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Books

The Book of Joan: part apocalyptic tale, part erotic poem

24 February 2018

9:00 AM

24 February 2018

9:00 AM

Does J.G. Ballard’s ‘disquieting equation’, ‘sex x technology = the future’, still hold? Not in Lidia Yuknavitch’s novel, which imagines a society better described by the formula ‘the future = technology sex’. There is no procreation in it, and any manifestation of sexuality is a crime. Its inhabitants have left Earth for a space station, a hi-tech prison only the rich can afford, moving away from ‘a lunar landscape of jagged rocks, treeless mountains, or scorched dirt’, the scene of endless wars fought by child soldiers, where ‘technology is seized by those who kill best’.

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