**by request**


Robert Westall - Futuretrack 5 (Greenwillow, 1983). 276 pages.

New scan. Searchable pdf (clearscan) with contents in bookmarks, accurate pagination and metadata, etc.


description:

Spectacular Robert Westall SF novel that was way ahead of its time.

A story of the near future in which Britain is divided into Zones and castes to which men and women are pitilessly allocated at the end of their schooling. Whether crazed proles in the Unnem zones, smug pampered bourgeois Ests or arrogant Techs, all are ultimately pawns of the computer that governs it all. One boy penetrates the conspiracy by which the nation is governed and has the knowhow to strike at the heart of evil.

This novel was originally published in 1983 and was runner up for the Carnegie Medal. It's a fantastic, if bleak, vision of the future ΓÇô all the more scary because many of its 'Big Brother' elements are so evident in our society today.

In the highly organized society of twenty-first-century Britain the system is not to be questioned, but Kitson, a young computer wizard, and his partner Keri are determined to find answers to some important questions.

When Kit scores full marks in his final exams, he finds he's been a bit too clever for his own good. For instead of settling into a comfortable life as an Est, he is allocated to the Techs, a small body of people who maintain the all important computers. Still, it's safer than being sent through the Wire, where no-hopers and crazy proles fight for survival. Kit's sure there must be more to life and, with his state-of-the-art motorbike, goes searching for it. That's when he meets Keri and tastes that elusive freedom for the first time. But with that freedom comes knowledge and responsibility, and a darker future than either could have imagined.


Awards: 
The Carnegie Medal Runner-up
1990 Preis der Leseratten 
ALA Best Book for Young Adults 

About the Author

Robert Westall was born October 1929, in Tynemouth, England. His first book, The Machine Gunners, was published in 1975, for which he won the Carnegie Medal. Amongst many more prizes and accolades, he won the Carnegie for the second time in 1980, with The Scarecrows. He died in 1993.