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2024 Arthur C. Clarke Award (shortlist)
Nothing has happened. Not yet, anyway. This is how all things begin.
Welcome to Apex City, formerly Bangalore, where everything is decided by the mathematically perfect Bell Curve.
With the right image, values and opinions, you can ascend to the glittering heights of the Twenty Percent – the Virtual elite – and have the world at your feet. Otherwise you risk falling to the precarious Ten Percent, and deportation to the ranks of the Analogs, with no access to electricity, running water or even humanity.
The system has no flaws. Until the elusive “Ten Percent Thief” steals a single jacaranda seed from the Virtual city and plants a revolution in the barren soil of the Analog world.
Previously published in South Asia only as Analog/Virtual, The Ten Percent Thief is a striking debut by a ferocious new talent.
Genre: Science Fiction
Welcome to Apex City, formerly Bangalore, where everything is decided by the mathematically perfect Bell Curve.
With the right image, values and opinions, you can ascend to the glittering heights of the Twenty Percent – the Virtual elite – and have the world at your feet. Otherwise you risk falling to the precarious Ten Percent, and deportation to the ranks of the Analogs, with no access to electricity, running water or even humanity.
The system has no flaws. Until the elusive “Ten Percent Thief” steals a single jacaranda seed from the Virtual city and plants a revolution in the barren soil of the Analog world.
Previously published in South Asia only as Analog/Virtual, The Ten Percent Thief is a striking debut by a ferocious new talent.
Genre: Science Fiction
Praise for this book
"The Ten Percent Thief delivers hope, wonder, bleakness, humour and wisdom in equal measure, with unforgettable characters telling a multifaceted story of a future revolution. A complex, dazzling debut." - Samit Basu
"Lavanya Lakshminarayan's debut drops us headfirst into a future Bangalore where a corporation rules the world and humanity seeks security and fulfilment in a thought-policed virtuality. I loved the razor-sharp writing and vivid detailing of her unfolding of the human situations and dilemmas of the Analog/Virtual divide in society. This is fiction playing for the highest stakes - and winning." - Chandrahas Choudhury
"In the best tradition of dystopian fiction, Analog/Virtual explores issues about class, society, power structures and values. Lavanya Lakshminarayan has skilfully crafted a series of interwoven stories about a frighteningly plausible near future scenario, rooted in the extrapolation of today's worship of technology and productivity. Spanning multiple points of view, writing styles and character voices, this masterful work of science fiction weaves its individual stories into a complex and engaging whole." - S B Divya
"Immersive and skillfully wrought; a fascinating kaleidoscope of near-future dystopian fiction." - Stark Holborn
"If you ever wondered how Huxley's Brave New World would look when social media metrics take charge, Lakshminarayan's Ten Percent Thief gets all the likes and thumbs up for showing us a world no sane person would want to live in. It's deeply disturbing, but you can't look away." - Wayne Santos
"An astonishing, kaleidoscopic journey through the fractured landscape of a future India where cyber-power has created a new system of oppression, this beautifully written novel of imaginative literature serves both as a warning and a source of resurgent hope. Grim, unrelenting, polyphonic and exhilarating." - Vandana Singh
"A series of taut, Dickian cyberpunk vignettes, always introducing fascinating new protagonists to its intertwining cast of dozens; at its best when lampooning the contemporary worlds of social media, e-sports, app-obsession and the hyper-gamification of everything from art to economic standing. A sparkling debut." - Aubrey Wood
"Lavanya Lakshminarayan's debut drops us headfirst into a future Bangalore where a corporation rules the world and humanity seeks security and fulfilment in a thought-policed virtuality. I loved the razor-sharp writing and vivid detailing of her unfolding of the human situations and dilemmas of the Analog/Virtual divide in society. This is fiction playing for the highest stakes - and winning." - Chandrahas Choudhury
"In the best tradition of dystopian fiction, Analog/Virtual explores issues about class, society, power structures and values. Lavanya Lakshminarayan has skilfully crafted a series of interwoven stories about a frighteningly plausible near future scenario, rooted in the extrapolation of today's worship of technology and productivity. Spanning multiple points of view, writing styles and character voices, this masterful work of science fiction weaves its individual stories into a complex and engaging whole." - S B Divya
"Immersive and skillfully wrought; a fascinating kaleidoscope of near-future dystopian fiction." - Stark Holborn
"If you ever wondered how Huxley's Brave New World would look when social media metrics take charge, Lakshminarayan's Ten Percent Thief gets all the likes and thumbs up for showing us a world no sane person would want to live in. It's deeply disturbing, but you can't look away." - Wayne Santos
"An astonishing, kaleidoscopic journey through the fractured landscape of a future India where cyber-power has created a new system of oppression, this beautifully written novel of imaginative literature serves both as a warning and a source of resurgent hope. Grim, unrelenting, polyphonic and exhilarating." - Vandana Singh
"A series of taut, Dickian cyberpunk vignettes, always introducing fascinating new protagonists to its intertwining cast of dozens; at its best when lampooning the contemporary worlds of social media, e-sports, app-obsession and the hyper-gamification of everything from art to economic standing. A sparkling debut." - Aubrey Wood
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Used availability for Lavanya Lakshminarayan's The Ten-Percent Thief