For Emma
A Novel
Published on 17. June 2025
Book
Hardback
360 pages
978-1-64821-142-3 (ISBN)
Description
"This book really did seem to be about the meaning of life and just so valuable but also completely terrifying...everybody, you must read For Emma"-Georgina Godwin, Monocle Radio: Meet the Writers
"Ewan Morrison's depiction of AI and biotech's future could be a dystopian fiction classic."-Buzz Magazine
How Far Would You Go to Save Your Child from the Machines?
A year after Emma Henson,a young, genius biotech scientist, dies in a covert AI brain-chip experiment, her father, Josh, has nothing left to live for and vows to get revenge on the Silicon Valley CEO responsible.Josh has thirty days to make his homemade bombs and to say goodbye to life. To give himself courage in the countdown, he records daily video messages to his lost "Em." Memories flood him as he searches for the moments in Emma's short life where he could have been a better father and saved her.
Fueled by the horrific memories of Em's death-her body and brain devoured by the AI "infinity" system-he grapples with constructing and testing his DIY bombs as his thirty days start to run out, and Emma's voice returns to him, speaking with him as he sets to complete his mission. He worries that he's gone insane-he doubts if he can see the violent act through-but Emma's voice insists he continue on his path toward murder and mayhem. Josh tries to resist his daughter's voice as it attempts to take full control of his body. But is it even her? Or is it a ghost, a psychotic delusion, or the AI system that is controlling him?
Inspired by the real-life Brain Chip Implant experiments (Musk/Neuralink) and the technogothic tradition (Frankenstein, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Island of Dr. Moreau), For Emma is a tale of possession by a new force unleashed by science. It is a warning for the future but also an intimate, heart-breaking study of the love between a father and daughter and of the madness that grief can drive us to.
"Ewan Morrison's depiction of AI and biotech's future could be a dystopian fiction classic."-Buzz Magazine
How Far Would You Go to Save Your Child from the Machines?
A year after Emma Henson,a young, genius biotech scientist, dies in a covert AI brain-chip experiment, her father, Josh, has nothing left to live for and vows to get revenge on the Silicon Valley CEO responsible.Josh has thirty days to make his homemade bombs and to say goodbye to life. To give himself courage in the countdown, he records daily video messages to his lost "Em." Memories flood him as he searches for the moments in Emma's short life where he could have been a better father and saved her.
Fueled by the horrific memories of Em's death-her body and brain devoured by the AI "infinity" system-he grapples with constructing and testing his DIY bombs as his thirty days start to run out, and Emma's voice returns to him, speaking with him as he sets to complete his mission. He worries that he's gone insane-he doubts if he can see the violent act through-but Emma's voice insists he continue on his path toward murder and mayhem. Josh tries to resist his daughter's voice as it attempts to take full control of his body. But is it even her? Or is it a ghost, a psychotic delusion, or the AI system that is controlling him?
Inspired by the real-life Brain Chip Implant experiments (Musk/Neuralink) and the technogothic tradition (Frankenstein, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Island of Dr. Moreau), For Emma is a tale of possession by a new force unleashed by science. It is a warning for the future but also an intimate, heart-breaking study of the love between a father and daughter and of the madness that grief can drive us to.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Skyhorse Publishing
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 232 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 35 mm
Weight
638 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-64821-142-3 (9781648211423)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Ewan Morrison has been described as the "most fluent and intelligent Scottish writer of his generation" by Booker Prize judge Stuart Kelly.Morrison is an award winning novelist and screenwriter and an essayist.His writing has been praised by renowned authors Lionel Shriver, Ian Rankin, Fay Weldon, Douglas Coupland, James Frey, Irvine Welsh, James Robertson, Luke Rhinehart, and Hanif Kureishi among others. Ewan's eighth book, the 'darkly comic thriller, How to Survive Everything was published by Contraband in the UK in 2021, and in the US with Harper Perennial in 2022. Ewan's novel, NINA X,published by Fleet an imprint of Little Brown, won Scotland's most prestigious literary prize-the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year-in 2019, and his novel, Close Your Eyes wasthe winner of the Scottish Book of the Year (SMIT) Fiction Prize in 2013. He is also the winner of the Not the Booker Prize in 2012 for Tales from the Mall (2012) which has been named one of the top 50 Scottish Books of the last 50 years (Scottish Book Trust).Morrison blogs regularly for Psychology Today as"WORD-LESS: A novelist ponders emotional health," andwrites regular articles and essays for AREO Magazine on Utopianism, Technology, and Free Speech. Between 2011 & 2013 Morrison was a regular contributor to The Guardian, and hehas contributed articles to The Times, The Telegraph, The Independent, The Daily Mail, L'Express, La Republicca, Quillette, Areo, Scotland on Sunday, The Scotsman, The Erotic Review, GQ, Esquire, Arena, Mute, Frieze, The Psychologist and Psychology Today. Ewan can be found on X at @mrewanmorrison.