Cosmos_Incorporated
2010 Nominated

Cosmos Incorporated

artwork-image

ABOUT
THE BOOK

Fifty years of warfare, disease, and strife have decimated the world’s population. Those who remain are motes in the mind of UniWorld, a superstate that monitors humanity via a vast computer metastructure that catalogue everything about everyone on the planet–race, religion, genetic codes, even fantasies. Those who have the means escape UniWorld’s tight control through the Orbital Ring.

Though his memory has been wiped clean and his history fabricated in order to pass through UniWorld’s check points, Sergei Diego Plotkin knows his name and he knows his mission: to murder a man in the city of Grand Junction, a Vegas-like outpost that is home to the private launching pad to the Ring. But this sense of purpose is compromised by random memories that flash through Plotkin’s brain. England and Argentina. The shores of Lake Baikal. And something else. Something indescribable.

Now Plotkin is about to meet his maker. As his identity and mission incrementally resurface in his conscious mind, and in the presence of an eerily beautiful woman, Plotkin will soon discover that he has come here not just to kill but to be born. . . .

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Maurice
G. Dantec

Maurice Georges Dantec was born in Grenoble, France on June 13th, 1959, within a communist family. His father was a scientific journalist and his mother a dressmaker, employees in the service of the City of Ivry-sur-Seine. He spent the majority of his childhood in the “red” suburbs. At the age of 5 years, a series of violent asthma attacks awakened his mind with the dreadful anxiety of imminent death, a memory that haunted him into adolescence. These health problems greatly affected him, along with the separation of his parents, and he lived with his mother and sister for more than 5 years in Alps, near Grenoble, his home town. in 1991, he decided to write seriously. On recommendation of Jean-Bernard Pouy, he submitted some of his writing in 1992 to Patrick Raynal, manager of the collection Thriller. It was a huge, unpublishable handwritten manuscript of five hundred pages. Instead of rejection, the editor saw in Maurice “the signs of a literary phenomenon” strongly encouraging him to create other works.

Maurice Georges Dantec was born in Grenoble, France on June 13th, 1959, within a communist family. His father was a scientific journalist and his mother a dressmaker, employees in the service of the City of Ivry-sur-Seine. He spent the majority of his childhood in the “red” suburbs. At the age of 5 years, a series of violent asthma attacks awakened his mind with the dreadful anxiety of imminent death, a memory that haunted him into adolescence. These health problems greatly affected him, along with the separation of his parents, and he lived with his mother and sister for more than 5 years in Alps, near Grenoble, his home town. in 1991, he decided to write seriously. On recommendation of Jean-Bernard Pouy, he submitted some of his writing in 1992 to Patrick Raynal, manager of the collection Thriller. It was a huge, unpublishable handwritten manuscript of five hundred pages. Instead of rejection, the editor saw in Maurice “the signs of a literary phenomenon” strongly encouraging him to create other works.

ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Tina
A. Kover

Tina Kover is a literary translator. She studied French at the University of Denver and the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and attended the Next Level Language Institute in Prague, Czech Republic. She holds a Master’s Degree in Medieval and Renaissance Studies from Durham University.

Tina Kover is a literary translator. She studied French at the University of Denver and the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and attended the Next Level Language Institute in Prague, Czech Republic. She holds a Master’s Degree in Medieval and Renaissance Studies from Durham University.

NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

An esoteric vision of a near future, written in a complex but fascinating language.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Country
Canada
Original Language
French
Publisher
Ballantine Books
Translator
Tina A. Kover

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