Award-winning author Susan Daitch's new novel, The Adjudicator , is a visionary cyberpunk mystery that explores the boundaries of consciousness and individual autonomy within an authoritarian state that controls the genetics of its citizens. In a near future where the surveillance state legislates the genetic code of its citizens, babies are created in a laboratory according to a template set by parents and the corporation. It is a utopian world of perfect control, where disease has been eliminated and the human genome ...
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Award-winning author Susan Daitch's new novel, The Adjudicator , is a visionary cyberpunk mystery that explores the boundaries of consciousness and individual autonomy within an authoritarian state that controls the genetics of its citizens. In a near future where the surveillance state legislates the genetic code of its citizens, babies are created in a laboratory according to a template set by parents and the corporation. It is a utopian world of perfect control, where disease has been eliminated and the human genome has reached apotheosis. Mistakes, though unlikely, still occur, and it is adjudicator Zedi Loew's job to fix them. One day, a cold case file based on an absurd premise crosses her desk: that gene-coding can go beyond structuring the body, it can alter consciousness. Fearing exposure, Zedi's boss makes the case top priority, and she has only a few days to solve it. The case will prove to be an entry into a dangerous labyrinth, and Zedi follows a taut thread of information, one which, she will learn, connects to the corporation's hidden mechanism of power as well as her own origin story. "In The Adjudicator , Susan Daitch delivers an intricately layered dystopia that reveals the havoc wreaked by genetic engineering and the pervasive reach of corporate power. With razor-edged prose, fierce intelligence, and humor she crafts a noir-infused tale of desperation and control, pushing the boundaries of the novel's form through multimedia elements to create an experience as thought-provoking as it is gripping." -Ross Benjamin, translator of The Diaries of Franz Kafka "How can something so smart, so ethically engaging, so subversive and sane, also be fun? Susan Daitch has made it happen, with wit and verve and empathy. Empathy is, at least partly, what The Adjudicator is about. Its narrator, sharing the DNA of a film noir gumshoe, searches for clues in a futuristic dystopia, a place where morality is up for grabs, where perfect control is a hair's breadth from chaos, a world both imaginary, and eerily reminiscent of our own." -John Haskell, author of The Complete Ballet "A bad trip journey through the tangled knot history of technology, art, and capitalism through the form of a sci-fi mystery page turner. Daitch's kaleidoscopic range is only bested by her stunning accomplishment-it burns in a million ways." -Sammy Harkham, author of Everything Together "Who are we when we become made-to-order? And do they take returns? Profound questions of self and consciousness are sewn into a propulsive spycraft plot set within a Byzantine surveillance state populated by designer babies. Susan Daitch expertly superimposes biotech, grim office politics, and literalized empathy to construct her Pynchonesque scenes. A mirror-dream to get lost in." -Eugene Lim, author of Search History "If the sentences comprising the text of this wonderful illustrated novel were to be disentangled, like a strand of DNA, they would stretch from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Brighton Beach." -Ben Katchor, author of The Dairy Restaurant
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Add this copy of The Adjudicator to cart. $23.05, new condition, Sold by Booksplease rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Southport, MERSEYSIDE, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2025 by Green City Books.
