Publisher's Synopsis
Sawyer Adams does not fit in a world of ungendered equals and even dares to question the realities of an egalitarian society unable to provide the one thing that a boy on the cusp of puberty needs most: the love of his own mother.
It's 2084 and the Western Confederation has equalized the sexes from womb to war. Hormone treatments at the onset of puberty complete what socialization and education have begun and suppression of dissent disposes of those few malcontents and malingerers unable (or unwilling) to find their happiness in the new order.
The traditional family has been replaced by Third World surrogates who carry the children of the Confederation and state Guardians who administer the artificial intelligence that ensures a similar education and upbring for every child through projected teachers held in common. Remote Fathers govern every household through a projected Electronic Mother who provides each child with a similar home and who remains above the decay and frailty of human life. That is, computer technology and biological manipulation have transcended and perfected nature so that every child truly grow up with equal opportunity and equal results.
Only a few hold out. The Aristos-a secret society dedicated to blood ties at the expense of egalitarian ideals-challenge the egalitarian state from within even as the Heavenly Socialist Empire of the Two Chinas challenges it from without. More unsettling to Sawyer is his discovery that he was conceived not as he had been told and that he might even have a natural mother composed of flesh and blood rather than electrons and algorithms.
