For Emma
A Novel
Published on 17. June 2025
432 pages
978-1-64821-143-0 (ISBN)
Description
A year after Emma Henson, a young, genius bio-tech 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 home-made bombs and to say goodbye to his life. To give himself courage in the countdown, he records daily video messages to his lost "Em." He is fueled by the horrific memories of Em's death-her body and brain devoured by the AI "infinity" system in its quest for immortality. 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.
As he grapples with constructing and testing his DIY bombs, 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, 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.
Josh has thirty days to make his home-made bombs and to say goodbye to his life. To give himself courage in the countdown, he records daily video messages to his lost "Em." He is fueled by the horrific memories of Em's death-her body and brain devoured by the AI "infinity" system in its quest for immortality. 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.
As he grapples with constructing and testing his DIY bombs, 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, 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.
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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 was the 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," and writes 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 he has 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.
