The Twisted Road is a murder mystery and a political thriller. Its protagonist, Mab Winter, is an ex-cop and a refugee from Earth, hiding out on battered and anarchic Möbius Station while she battles her own demons. Reluctantly, however, she gets dragged back into her old life…
The book also a story about truth – and how we know what’s true.
The manipulation of the objective truth by bad actors – generally politicians with an ulterior motive – is a very familiar problem to us early in the 21st century. The Internet has allowed communication to proliferate far beyond anything our ancestors would have been able to imagine. We have so much information at our fingertips that it borders on the miraculous.
Our problem is, it’s hard to know what’s true and what isn’t. It’s a huge issue that we’ve barely even considered addressing. At the time of The Twisted Road, these problems have largely been overcome: “canonical” AIs guarantee that information is accurate – or at least accurate to what is believed to be true. Data is cryptopgraphically signed when it is an accurate representation of reality.
There are, inevitably, loopholes, and there are people who go to great lengths to get round the restrictions in order to portray their own (twisted) version of reality. The struggle between truth and illusion, it’s fair to say, plays a central role in the action and background of the book.
Find out more about the book on my site or on the Elsewhen Press site.
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