2025/136: Summerland — Hannu Rajaniemi

2025/136: Summerland — Hannu Rajaniemi

Do you remember Doctor Cummings who treated you when you had measles? Well, soon there will be no doctors. If you get sick, you will just pass over.’
‘If you have a Ticket,’ Peter said.
‘That’s right. And soon, having a Ticket will be the only thing anyone cares about. Not studying, not working, not doing the right thing. Nothing real.’ [p. 125]

The setting is an alternate Great Britain in the late 1930s. The Nazis never came to power, because Germany suffered a crushing defeat in WW1 -- partly as a result of the new ectotechnology. '...the ectotanks were created to break the deadlock of the trenches in the Great War: weapons that grew more powerful the more they killed". In the late 19th century, radio contact was made with the dead: now, half a century later, ectophones and ectomail connect the great metropolis of Summerland to the world of the living. In Summerland, Victoria reigns; in Summerland, the Presence watches every Soviet citizen. Anyone in Britain can, in theory, acquire a Ticket to prevent their dead spirit from Fading before it reaches Summerland. Anyone in the USSR knows that when they die, they will join the Presence.

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