2101 A Spacetime Odyssey

In 2040, NASA despatches a space mission to explore an Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star, returning in 2101 to a very different world from the one it left. Crewed by a transman and a transwoman who has had a womb transplant, the birth of identical twins genetically engineered to have opposite sex is a definitive test of the nature/nurture issue. However, the death of their transman mother during their birth forces the remaining crew member and the onboard chatbot to become the twins' parents and bring them up as best they can, forcing them to change their names, genders, and pronouns in ways never foreseen by NASA... Dialogues between the chatbot, the remaining crew member and the twins provide the means for the author to introduce readers to a totally new way of thinking about human nature, based on the latest advances in genetics, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology.

Christopher Badcock is Emeritus Reader in Sociology at the London School of Economics and author of works on the imprinted brain (Crespi-Badcock) theory and diametric model of the mind and of mental illness.

A modern-day 1984. From a position of profound erudition, using the literary device of confining protagonists into a set place and span of time, the author blithely skewers the self-righteous platitudes and bleak mandated groupthink that seem all too often to inform today's culture. Beyond the book's first-degree enjoyable, often laugh-out-loud style, its underlying message is deathly serious: the choices we make have consequences, and we better do our homework as to what such may be before we mindlessly hurtle along, borne by good-sounding yet hollow slogans.

-H Chris Ransford, DEA Alumnus at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

As always, this novel demonstrates the author's splendid erudition and original ideas-two phenomena which are unfortunately not much commended in mainstream academia.

-Amar Annus, Tartu University Estonia.