Hyperplastic

“The world is running faster and leaving you behind.”

Ezra Safdie, a brilliant but disillusioned plastics engineer, tries not to think about it. PlasTech's uterine private island makes it all too easy. The cucumber-infused air and Utopian amenities are enough to keep him mindlessly content, or at least distracted. That is, until he meets Mia, an enigmatic woman who claims to know the truth about real human connection. By the time Ezra realizes he needs what Mia has, it is too late: Mia has vanished, across the water, into the churning megacity of Vanzhou.

All hope is lost until Ezra receives a cryptic invitation from Mia to Vanzhou’s most exclusive nightclub, Sangria-La. Armed with her one line email, Ezra exits his comfort zone. Soon, he finds himself entangled with Cynthia, a bubbly internet celebrity who revels in the pop culture Ezra detests. Despite her effervescence, Cynthia too longs for something that simulation cannot assuage. She too has received an email. It seems that Mia has brought her and Ezra together for a reason.

Ezra and Cynthia trace the trail that Mia’s left behind, from the gustatory gauntlet of the MeokBang Hotel, where every meal is a spectacle, to the uncanny depths of the Zipporah Walled City, where body modification is pushed to its nightmarish limit. Articulated buildings swing and lock, reconfiguring the skyline. Screens haemorrhage memes onto sunlight-deprived plazas. With the help of a monstrous rat man, a paranoid artist, and a livestream-addicted gig worker, Ezra and Cynthia unknot a conspiracy that threatens to redefine the human condition.

And they recognize Mia’s handiwork.

Ezra and Cynthia must confront the possibility that their identities and desires are being shaped by machinations beyond imagination. Will they see through the city's roiling surface to the undercurrent of meaning vibrating within, or will they be swept away in its pummeling deluge?

HYPERPLASTIC is an upmarket sci-fi novel complete at 115,000 words. It is a mind-bending, darkly comedic exploration of the human quest for identity and connection under technocapitalism. In HYPERPLASTIC, the speculative wonder of Ted Chiang's EXHALATION: STORIES meets the ad-ridden hyperreality of Netflix's MANIAC.

Thank you for your consideration,

Adam Bignell