Correspondence - Softcover

A hypnotic mix of cyberpunk and magical realism, this chilling first novel by Sue Thomas marks the debut of a corrosively brilliant new writer. A novel of woman and machine, Correspondence blurs the boundaries between virtual reality and real life and examines the interconnectedness of fantasy, desire and memory. More than a novel, Correspondence is a roleplay and you are both reader and narrator, a computer programmer who is a compositor of fantasies. You take your source material from the accumulated hopes and desires of the world, but you must be careful. Sometimes the end result is unexpected. Emotionally deadened by the loss of your family in an accident, you begin turning yourself into a machine; you become an extension of the prosthetics for your compositing work. Soon there will be no future for you, and no past; no emotion and no pain. But your machine consciousness is not yet complete, and from your source material you create Rosa. As she grows and flourishes, Rosa develops a life of her own and starts to distance herself from you. Still deeply connected to the woman you have made, you are left with devastating choices. Subversive and utterly imaginative, Correspondence breaks the boundaries of conventional fiction to explore the meaning of consciousness itself.

Sue Thomas is Senior Policy Researcher at Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation. She has previously served as Director of Women's Studies at Georgetown University and is the author of How Women Legislate (OUP, 1994).
Clyde Wilcox is Professor of Government at Georgetown University. His most recent books include the Financiers of Congressional Elections: Investors, Ideologues, and Intimates, and Religion and Politics in Comparative Perspective: The One, the Few, and the Many.