Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Melissa Ferguson, Transit Lounge, $29.99.
It’s a scary allegory of a world that’s incomplete, catering to the haves and have-nots. The imagination is opulent. Nevertheless the story is exciting as it elaborates on the fight for survival and technological control and a paean (praise of triumph) plaudit for female capability and lasting friendship.
The questions are strong: in a world where inhabitants live in a world of fiction with an austere and frantic imaginary society. The Shining Wall questions the nature of humankind and empathy in a world that’s bereft of both.
The blurb of The Shining Wall tells us that author Melissa Ferguson is ‘a cancer-fighting scientist who loves to explore scientific possibilities through fiction’. In her debut novel about the dystopian society of a ruined world, she certainly combines her scientific knowledge with her creative imagination to produce a world both frightening and apocalyptic.
The Geelong-based author is chatting about the science of cloning, which has been used in the dystopian world of her debut novel. The science-fiction drama looks to a future age, in which advanced technology has allowed wealthy humans to build lives of privilege behind a shining wall, lives extended by many years and augmented with artificial intelligence and scientific discoveries. Implanted chips do everything from manage your funds via a credit system to diagnose and treat illness. Robot technology provides security.
In the midst of this dramatic and terrifying new world order, we meet our main characters. Alida, 17, and her sister Graycie, 5, are orphaned and left to fend for themselves in a society that has no place for weakness.
Through these pages, Alida is seen to have the necessary survival skills, with wit and humour, along with love and devotion for her sister and loyalty to her friends.
This speculative novel reveals that Ferguson loves to explore scientific possibilities through fiction.
