**Finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2022 **

From the Costa Award winner, a highly inventive and and humane novel about our relationship with technology and our addiction to innovation.
'Are they paying you extra for this? You'd better be getting something. For the inconvenience, I mean. Here for the whole weekend is what they said. What if we'd had guests? They never asked. And in any case what are the dangers? Being tested like lab rats, we are. Did they even try to provide any assurance it was all perfectly-'
This is the prototype. The first step to a new future.
A future that will be easy and abundant. A future in which distance is no longer a barrier to human contact. And all it takes is a simple transport unit, in every home, every street, every town. Quick. Clean. Easy. A future driven by data, not emotion.
And so begins the journey of a new technology that will soon change the world and everyone in it - the...]]> Mon, 31 Oct 2022 16:55:22 +0200 https://graycity.net/j-o-morgan/102098-assurances.html https://graycity.net/j-o-morgan/102098-assurances.html
A war-poem both historic and frighteningly topical, Assurances begins in the 1950s during a period of vigilance and dread in the middle of the Cold War: the long stand-off between nuclear powers, where the only defence was the threat of mutually assured destruction.Using a mix of versed and unversed passages, Morgan places moments of calm reflection alongside the tensions inherent in guarding against such a permanent threat. A work of variations and possibilities, we hear the thoughts of those involved who are trying to understand and justify their roles. We examine the lives of civilians who are not aware of the impending danger, as well as those who are. We listen to the whirring minds of machines; to the voice of the bomb itself. We spy on enemy agents: always there, always somewhere close at hand.Assurances is an intimate, dramatic work for many voices: lyrical, anxious, fragmentary and terrifying; a poem about the nuclear stalemate, the...]]> Sun, 11 Nov 2018 14:13:47 +0200