Contraband

Freedom knows no boundaries... Joe ‘Skid’ Marak, aka the Pilot, is a compulsive smuggler. For profit, adventure and the sheer hell of it – it’s more a way of life than a way of making a living. His home is the abandoned spire of Manhattan’s TransCom Building. His friends are outcasts from a city fallen into decay and draconian bureaucracy. And his days are numbered. For it seems the freetraders of the world are disappearing, victims of a mysterious force known only as ‘Bokon Taylay’. On his ECM-pak – a laptop mishmash of scramblers, sensors and sat-nav systems – the Pilot watches as his comrades vanish from the screen. His only clue is a smuggled message instructing him to track down a man called Hawkley: reputed author of the Smuggler’s Bible, the only person who can crack the Taylay code – a man who may not even exist. As the Feds close in and the Wildnets shut down, the Pilot and an oddball bunch of companions embark on a desperate quest to save the last free trade on earth. Together they will travel a darkening world ripped by plague and repression, smuggling the only contraband worth carrying . . . human freedom. Praise for George Foy: ‘This is fun with a point, SF à la P. J. O’Rourke – humour covering anger, dismay transmuted into sharp-tongued satire’ LOCUS Critical acclaim for The Shift: ‘Fresh and powerfully imagined . . . One of the best cyberspace vehicles since Gibson’s Neuromancer and a deserving candidate for every major SF award’ – Booklist ‘An engaging cross-genre mystery . . . This is what both SF and the hard-boiled mystery were born to do, and Foy has done it well’ – Locus ‘I can’t remember the last time a novel had me flicking forward several pages to check that a character was still alive, or punching the air in delight as the hero twists his way out of danger . . . The Shift is close enough to real life to make you shiver . . .’ SFX