Book Description
252 passengers and one driver on the London Underground. They all have their own personal histories, their own thoughts about themselves and their travelling neighbours. And they all have one page devoted to them. Some characters are tragic, some are inspiring, some are mad/proud/foolish/infuriating (delete where appropriate) and some are just like the person near you right now. You’ll meet Estelle who’s fallen madly in love with Saddam Hussein; James, who anaesthetises sick gorillas for a living; and Who?, a character that doesn’t know where, or what, on earth he is. It’s a seven-and-a-half minute journey between Embankment and the Elephant & Castle. It’s the journey of 253 lifetimes… This is the full text of the celebrated interactive novel that startled the Web when it first went on line. Only it can’t crash, the downloading time is quicker and you can read it on the Tube, the train, the bus,, the plane, by foot – even by car, so long as you’re not driving.
About the Author
Geoff Ryman was born in Canada, to a journalist mother and a father in science. It was through his mother that Geoff, when he was eight, had a short story published in the local paper. But it was his father who inspired Geoff with stories of lasers – it was a fascination which was to last. His father was also an artist, a talent which has been passed down to his son.
Geoff’s apprenticeship to writing was long and hard. It was not the writing that was the problem but the imagination. His family moved to Los Angeles in 1963 and perhaps influenced by this city, he wanted to become an actor. In the mid 1970s when he had moved to London he realised that he really wanted to take his writing seriously, and his first short story was sold to New Worlds Ten in 1976.
