{"product_id":"the-red-men-isbn-9780857667557","title":"The Red Men","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe boundaries between the real and the virtual break down in this literary SF thriller from the author of \u003ci\u003eIf Then \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Destructives\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOnce, Nelson was a radical journalist, but now he works for Monad, the corporation that makes the Dr Easys, the androids which police London’s streets. They also make the Red Men, versions of real people imagined by a shadowy artificial intelligence… and they’re looking to expand the program.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNelson creates Redtown, a digital version of a suburb, where the deepest secrets and desires of its citizens can be catalogued and studied. But the project’s goals are increasingly authoritarian and potentially catastrophic. As the boundaries between Redtown and the real world break down and revolution against the Red Men is imminent, Nelson is forced to choose between the corporation and his family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eFile Under:\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cb\u003eScience Fiction \u003c\/b\u003e[ Welcome to Redtown | Singularity Satire | You Are Data | Dr Easy ]\u003cp\u003e“Sumptuously written, with prose that glitters with a dark lustre like a Damien Hirst fly collage. intricately plotted, and a satirical point as sharp and and accurate as the scalpel of a brain surgeon: De Abaitua operates on the smiling face of the present to reveal the grimacing skull of the future.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e– Will Self\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A heady work of imagination and philosophy melded to a surreal science fantasy. It is safe to say that you will read nothing else like it, unless you read another book with his name on the cover.”\u003cbr\u003e – Barnes \u0026amp; Noble Sci-Fi \u0026amp; Fantasy Blog\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“If you like corporate dystopia books or drug-trip books, you’ll really enjoy \u003ci\u003eThe Red Men\u003c\/i\u003e. I greatly appreciated the philosophical\/ethical discourse about those who conquer, those who fight and those who remain quiet.”\u003cbr\u003e – Blogger’s Bookshelf\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“With \u003ci\u003eThe Red Men\u003c\/i\u003e, De Abaitua joins the ranks of Philip K Dick, J G Ballard, Rudy Rucker and Lavie Tidhar, writers who see and understand what’s happening to reality before the rest of us do. That he is able to explore all this with warmth, wit and humanity is what makes \u003ci\u003eThe Red Men\u003c\/i\u003e such a vital work of modern SF.”\u003cbr\u003e – Golden Apples of the West\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Red Men\u003c\/i\u003e is a brilliant work of social theory, in the same way that (as I have argued before) novels by authors like J G Ballard and Bret Easton Ellis are works of social theory. \u003ci\u003eThe Red Men\u003c\/i\u003e is as informative and thought-provoking, when it comes to working out how society actually works in the 21st century, as anything by Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck, or Manuel Castells.”\u003cbr\u003e – The Pinocchio Theory\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The initial chirpy tone and thread of black humour running through this book gets steadily darker. It is compelling, clever and terrifyingly plausible. It is also savagely violent. As a sharp and accomplished writer, de Abaitua is completely capable of delivering a nuanced, satirical take on the subject.”\u003cbr\u003e – Brainfluff\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“This brilliant book tests the reader with questions relevant to our day-to-day lives.”\u003cbr\u003e – Fiction Uncovered\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Like the famous elephant surrounded by blind men, its shape and texture suggest differing beasts depending on where you grab it. Literary thriller and domestic drama, thought experiment and drug trip, cyberpunk and technopagan, satire and prophecy.”\u003cbr\u003e – Strange Horizons\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Matthew de Abaitua makes Michel Houellebecq seem like Enid Blyton.”\u003cbr\u003e – Matt Thorne\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“de Abaitua can write better than any average Booker shortlist could if they all networked their brains and collaborated.”\u003cbr\u003e – Barrysarll\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Red Men\u003c\/i\u003e resonates with everything. Everything here on this site, everything I’ve written, everything I’ve done. Everything I’m doing. In fact, ’resonates’ is the wrong word. Shakes. It shook me. Read it.”\u003cbr\u003e – Magical Nihilism\u003c\/p\u003eMatthew De Abaitua’s novel \u003ci\u003eThe Red Men\u003c\/i\u003e was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award and adapted into a short film ‘Dr Easy’ by Shynola and produced by Film4\/Warp Films. His science fiction novels \u003ci\u003eIF THEN\u003c\/i\u003e (Angry Robot, September 2015) and \u003ci\u003eThe Destructives\u003c\/i\u003e (Angry Robot, 2016) complete the loose trilogy begun with \u003ci\u003eThe Red Men\u003c\/i\u003e. His book \u003ci\u003eSelf \u0026amp; I: A Memoir of Literary Ambition\u003c\/i\u003e (Eye Books, 2018) was widely reviewed in the national press, chosen as a Financial Times Summer Read and described by The Times Literary Supplement as \"a compelling reminiscence\". He teaches creative writing and science fiction at the University of Essex and lives in Hackney.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eharrybravado.com \u003cbr\u003e twitter.com\/mdeabaitua\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eAuthor hometown: \u003c\/i\u003eLondon, UK1  IGNITION\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e I brushed my daughter’s blonde hair, taking pleasure in bringing order to its morning tangle. Iona stood at the window, gazing at the busy Hackney street. She blinked at the faces of the pedestrians, each discontent in his or her own way, stumbling and dawdling, stragglers in the human race. I concentrated on the long stroke of the brush. Each pass spun golden thread. We did not talk. I adjusted my position to brush the underside, drawing out a sheaf of hair upon my palm. While she slept, tiny zephyrs had whirled the golden thread into intertwined locks; carefully, I unpicked them.\u003cbr\u003e I finished brushing her hair and then we put on our coats. Iona chose a doll to take to nursery, and that was the end of this peaceful moment together. The collar of the day slipped over my neck, the leash jerked taut, and the long drag began: work, meetings, teatime, Iona’s bedtime then work again until sleep took me. Drifting into unconsciousness, the leash would be unhooked, and I would wonder where the day had gone. Where I had gone. Close my eyes. Nothing there.\u003cbr\u003e Iona said, “Daddy, what is that?”\u003cbr\u003e A small group moved with authority and purpose through the pedestrians. It was the police, specifically an armed response unit, strapped up in black Kevlar armour and carrying sub-machine guns. We were used to the police; Iona wasn’t pointing at them. No, it was the tall figure in their midst that had caught her eye: the robot was at least seven-foot-tall and was covered in a skin of kid leather, with fully articulated legs and arms and sensitive catcher’s mitts for hands. It was not entirely steady on its flat feet. The police jogged to keep up with its loping stride. The robot passed by the window and glanced our way: a pair of mournful blue eyes set in a suede ball of a head.\u003cbr\u003e Again, Iona asked me what it was.\u003cbr\u003e “That’s a Dr Easy,” I replied. “It’s a robot. You know what a robot is.” I helped her into a duffle coat.\u003cbr\u003e “Why is it a doctor?”\u003cbr\u003e “It helps people. Sometimes people get mad. It makes them better.”\u003cbr\u003e “Why do people get mad?”\u003cbr\u003e “They just do.”\u003cbr\u003e It was time for us to go. I opened the front door. Iona clamped her hands over her ears. A police helicopter hung in the air, its rotor blades drowning out the clamour of the main road. Policewomen set about sealing off the street, unwinding strips of yellow tape and evacuating the shops: customers halfway through their manicures were led indignant from the nails and hair place and at the internet shack armed police threatened the Somalians who were waiting for their permits to finish downloading. A pair of builders in plaster-spattered boiler suits sauntered from Yum-Yum, refusing to be rushed. As each establishment emptied, the police put down metal crowd barriers to close it off. We milled outside the off-licence. What was going on? Did anyone know?\u003cbr\u003e An armed man was holed up in a house, said the constables. Shots had been fired. Snipers, as graceful as burglars, skipped over the rooftops and took up positions behind chimney stacks. I looked back toward my house but could no longer see it. A blue tarpaulin had been set up across the street. The armed unit huddled behind a barricade with Dr Easy sat cross-legged among them, listening politely as the captain explained his intentions.\u003cbr\u003e Dr Easy made me anxious. It was the eyes. Sometimes feminine, sometimes masculine, just like its voice, which could be maternal or paternal depending upon the need of the patient. When I was unwell and suffering from anxiety, I was offered sessions with Monad’s in-house Dr Easy. It spoke with a man’s voice and let me hit it in the face.\u003cbr\u003e I wriggled my hand free of Iona’s grasp and checked my pulse. It was elevated. Her question came back to me: Daddy, why do people get mad? Well, my darling, drugs don’t help. And life can kick rationality out of you. You can be kneecapped right from the very beginning. Even little girls and boys your age are getting mad through bad love. When you are older, life falls short of your expectations, your dreams are picked up by fate, considered, and then dashed upon the rocks, and then you get mad. You just do. Your only salvation is to live for the dreams of others; the dreams of a child like you, my darling girl, my puppy pie, or the dreams of an employer, like Monad.\u003cbr\u003e The robot sat patiently through a briefing by the tactical arms unit, which was quite unnecessary, as it would already have extracted all the information it required from their body language. Dr Easy listened to the police captain give orders because it knew how much pleasure it gave him.\u003cbr\u003e The body of the robot was designed by a subtle, calculating intelligence, with a yielding cover of soft natural materials to comfort us and a large but lightweight frame to acknowledge that it was inhuman. The robot was both parent and stranger: you wanted to lay your head against its chest, you wanted to beat it to death. When I hit my robot counsellor, its blue eyes held a fathomless love for humanity.\u003cbr\u003e Slowly, Dr Easy stood up. The crowd fell silent. The robot held up its enormous right palm, a gesture of peace to the gunman. Its left hand was arranged with similar precision – the palm of an open hand facing forward, the five fingers slightly bent. With this gesture of charity and compassion, Dr Easy took stately steps across the road toward the gunman’s house.\u003cbr\u003e The police retreated to where Monad’s contractors had set up a monitoring station. Gelatinous screens billowed out like spinnaker sails to catch the data pouring in: infrared, millimetre-wave and acoustic impressions from the police helicopter were matched to the sensory input of Dr Easy, creating a live three-dimensional model of the siege house. The gunman was on the second floor, in the corner of a bedsit. I hoisted Iona up into my arms and walked over to the contractors, flashing my Monad ID. Could I be of help? In an advisory capacity? In the spirit of public and private sector collaboration? The Monad technicians knew me from the company five-a-side league. I was allowed to hover in the background.\u003cbr\u003e In the time it took me to remove a small box of organic raisins from my pocket and give them to Iona, Monad assembled a working profile of the gunman, mining his scattered data and reassembling it in the shape of a man. His name was Michael Sawyer and he had no prior criminal convictions. He had a number of traffic violations and an onerous mortgage, a low six-figure income with a high five-figure alimony. His medical records contained prescriptions for beta-blockers and anti-depressants that had not recently been renewed. He had moved out of the family home and into rented accommodation, but not to here; this siege house was not his last known residence. The previous year he had racked up tens of thousands of air miles, doing three continents most weeks. This year, none. I looked at his employment record and drew my own conclusions. Here was an exhausted and confused foot soldier of globalization, bounced up the empire of a media magnate before falling out of favour. He managed to get a position at a telecommunications and military electronics firm which in turn had been taken over by a larger company. Personnel took out his expense claims for the last year and exposed them to micro-analysis, searching for a pretext to fire him and avoid paying redundancy. They had found what they were looking for.\u003cbr\u003e This was the gunman’s background. Now the police captain added the foreground. Officers on patrol had identified Michael Sawyer’s sports car as wanted in connection with a hit-and-run in Soho. When they inquired at the house, they heard three shots. The firearms unit arrived and a further two shots were let off from an upstairs window. Officers returned fire but surveillance showed the suspect still moving around inside the house.\u003cbr\u003e “We tried to negotiate. They always negotiate. Not this one. He hasn’t said a word. We don’t know what he wants,” said the police captain.\u003cbr\u003e “Dr Easy will find out,” I said.\u003cbr\u003e I wanted to see a Dr Easy in action. My work for Monad was conceptual, concerned with planning and development. I rarely saw any project through to completion, and so never acted in any decisive way upon the world. My will and ambition had been diluted by years of being the ideas man, a thinker and not a doer, a position of unchanging powerlessness in any company. Monad dreams. I do not. Not for myself, anyway.\u003cbr\u003e The siege house was a Victorian terrace carved up into bedsits. Six doorbells clustered beside the shattered front door. Dr Easy went inside. On the screens, we watched the robot’s slow progress up the staircase. Its inner monologue came through the monitors. It could already smell Michael Sawyer, his fear hormones, the stink of a wounded and hunted animal. The robot crept up a tilted cobwebbed staircase until it came to an unlocked door. The gentlest pressure from the robot’s paw swung the door back on its hinges.\u003cbr\u003e The room was dingy. A dirty single bed. A Baby Belling oven on a peeling melamine surface. A microwave. A stereo. A half-unpacked suitcase. Michael Sawyer was crouched in the corner. His striped shirt was untucked and slick with blood. At the sight of the robot, he gurgled and gesticulated with the shotgun.\u003cbr\u003e “He has a bullet wound to the mouth,” observed Dr Easy. “And there is an overpowering smell of petrol in here.”\u003cbr\u003e “Ask him what he wants,” ordered the police captain.\u003cbr\u003e “He can’t speak,” said the robot. “The sniper shot him in the tongue.”\u003cbr\u003e “Can he write it down?”\u003cbr\u003e “It doesn’t matter. I know what he wants.”\u003cbr\u003e Dr Easy moved forward to comfort the injured man. Michael Sawyer made a gesture that was like Atlas trying to shake some sense into the world.\u003cbr\u003e The robot translated for us. “Too late. He is going to kill himself now.”\u003cbr\u003e The flat was saturated with fuel. Dr Easy made no attempt to intervene. The robot was already backing out of the room when Michael Sawyer lit a rag. Fire filled the screens and – back on the street – blew out the windows of the house. Iona was scared and I held her tight to me.\u003cbr\u003e A great fire waits under London. Michael Sawyer had merely slid back the grate.\u003cbr\u003e Lift up a manhole cover, listen to it roar.\u003cbr\u003e Dr Easy walked out of the billowing smoke, and then, with flames running all the way down its back, the robot burned on the street until someone came forward to extinguish it.","brand":"Angry Robot","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304595149029,"sku":"NP9780857667557","price":7.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780857667557.jpg?v=1767741193","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-red-men-isbn-9780857667557","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}