NICOLA MORGAN

Winner of the Scottish Arts Council Children’s Book of the Year 2005

Shortlisted for the Stockport and South Lanarkshire awards

Published by Hodder in 2004

Published in French in April 2008, as "Un Monde Sans Reves", with a gorgeous cover .... At last, one of my books appears in a language I can actually READ!

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Q: When and where is it set?

A: It’s a thriller set in the future, about 150 years ahead. It takes place in Britain, but a very different Britain from the one we know today. Rain falls when it’s programmed, everyone is safe, and nothing bad ever happens.

Q: What’s it about?

A: There are two groups of people. Most are the Citizens, who drift in a daze of contentedness, with everything provided for them by the state: their jobs are programmed from birth; the skills they need are programmed into their brains; housing is provided; their personalities are regulated by a personal cocktail of mind-altering drugs, so they are never angry, sad, mad, bad or unpleasant; any time they’re feeling a bit high or low, they take funk, a drug that levels them out again. They’re content, sleepwalking through a safe and sterile world  -  but is that really living?

Just after birth, a computer chip in their brains dulls their language abilities. Why? Because if we have the power of language, we can question, dream, persuade, create  -  we have power. The Governators believe it’s best if the Citizens are powerless and content, never knowing how different their lives can be. Stories are banned, poetry doesn’t exist, oratory and debating are impossible. Real thought is out of their reach.

But there’s another group, rebels who have escaped this programming. They are the Outsiders. They live mostly underground, in the tunnels of the old underground system. Some live in poverty in the unregulated countryside  -  no Citizens live in the countryside because it would be too full of rain, nature and animals, and they would be too far from their endless entertainment. If the Outsiders don’t interfere with the Citizens, they are tolerated. But if they are spotted by the sinister, cruel police  -  the Pols  -  they are shot. The Pols hunt them for pleasure.

Some Outsiders have a Plan. For years, they have been educating some children, in safety, planning that when they are adults they will find a way to change the system, overthrow the state and bring real life back.

Disaster strikes: a plague amongst the Outsiders in the underground tunnels. The Plan must be brought forward. But the oldest of the young people are only 16. Are they ready? Are they strong enough to overcome the system? Can they uncover the extraordinary secret that lies behind the Governators’ power? Can they overcome their own weaknesses, and what will they discover about themselves in the process?

Livia, Marcus, Tavius and Cassandra are four brilliant teenagers. But will their lives be short and pointless? Or can they write their own stories?

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Main reviews

The Independent 

"... a turbulent story of revolt where it really matters - in this case, the overturning of a tyrannous state where humans are reduced to zombies. Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World provide models for this awful society, whose all-powerful computers have come to be guided by these two stories. But four teenagers - brought up in an outcast, still-free society - decide to change things for good by invading central control and feeding in more cheerful tales as exemplars. This is Morgan’s third novel, and as before she writes with intelligence and feeling."

The Scotsman 

"Sleepwalking ... is set about 150 years from now in a world where lives and emotions are carefully controlled. There’s no poverty, no crime, no evil and everyone is safe and content. Drugs keep the Citizens happy and a microchip in their brains controls what they think. Freedom of thought, speech or action is considered revolutionary and unnecessary. Only the Outsiders, who have rejected this ultimate Nanny State, can think for themselves, but they pay a high price for their intellectual freedom. Over the years a small group of Outsider teenagers has been trained to infiltrate the Government HQ at Central Tower and overthrow the dictators. Livia, Marcus, Tavius and Cassandra have no weapons or explosives and must rely on their intelligence and adaptability to defeat the enemy. Sounds a bit like Nineteen Eighty-four? It’s meant to and Morgan plants echoes of other stories, such as Through the Looking Glass and Brave New World, throughout. This is a novel about the importance of language and individuality, and the power of ideas and stories. But you don’t need to recognise the references to enjoy the novel. It’s a fast-paced, thrilling sci-fi adventure in its own right."

 

Guardian (Education   -  Book of the Week)

"Nicola Morgan’s rich imagination means she’ll never be typecast. Her first novel, Mondays are Red, is hard to categorise as its subject is the very real, but very bizarre, condition synaesthesia. Fleshmarket is a historical thriller, and Sleepwalking casts her readers into a deeply spooky future, to a time in which people choose to live a life that is utterly controlled. There are no problems, everything runs smoothly, nothing unpredictable ever happens. The Citizens live a life of serenity. Even their language is controlled - stories are too dangerous, so the ability to tell them has been removed.

"Livia, the central character, is among a select group of Outsiders chosen to infiltrate the false harmony of the Citizens in order to liberate the truth. With her friends, she faces physical hardship and terrifying situations in order to achieve her goal on behalf of the underground community in which she has grown up. And alongside that, she gradually unravels her own difficult story, and her own uncomfortable truth.

Morgan’s clever play on names and her mining of classics of the genre helps to make this an intriguing read, as well as a thrilling one."

 

The Observer 

"Nicola Morgan’s third novel unfolds in a similarly post-apocalyptic world, sometime in the far-off future. Lightly witty, it centres on a trio of teens who belong to an underground movement of ’Outsiders’. Headed by a man named ’the Poet’, they are determined to undermine a regime whose ’Citzens’ glide through life in a permanent state of niceness, their moods modulated by a cocktail of drugs.

"If anything ripples beneath the surface of this eerie, unfeeling calm, they reach for the ’funk’, slipping into a state of inertia in which all sentences end in an aimless ’but’, a sort of post-whatever ’whatever’. As sci-fi, Sleepwalking is fairly hackneyed, and often let down by its dialogue and predictable episodes of self-harm, but its whimsical mix of ingredients  -  too many to list here  -  makes it worth indulging. And there’s a pleasing twist in the tale."

e-Claire
"Big Brother is watching and controlling. The only happiness is drugged happiness. In this futuristic and thought-provoking book, Morgan shows the horrors brought about by drug dependency and thought manipulation."

Sunday Herald

"Morgan’s latest novel, Sleepwalking, is set in the future, drawing on a wide range of literary influences from Orwell to Huxley, with a sprinkling of Stepford Wives thrown in. ....

"Critically, the Citizens have only limited language and it is this motif in Morgan’s story which is perhaps the most powerful. Her argument that language is thought, and that only through free use of language can the truth be known and understood, drives the plot in which four young Outsiders are sent to infiltrate the world of the Citizens. ... Morgan is a verbal sculptress, creating images of vivid physicality so that the world of the Outsiders and Citizens is entirely credibly drawn, even disturbingly so. The twist at the end is chilling, even on re-reading, and establishes the possibility of a sequel."

Thanks to all the teenagers who have emailed me saying how much they liked it. And those of you who didn’t like it  -  thanks for not telling me. And special thanks to the teenagers and adults who voted it the Scottish Children’s Book of the Year.

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