Self / Less
by AViVA
Pan Macmillan
Set in a dystopian future, seventeen year-old Teddy Veodrum lives in Metropolis City and is about to graduate from high school. She has been brought up to believe that she is one of the chosen people to live in the walled city whose Council members have banished all that plagued Earth.
Lives are very ordered in the Metropolis which has banned creativity, considering it to be an evil that led humanity to war, mass destruction, nuclear fallout and near extinction. The motto of the city is “Continue watching. Continue listening. Continue working.”
Teddy is about to be allocated a job in line with her family hierarchy. Her mother is the editor of Metropolis Magazine, the only publication in the city, and her father is an influential councillor on the governing body whose seal is an eye. “We watch because we care.”
After the job allocation, Teddy will be paired with someone to become a wife and a womb keeper. There is no love involved as that is considered to be toxic self-indulgent behaviour. It is not about whom you want to love, but who you need to love to best serve the city.
Teddy has a growing uneasiness about being saved from herself because the city has determined that she doesn’t know what is best, and she wants to know where her best friend Lisa and her grandfather have suddenly disappeared to.
Then she finds out that other worlds exist – worlds where the Metropolis rules don’t apply, but worlds that their own rules and have to fight for survival.
Lezly Herbert
You can support our work by subscribing to our Patreon
or contributing to our GoFundMe campaign.
