The Word Exhange by Alena Graedon:
In a near-future world where the "death of print" has become a near reality, Anana Johnson, an employee at the North American Dictionary of the English Language (NADEL) working on the last print version of the dictionary, searches for her missing father. As Anana penetrates the mystery of her father’s disappearance and a pandemic of decaying language called “word flu” spreads, The Word Exchange becomes a cautionary tale that is at once a technological thriller and a meditation on the high cultural costs of digital technology.
In the coming centuries the world's population has exploded. The earth is crowded with cities, animals are nearly all extinct, and drought is so widespread that water is rationed. There are no maps, no borders, no numbered years, and no freedom, except for an elite few. Orphan Nadia dreams of a green vacation spot called Lighthouse Island. When an opportunity for escape arises, Nadia embarks on a dangerous and sometimes comic adventure. Along the way she meets James Orotov, a mapmaker and demolition expert. Together, they evade arrest and head north toward the wild beauty that lies beyond the megapolis—Lighthouse Island.
The world Cal and Frida have always known is gone, and they've left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them living in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable in the face of hardship and isolation. The tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's pregnant. Terrified of the unknown and unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust.
Living in exile after failing in his job as an investigator of religious groups and supernatural claims, Justin March, a man from a near-future world decimated by religious extremists, is invited to join an elite branch of the military by genetically enhanced soldier Mae, with whom he confronts formidable enemies to solve a string of ritual murders. As their investigation races forward, unknown enemies and powers greater than they can imagine are gathering in the shadows, ready to reclaim the world in which humans are merely game pieces on their board. (This is the first of a projected New Adult series Age of X.)
The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo. A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ "A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.
A decade has passed since the city of Pittsburgh was reduced to ash. While the rest of the world has moved on, survivor John Dominic Blaxton has not, reliving his lost life by immersing in the Archive's fully interactive digital reconstruction of Pittsburgh, accessible to anyone who wants to visit the places and people they remember. Dominic investigates deaths recorded in the Archive to help close cold cases, but when he discovers glitches in the code for a crime scene he stumbles into a web of deceit taking him from the darkest corners of the Archive to the ruins of the city itself, and into the heart of a nightmare more horrific than anything he could have imagined.
For more dystopia related recommendations, click on the dystopian tag in the tag list under this post and speak with a librarian at the reference desk.
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