SF Masterwork of the Week: Mockingbird

Our current Masterwork of the week is a haunting dystopian vision from the acclaimed author of novels as diverse as The Hustler and The Man Who Fell to Earth: Walter Tevis.

The future is a grim place in which the declining human population wanders, drugged and lulled by electronic bliss. It’s a world without art, reading and children, a world where people would rather burn themselves alive than endure. Even Spofforth, the most perfect machine ever created, cannot bear it and seeks only that which he cannot have – to cease to be. But there is hope for the future in the passion and joy that a man and woman discover in love and in books, hope even for Spofforth. A haunting novel, reverberating with anguish but also celebrating love and the magic of a dream.

Mockingbird is available as an SF Masterworks paperback and you can read about Walter Tevis in his entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.