Today I’m having very special visitors, Alea of Pop Culture Junkie and Lenore of Presenting Lenore. We will be discussing the young adult dystopian novel, Genesis by Bernard Beckett together on each of our blogs. Many thanks to Lenore for this brilliant idea.

About Genesis:

"Anax, the dedicated student historian at the center of Beckett's brutal dystopian novel, lives far in the future—the distant past events of the 21st century are taught in classrooms. The world of that era, we learn, was ravaged by plague and decay, the legacy of the Last War. Only the island Republic, situated near the bottom of the globe, remained stable and ordered, but at the cost of personal freedom. Anax, hoping her scholarly achievements will gain her entrance to the Academy, which rules her society, has extensively studied Adam Forde, a brilliant and rebellious citizen of the Republic who fought for human dignity in the midst of a regimented, sterile society. To join the Academy's ranks, Anax undergoes a test before three examiners, and as the examination progresses, it becomes clear that her interpretations of Adam's life defy conventional thought and there may be more to Adam—and the Academy—than she had imagined."

About Bernard Beckett:

Bernard Beckett has a degree in Economics, and has taught in the Wellington region for several years. He has published nine novels, and has won many awards for his fiction.

In 2006 Bernard was awarded a New Zealand Science, Mathematics and Technology Teacher Fellowship where he worked on a project examining DNA mutations. This new direction led to the publication of Genesis in 2006, which won the Young Adult Category in the 2007 NZ Post Book Awards.

In 2008 the book made publishing history when UK publisher Quercus Books offered the largest advance ever put forward for a young adult novel in New Zealand. The novel, also published in Australia, is to be released in the UK as two separate editions: adult and young adult, and is to be published – at this date – in over 20 countries.

Discussion time folks:

Sharon: Since you are "all about the details" I'd like to ask you to speculate on a few things: What type of plague do you think took over the earth? What do you think happened to the girl that Adam found? What do you think is going on in the rest of the world by the end of the novel?

Alea: Go easy on me Sharon, I'm a newbie and don't have the proper dystopian imagination yet! I'm going to go with swine flu just to be creepy. No, I just really have no idea! I would like to think the girl that Adam saved was allowed to live in peace with the community but it's much more likely she was killed. Regarding the world as a whole, I think in the beginning after the plague had it's way with the world all the different clusters that survived still had a lot in common and slowly began to develop their own technologies, beliefs, and customs etc. By the end of the book I think all the clusters left (if there are any) are very different from each other and probably wouldn't have anything in common with the other cities/communities.

Sharon: Do you it is ever a good idea for humans to create artificial intelligence? Have you ever read a book where this turns out to be a good thing for the human race? Should they scientists in Genesis have been more cautious?

Lenore: Wow. Well, popular literature and movies don’t really give me much confidence that it is a good idea, do they? In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the super computer HAL turns on the humans. In The Matrix, most humans live a virtual reality as they create energy for robots. In the Terminator series, I, Robot and Battlestar Galactica, robots revolt against their former human masters. I don’t read science fiction widely enough to be able to come up with examples of robots and humans happily living together with nothing going wrong. I guess it’s just not as exciting or memorable!

The robots in Genesis were similar to many robots you find in sci-fi in that they were created to be non-violent and follow rules that don’t allow them to hurt humans. Maybe scientists would do well to follow the example of Blade Runner and give robots an expiration date. And I would recommend building in a long, long series of fail-safes to terminate unruly robots. But even then, can you really be sure? It’s certainly a question that keeps many up at night!

Lenore: Would you rather be a laborer in a safe society based on Plato's republic - or would you prefer to take your chances in the outside world beyond the fence (after all, we don't find out what's going on out there)?

Sharon: This is such an insanely difficult question! I would love to think that I would have risk it all and made a break for the outside world, but I really can’t say for sure. There is a certain comfort that people feel living in a safe and predictable society. I don’t know that I want to break away from that sense of security. Then again, I’d also be very curious to know what is going on outside my little fenced in community. I’m honestly a bit of a wimp so I’d probably stay behind the fence and not bother to take such a huge risk.

If you you're interested in following the rest of the discussion check out Alea's post and giveaway and Lenore's discussion post on her blog.