News From The Squares News

Robert Llewellyn's latest novel on the way.

30 August, 2013

Last year, Robert Llewellyn released the first in a new series of novels in which he sought to examine human society through the prism of science fiction and alternate realities. News from Gardenia was funded via a new method of crowdfunding publishing, courtesy of the website Unbound, on which potential readers could pre-order the book for a range of special incentives.

Since then, Robert has been hard at work on the sequel - and having successfully reached its own funding target, News From The Squares is now set for publication next month. Here's Robert himself on the book's premise:

In my last book, News from Gardenia, Gavin Meckler slips through a split in time and arrives two hundred years into the future. He discovers a world much changed from our own, a world with no money, no laws, armies or wars, no recognizable traditions or family structures and where nothing is burned to make anything else. At the end of the book he tries to return home to his own time, but something is amiss.

In News from the Squares, Gavin soon understands that he has travelled sideways through time to another possible future, as unlike Gardenia as our own era. Much of the environment is recognizable to Gavin, people still live in buildings, work, eat, sleep, get married, some have children, they vote in elections, use money and usually die of old age. The big difference is who administrates of this vast urban landscape. The governing bodies, security services, medical establishments, companies, legal profession and scientists are all women.

Gavin has never experienced living in a world where women make virtually every decision affecting his life, where the men are more emotionally connected than he knew possible and where, for the first time in his life, he starts to understand that he's an emotional being himself.

If women work and run the city while men look after the home and children, both out of choice rather than coercion, what would happen? How would children develop? Would society be more gentle, would sustainable systems be allowed to develop, would the profit motive be at the bottom of the contract rather than above the title?

As the book is already funded, it's no longer possible to get the pre-order incentives such as having your name printed in the first edition - but you can still order the first edition hardback from Unbound. The book will also be available from Amazon on the 26th of September, alongside eBook and Audiobook editions.

The same date will also see the launch of a new paperback edition of News From Gardenia - with a new cover design to match the style of Squares - which can also already be bought in Kindle and Audiobook forms.

Finally, Robert will also be doing a number of bookstore signing/reading events and convention appearances in the coming months to promote the book. More details on these events can be found on his blog, but a selection include: