A year after Emma Henson, a young, genius bio-tech scientist, dies in a covert AI brain-chip experiment, her father Josh has nothing left to live for and vows to get revenge on the Silicon Valley CEO responsible.
Josh has thirty days to make his home-made bombs and to say goodbye to his life. To give himself courage in the countdown, he records daily video messages to his lost "Em." He is fueled by the horrific memories of Em’s death—her body and brain devoured by the AI "infinity" system in its quest for immortality. Memories flood him as he searches for the moments in Emma’s short life where he could have been a better father and saved her.
As he grapples with constructing and testing his DIY bombs, his thirty days start to run out, and Emma’s voice returns to him, speaking with him as he sets to complete his mission. He worries that he’s gone insane—he doubts if he can see the violent act through—but Emma’s voice insists he continue on his path toward murder and mayhem. Josh tries to resist his daughter’s voice as it attempts to take full control of his body. But is it even her? Or is it a ghost, a psychotic delusion or the AI system that is controlling him?
Inspired by the real-life Brain Chip Implant experiments (Musk/Neuralink) and the technogothic tradition (Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Island of Dr Moreau), For Emma is a tale of possession by a new force unleashed by science. It is a warning for the future but also an intimate, heart-breaking study of the love between a father and daughter and of the madness that grief can drive us to.
Genre: Thriller
Josh has thirty days to make his home-made bombs and to say goodbye to his life. To give himself courage in the countdown, he records daily video messages to his lost "Em." He is fueled by the horrific memories of Em’s death—her body and brain devoured by the AI "infinity" system in its quest for immortality. Memories flood him as he searches for the moments in Emma’s short life where he could have been a better father and saved her.
As he grapples with constructing and testing his DIY bombs, his thirty days start to run out, and Emma’s voice returns to him, speaking with him as he sets to complete his mission. He worries that he’s gone insane—he doubts if he can see the violent act through—but Emma’s voice insists he continue on his path toward murder and mayhem. Josh tries to resist his daughter’s voice as it attempts to take full control of his body. But is it even her? Or is it a ghost, a psychotic delusion or the AI system that is controlling him?
Inspired by the real-life Brain Chip Implant experiments (Musk/Neuralink) and the technogothic tradition (Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Island of Dr Moreau), For Emma is a tale of possession by a new force unleashed by science. It is a warning for the future but also an intimate, heart-breaking study of the love between a father and daughter and of the madness that grief can drive us to.
Genre: Thriller
Praise for this book
"Josh Cartwright, the beguiling protagonist of FOR EMMA, is reminiscent, with all his paranoia and eccentricities, of the tortured heroes of Philip K. Dick. But this tale should not be categorized as speculative. Rather, this brilliant and frightening novel is more like science fact than science fiction. So some day soon when we're all backing up our brains and things get even crazier in our mad world, we'll remember that Ewan Morrison tried to warn us." - Jonathan Ames
"For Emma is as disturbing as it is convincing, a tale of love and guilt and grief, and an apt tract for our chaotic times." - John Banville
"For Emma is an astonishing, bold novel . . . heart-rending, but also complex, visceral and angry . . . unlike anything I have read before - a sympathetic, yet abject account of violence. Morrison's eyes are on the horizon. This is the novel for our times, a mordant, coruscating yet exhilarating account of where we will be, sooner than we think." - Nicholas Blincoe
"As pacey and compelling as a thriller, For Emma is also a skillful exploration of that area where our genuine fears about the global reach of tech giants meet a natural tendency to paranoia. How worried should we be about the rapid advances in artificial intelligence currently underway? Emma's story feels compelling, moving and terrifyingly plausible." - Miranda France
"This book scared me like no horror story ever has, because its monster is right in front of us, right now, eating us slowly while we cheer." - Isaac Marion
"Harrowing, tragic and moving." - Ian Rankin
"Ewan Morrison's harrowing and beautiful new novel, For Emma, is an early warning system for the future. In that way, a worthy successor to Easy Travel to Other Planets, Neuromancer, and, of course, Brave New World." - David Shields
"Hold onto your seats for a cracking good ending, which I did not see coming, yet which I felt I should have seen coming - the best kind." - Lionel Shriver
"A devastatingly accomplished and cinema-literate nightmare of culture-induced and morally bereft psychotic breakdown: the state in which we are all now registered, observed and disenfranchised. The poetry of paranoia, here, is so compelling, that we are forced to conclude that the very act of tale-telling, authorship, is being dictated by a terrifying otherness. Now read on. Please." - Iain Sinclair
"A masterpiece . . . For Emma is an extraordinary novel; a treatise of love and loss, the terror of the modern world and the sprung, high-tech trap humanity has set for itself. This would be more than enough: awe inspiringly, it's also a page-turning thriller, and it confirms its author as the eminent fiction writer of our times." - Irvine Welsh
"For Emma is as disturbing as it is convincing, a tale of love and guilt and grief, and an apt tract for our chaotic times." - John Banville
"For Emma is an astonishing, bold novel . . . heart-rending, but also complex, visceral and angry . . . unlike anything I have read before - a sympathetic, yet abject account of violence. Morrison's eyes are on the horizon. This is the novel for our times, a mordant, coruscating yet exhilarating account of where we will be, sooner than we think." - Nicholas Blincoe
"As pacey and compelling as a thriller, For Emma is also a skillful exploration of that area where our genuine fears about the global reach of tech giants meet a natural tendency to paranoia. How worried should we be about the rapid advances in artificial intelligence currently underway? Emma's story feels compelling, moving and terrifyingly plausible." - Miranda France
"This book scared me like no horror story ever has, because its monster is right in front of us, right now, eating us slowly while we cheer." - Isaac Marion
"Harrowing, tragic and moving." - Ian Rankin
"Ewan Morrison's harrowing and beautiful new novel, For Emma, is an early warning system for the future. In that way, a worthy successor to Easy Travel to Other Planets, Neuromancer, and, of course, Brave New World." - David Shields
"Hold onto your seats for a cracking good ending, which I did not see coming, yet which I felt I should have seen coming - the best kind." - Lionel Shriver
"A devastatingly accomplished and cinema-literate nightmare of culture-induced and morally bereft psychotic breakdown: the state in which we are all now registered, observed and disenfranchised. The poetry of paranoia, here, is so compelling, that we are forced to conclude that the very act of tale-telling, authorship, is being dictated by a terrifying otherness. Now read on. Please." - Iain Sinclair
"A masterpiece . . . For Emma is an extraordinary novel; a treatise of love and loss, the terror of the modern world and the sprung, high-tech trap humanity has set for itself. This would be more than enough: awe inspiringly, it's also a page-turning thriller, and it confirms its author as the eminent fiction writer of our times." - Irvine Welsh
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