Normal: A Novel
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
A smart, tight, provocative techno-thriller straight out of the very near future—by an iconic visionary writer
Some people call it "abyss gaze." Gaze into the abyss all day and the abyss will gaze into you.
There are two types of people who think professionally about the future: foresight strategists are civil futurists who think about geo-engineering and smart cities and ways to evade Our Coming Doom; strategic forecasters are spook futurists, who think about geopolitical upheaval and drone warfare and ways to prepare clients for Our Coming Doom. The former are paid by nonprofits and charities, the latter by global security groups and corporate think tanks.
For both types, if you're good at it, and you spend your days and nights doing it, then it's something you can't do for long. Depression sets in. Mental illness festers. And if the "abyss gaze" takes hold there's only one place to recover: Normal Head, in the wilds of Oregon, within the secure perimeter of an experimental forest.
When Adam Dearden, a foresight strategist, arrives at Normal Head, he is desperate to unplug and be immersed in sylvan silence. But then a patient goes missing from his locked bedroom, leaving nothing but a pile of insects in his wake. A staff investigation ensues; surveillance becomes total. As the mystery of the disappeared man unravels in Warren Ellis's Normal, Dearden uncovers a conspiracy that calls into question the core principles of how and why we think about the future—and the past, and the now.
The ebook edition also includes four conversations with Warren Ellis about Normal, featuring Robin Sloan, Laurie Penny, Geoff Manaugh, and Lauren Beukes. The conversations originally appeared on tor.com.
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
Warren Ellis. (2016). Normal: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Warren Ellis. 2016. Normal: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Warren Ellis, Normal: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.
MLA Citation (style guide)Warren Ellis. Normal: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 0 | 0 |
OverDrive Product Record
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/2390-1/{DE544F11-3663-4873-83F4-364AAC137397}Img100.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/2390-1/{DE544F11-3663-4873-83F4-364AAC137397}Img200.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/2390-1/DE5/44F/11/{DE544F11-3663-4873-83F4-364AAC137397}Img150.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/2390-1/DE5/44F/11/{DE544F11-3663-4873-83F4-364AAC137397}Img400.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- formats
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780374712631
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B00W1FQYHK
- name: Kindle Book
- id: ebook-kindle
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780374712631
- name: OverDrive Read
- id: ebook-overdrive
- identifiers:
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780374534974
- mediaType
- eBook
- primaryCreator
- role: Author
- name: Warren Ellis
- isOwnedByCollections
- False
- title
- Normal
- dateAdded
- 2016-11-04T02:13:11.17Z
- contentDetails
- href: https://link.overdrive.com?websiteID=141&titleID=2185366
- type: text/html
- account:
- name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
- id: 1151
- sortTitle
- Normal A Novel
- crossRefId
- 2185366
- subtitle
- A Novel
- id
- DE544F11-3663-4873-83F4-364AAC137397
- starRating
- 3.5
OverDrive MetaData
- isPublicDomain
- False
- formats
- fileName: Normal_9780374712631_2185366
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 345282
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780374712631
- rights:
- type: Copying
- value: 0
- type: Printing
- value: 0
- type: Lending
- value: 0
- type: ReadAloud
- value: 0
- type: ExpirationRights
- value: 0
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- onSaleDate: 11/29/2016
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=de544f11-3663-4873-83f4-364aac137397&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: Normal_2185366
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B00W1FQYHK
- name: Kindle Book
- id: ebook-kindle
- onSaleDate: 11/29/2016
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=de544f11-3663-4873-83f4-364aac137397&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: Normal_9780374712631_2185366
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 345287
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780374712631
- name: OverDrive Read
- id: ebook-overdrive
- onSaleDate: 11/29/2016
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=de544f11-3663-4873-83f4-364aac137397&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- keywords
- value: Thrillers / Technological
- creators
- role: Author
- fileAs: Ellis, Warren
- bioText:
WARREN ELLIS is an author, graphic novelist, columnist, and speaker. His novel, Gun Machine, was released in January 2013, and is being developed for television by Chernin Entertainment and FOX.
Crooked Little Vein, his first novel, was described by Joss Whedon as "Funny, inventive, and blithely appalling . . . Dante on paint fumes."
His graphic novel RED was made into a successful film starring Bruce Willis and Helen Mirren. His other graphic novels, including Transmetropolitan, Planetary, Ministry of Space, Global Frequency, Gravel, and Freakangels, have won multiple awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Prize from the Eagle Awards and the NUIG Lit & Deb's President's Medal in recognition of support for free speech.
He lives mostly in Britain. - name: Warren Ellis
- imprint
- FSG Originals
- publishDate
- 2016-11-29T00:00:00-05:00
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- Normal
- fullDescription
A smart, tight, provocative techno-thriller straight out of the very near future—by an iconic visionary writer
Some people call it "abyss gaze." Gaze into the abyss all day and the abyss will gaze into you.
There are two types of people who think professionally about the future: foresight strategists are civil futurists who think about geo-engineering and smart cities and ways to evade Our Coming Doom; strategic forecasters are spook futurists, who think about geopolitical upheaval and drone warfare and ways to prepare clients for Our Coming Doom. The former are paid by nonprofits and charities, the latter by global security groups and corporate think tanks.
For both types, if you're good at it, and you spend your days and nights doing it, then it's something you can't do for long. Depression sets in. Mental illness festers. And if the "abyss gaze" takes hold there's only one place to recover: Normal Head, in the wilds of Oregon, within the secure perimeter of an experimental forest.
When Adam Dearden, a foresight strategist, arrives at Normal Head, he is desperate to unplug and be immersed in sylvan silence. But then a patient goes missing from his locked bedroom, leaving nothing but a pile of insects in his wake. A staff investigation ensues; surveillance becomes total. As the mystery of the disappeared man unravels in Warren Ellis's Normal, Dearden uncovers a conspiracy that calls into question the core principles of how and why we think about the future—and the past, and the now.
The ebook edition also includes four conversations with Warren Ellis about Normal, featuring Robin Sloan, Laurie Penny, Geoff Manaugh, and Lauren Beukes. The conversations originally appeared on tor.com.- reviews
- premium: False
- source: Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review
- content:
"A seriously good writer with a seriously wicked imagination"
- premium: False
- source: Lauren Beukes, author of Broken Monsters
- content: "Warren Ellis is a twisted genius."
- premium: False
- source: Sir Patrick Stewart
- content: "A beacon of brilliant irony and sardonic satire."
- premium: False
- source: Publishers Weekly
- content: "Deliciously perverse."
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
September 5, 2016
Adam Dearden, the hero of this fascinating near-future thriller from Ellis (Gun Machine), is one of the people monitoring an intricate worldwide
surveillance system as part of an effort to save the world from a looming cataclysm that could bring financial ruin. When Adam suffers a breakdown while attending a conference in Rotterdam, he’s taken to Normal Head, an asylum in Oregon. The next morning, awakened by loud banging, he leaves his room and sees orderlies in an uproar. Another inmate, Mr. Mansfield, is missing from his room, his bed covered with a couple hundred pounds of bugs. There’s no evidence on the surveillance tapes of Mr. Mansfield leaving or being taken from his room, which was locked with its windows sealed. The institute is put into lockdown with all Internet connections severed. Though all inmates and staff are suspects, Adam, as the new arrival, is the primary one. Readers will root for Adam as he struggles to discover what is actually going on in Normal, who is to be trusted, and what happened to Mansfield.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
September 15, 2016
After a futurist has a nervous breakdown in Rotterdam, he's taken to a secret hospital in rural Oregon that may not be what it seems on the surface.This is a fantastic digital-first novella by multimedium writer Ellis (Gun Machine, 2013, etc.) that will also be released in print. It follows up on Ellis' previous digital FSG Original, Dead Pig Collector (2013). This book may be the perfect way to sample Ellis, drawing on his fascination with futurists and the threats imposed by ever faster technology and offering a story that employs his profane poetry to a degree that may inspire cackles from fans. The book's protagonist is Adam Dearden, a brilliant man whose mind came apart following a confrontation in Namibia. He's been secreted away to the "Normal Head Research Station," a recovery facility for those like him. "He was a futurist," Ellis writes. "They were all futurists. Everyone here gazed into the abyss for a living. Do it long enough, and the abyss would gaze back into you." They're a divided bunch: on one side, foresight strategists who work for charities, nonprofits, and universities (glass half full). On the other, strategic forecasters, the spooks who think all the water has dried up and the glass is shattered. Some patients yearn to go to "staging," a promise of a sort of halfway house to transition the mad geniuses back into society. After one of his fellow patients disappears under a mass of writhing black insects, the inmates are warned that government investigators are coming to get to the bottom of things. Adam must form a ragtag alliance with his fellow prisoners, who include an urbanist with a little cannibalism challenge, a mad economist, and other allies who gazed too long into the abyss. Ellis even manages to bring his damaged hero to an epiphany, although it's one that will scare the living hell out of anybody who truly ponders what the world is becoming. A crackling, funny, and frightening horror story from a unique voice in genre lit.COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
- popularity
- 252
- links
- self:
- href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/de544f11-3663-4873-83f4-364aac137397/metadata
- type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
- self:
- id
- de544f11-3663-4873-83f4-364aac137397
- starRating
- 3.6
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/2390-1/{DE544F11-3663-4873-83F4-364AAC137397}Img100.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/2390-1/{DE544F11-3663-4873-83F4-364AAC137397}Img200.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/2390-1/DE5/44F/11/{DE544F11-3663-4873-83F4-364AAC137397}Img150.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/2390-1/DE5/44F/11/{DE544F11-3663-4873-83F4-364AAC137397}Img400.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- isPublicPerformanceAllowed
- False
- languages
- code: en
- name: English
- subjects
- value: Fiction
- value: Literature
- value: Thriller
- publishDateText
- 11/29/2016
- mediaType
- eBook
- shortDescription
A smart, tight, provocative techno-thriller straight out of the very near future—by an iconic visionary writer
Some people call it "abyss gaze." Gaze into the abyss all day and the abyss will gaze into you.
There are two types of people who think professionally about the future: foresight strategists are civil futurists who think about geo-engineering and smart cities and ways to evade Our Coming Doom; strategic forecasters are spook futurists, who think about geopolitical upheaval and drone warfare and ways to prepare clients for Our Coming Doom. The former are paid by nonprofits and charities, the latter by global security groups and corporate think tanks.
For both types, if you're good at it, and you spend your days and nights doing it, then it's something you can't do for long. Depression sets in. Mental illness festers. And if the "abyss gaze" takes hold there's only one place to recover: Normal Head, in the wilds of Oregon, within the...- sortTitle
- Normal A Novel
- crossRefId
- 2185366
- subtitle
- A Novel
- publisher
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
