions about technology that will appeal to fans of hard science fiction, but the story itself too often reads like dry reportage.
