DIVISION starts with a story some of us will find uncomfortable. Soldier, the title, is applied to a young person who has a very aggressive immune system. When he survives an epidemic, the medical experts start figuring out ways to use him to fight diseases. Like ebola. The gradually warming continent has provided new breeding grounds for mosquitoes and diseases. Antibiotic-resistant germs are spreading through the population. Can young Tamun bear to keep on being a hero?

In Dissimulation, we see a world where people don't need to travel to work or school, if they can plug themselves directly into a sim from home. Fast forward to the next tale where people are so shut off in their net-linked apartments and jobs that they don't meet, flirt, hang out or talk. So what would dating be like? Find out in Please Connect. This is my favourite story.

Horror fans will find something to their liking, and there's more than one wry look at future tech. The title story DIVISION is last, and we find ourselves aboard the largest passenger ship in the galaxy, the Mary Shelley. Two women have made a baby, and their little girl is their focus until events take a turn for the worse. I found a deeply touching tale here with all the humanity we would expect of a contemporary novel. The setting is well realised and makes sense of some of the contextual items, such as needing a licence for motherhood.

Dip in and dip out with a smile or a frown, as you make your way through the woods where something worse than wolves may lurk. If you do not like the future presented, remember that it is our generation who will bring about the future. Thanks to Lee S. Hawke, we can visualise this version of a cybernetic, mechanised, warming world and see how ordinary people fit into it - or don't. DIVISION will suit SF fans looking for quick reads.

Book Summary