It is 2050-a time of limited resources where all energy and water supplies are strictly controlled, each garment is recycled and every child is an eagerly-awaited prize.
​
Twenty years since Division when the Magnamater pioneered ASO – a new self-sufficient society, divided into three cohering parts, forged from the wreckage of old Britain.
​
To the west in Abovo, Maters rear all children before they graduate at eighteen to one of the fifteen provinces in Suris, where they will live and contribute until at fifty-five they are obliged to resort to Olim in the east.
​
It has taken ruthless dedication for overworked Fidelis officer Rachel Develin to achieve her elite status and uphold the principles that her office represents.
​
Her latest assignment begins with a routine interrogation but when the unaccountable death of a lifelong friend forces her investigations in a more unpredictable direction, she finds herself at the centre of a brewing storm. All her previous loyalties are irreversibly challenged as she uncovers devastating secrets that threaten the stability of ASO itself.
​
This is the story of who the faithful must become when their causes betray them.
Lindsey says...
ASO came as a surprise to me. I had not attempted any speculative fiction before this but having written the short story ‘Olim’, I realised I had the makings of an interesting and potentially bigger idea.
​
It is primarily about the unwilling but necessary separation of a mother and her child and explores how sustainable such separation could be when it so fundamentally challenges the natural order.
​
I have learned since writing ASO that the concept of retirement communities is not unique. Firhall village near Inverness in Scotland and Whitely village in Sussex are both examples of such a way of living. Sit on the beaches in Florida and witness the satisfaction of older people electively living together.
I wanted to ask whether this would be better than living in a society where one feels irrelevant and invisible.
The word here of course, is ’elective’.
