Conville & Walsh Ltd
Conville & Walsh Ltd
Conville & Walsh Ltd
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GEMX<br />
Nicky Singer<br />
Praise for FEATHER BOY<br />
Winner of the Blue Peter Book Award<br />
<strong>Conville</strong> & <strong>Walsh</strong> <strong>Ltd</strong><br />
Fiction<br />
Each copy should come with a torch for a spellbinding midnight conclusion<br />
– DAILY TELEGRAPH<br />
BAFTA Award 2004 Best Children’s Drama – television series<br />
Set in a future where the city of Polis is divided into the genetic elite (the Enhanced) and those less<br />
fortunate (the Naturals or the Dreggies, depending on your point of view), GEMX tells the story of two<br />
teenage boys who live on opposites sides of the tracks. Maxo Strang is a GemX (the latest version of<br />
the Enhanced). He lives a protected life of perfection and food pills, ambi-suits and virtual date<br />
palaces. Stretch is an angry young man from a Dreggie estate. He owns nothing, not even a proper<br />
name. But what’s really gnawing at him is the loss of his father who went ‘missing’ after responding to<br />
the call for ‘clean genes’ to support the city’s Clodrone programme.<br />
Between the two boys is Gala, a young girl from the estates whose mother is dying of a disease that<br />
those with genetic protection no longer die from – so there are few available drugs, and what drugs<br />
there are, are prohibitively expensive. Gala has no money.<br />
One day Maxo Strang sees something strange on his perfectly formed GemX face – a sort of line at<br />
the edge of his right eye. The only place he’s seen something so horrible before is on old Naturals<br />
(the Enhanced have a life expectancy of 130 years) – and he thinks these cracks are called ‘wrinkles’.<br />
What can be happening to him? It soon becomes clear it’s not just Maxo’s problem: MediAlert has<br />
logged 11,000 Web hits from concerned GemXs. And it’s not just physical degradation the GemXs are<br />
suffering: something is also beginning to happen to their minds, something that makes Enhanced<br />
Maxo fall helplessly in love with a Dreggie face that he sees on a securi-screen. The face is Gala’s…<br />
At one level GEMX is a fast-paced futuristic adventure story. What is really happening to Maxo? Will<br />
Gala be able to save her mother? Can Stretch find his father? Who is going to fall in love with whom?<br />
At another level it’s about whether our technological capabilities are about to outstrip our morality and<br />
cause an unbridgeable gulf between Haves and Have-Nots – and what really makes us human.<br />
Nicky Singer has published four adult novels, two works of non-fiction and two highly acclaimed<br />
children’s novels, FEATHER BOY and DOLL. She lives in Sussex with her husband and three children.<br />
UK Publisher Oxford University Press<br />
US Publisher Holiday House<br />
UK Publication 5 October 2006<br />
Status Manuscript<br />
Length 70,000 words<br />
Agent CBC<br />
All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, US (Holiday House)<br />
World English rights: Oxford University Press<br />
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