Bold as Love

P. K. Dick and Triptree Award-winning author Gwyneth Jones delivers a rock-and-roll fable set in a dystopic near-future England.

Dissolution Summer: the soon to-be former UK was desperate. The world was in the grip of a fearsome economic depression. The anti-globalization movement threatenedstability throughout Europe, supported by rioting youth, bitterly disaffected voters, and encroaching environmental doom.

The Home Secretary decided to recruit a Countercultural Think Tank: pop stars would make the government look too cool to be overthrown. His girlfriend, club promoter and music biz socialite Allie Marlowe, filled his shopping cart for him with such indie notables as Ax Preston, the soft-spoken biracial guitar virtuoso; Aoxomoxoa (aka Sage Pender), techno-wizard king of the lads; and Fiorinda Slater, the baby punk-diva with a horrendous past.

It was just another publicity stunt for the rockers, until the shooting began. Now Slater and her friends must find a way to stay alive and overthrow the dominant social order, while the UK disintegrates under their feet. Will rock-and-roll’s revolutionary promise finally deliver, or will ethnic violence drown hippie idealism in rivers of blood? Either way, the world will never be the same.