THE CYCLE OF SALT is a near future novel - neither dystopian nor utopian - about what happens to humanity when urban planning goes haywire.
In SALT, the Earth's surviving population has moved to man-made islands. The government implements mandatory Taste Removal so the citizens will readily ingest their daily level of the foul but profitable and easy-to-make protein Scrape. Trouble is, the loss of taste causes 67% of the population to fall into one form of depression or another—including turning to Burn, a hardcore drug that mimics taste by burning, like hot peppers. An epidemic of junkie Burners breaks out.
Behind the scenes, Salax decides to save future generations from the scourge of addiction. To do so, Salax begins breeding children from adult Burn addicts who survive traumatic 'Rock Bottoms' terrifying enough to alter their epigenetic information—the genetic information that we can change during our lifetimes. These children will inherit genetic material making the notion of addiction as frightening to them as poisonous spiders. Only Global Governance finds out...
At its core, SALT explores the tension between measuring the needs of the individual against the needs of the group. It is the first in a series of three (and probably more)...
In SALT, the Earth's surviving population has moved to man-made islands. The government implements mandatory Taste Removal so the citizens will readily ingest their daily level of the foul but profitable and easy-to-make protein Scrape. Trouble is, the loss of taste causes 67% of the population to fall into one form of depression or another—including turning to Burn, a hardcore drug that mimics taste by burning, like hot peppers. An epidemic of junkie Burners breaks out.
Behind the scenes, Salax decides to save future generations from the scourge of addiction. To do so, Salax begins breeding children from adult Burn addicts who survive traumatic 'Rock Bottoms' terrifying enough to alter their epigenetic information—the genetic information that we can change during our lifetimes. These children will inherit genetic material making the notion of addiction as frightening to them as poisonous spiders. Only Global Governance finds out...
At its core, SALT explores the tension between measuring the needs of the individual against the needs of the group. It is the first in a series of three (and probably more)...