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SRP: $14.99 USA / $19.99 CAN / £9.99
Trim: 5 1/4 x 8
ISBN: 978-1-4215-3643-9
In the future, Utopia has finally been achieved thanks to medical nanotechnology and a powerful ethic of social welfare and mutual consideration. This perfect world isn't that perfect though, and three young girls stand up to totalitarian kindness and super-medicine by attempting suicide via starvation. It doesn't work, but one of the girls—Tuan Kirie—grows up to be a member of the World Health Organization. As a crisis threatens the harmony of the new world, Tuan rediscovers another member of her suicide pact, and together they must help save the planet...from itself.
Keikaku (Project) Itoh was born in Tokyo in 1974. He graduated from Musashino Art University. In 2007, he debuted with Gyakusatsu Kikan (Genocidal Organs) and took first prize in the "Best SF of 2007" in SF Magazine. He is also the author of Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriots, a Japanese-language novel based on the popular video game series. After a long battle with cancer, Itoh passed away in March 2009. Itoh wrote Harmony while in the hospital receiving treatment for the disease.
“We will begin playback now,” Edison Carter said. The screen went black.
<log:media=Network24:id=225-78495hu6ryti5h23j-09>
“I’m not sure when they’ll play this, so let me wish you a good morning, a good day, and a good evening.”
</log>
It was a female voice, heavily modulated.
There was no picture. Only the words VOICE ONLY in the middle of the screen.
I closed my eyes. Maybe that way I could hear a kernel of the real person—which could very well have been Miach Mihie. Besides, if there were no picture, what was the point of looking at it?
<log:media=Network24:id=225-78495hu6r-yti5h23j-09>
A lot of people have died.
A lot of people ended their own lives all at the same time.
I’m sure it was shocking.
I’m sure you’re frightened at the possibility of seeing someone die before your eyes.
We did this.
Our methods are, at present, a secret.
However, the framework for the method is already inside you, inside each of your brains.
It’s too late to take it out now.
You are all our hostages.
Harmony reviews or, we meant to do that!
Here’s a very brief review of Harmony’s ebook edition.
One shouldn’t really “answer” reviews, but in this case I’ll make an exception only to avoid further confusion—in Harmony the story is told partially through HTML (or rather, futuristic emotional-textual markup language or ETML) thanks to the technology in the narrator’s brain. So if you see a page full of HTML in the book, just read it and you’ll see what I mean. Our online excerpt has a sample of the sort of thing you might see. It’s an honest mistake; our ebook production staff started flagging all the HTML when they first started creating the ebook version. I suppose that’s the risk one takes when one tries to be a little avant-garde.
In better news, The Manga Critic has also reviewed the book, writing, in part: Harmony is a solidly entertaining book, offering a judicious mixture of globe-trotting action, social commentary, and suspense to engage all but the hardest science fiction fans, and a surprise ending that neatly resolves the main plot while raising new, thought-provoking questions. Recommended. And it’s fuuuuull of HTML, so check it out!
