Silence Descends

In the tradition of George Orwell's 1984 and Jack London's The Iron Heel, both cautionary tales about the future, Silence Descends is an audacious and eloquent novel in the form of a treatise written at the end of the twenty-fifth century, depicting the rise and fall of the Information Age. It is the history of what is yet to be: a world in which all that has come before it is no longer relevant.

Its story dates back to Volgograd, Russia in 2004, when the city was devastated by a nuclear bomb, which the author cites as the beginning of the end of the Information Age. Technology could not properly convey the horror and magnitude of the disaster; "for the first time, the airwaves of the world had been struck dumb". The book goes on to reveal the impact of a culture that cannot be contained, a society struggling to reinvent itself in the shadow of madness and longing: instead of saving the world, the "gluttony of data" leaves nothing but silence in its wake.

At once an imaginary assessment of the past and a cautionary tale from the future, Silence Descends will transfix and transport you.