RENAISSANCE 2.0 Book 1 - Sample Chapters

Jacket Cover

"Think Rabelais for the twenty-first century and you'll be coming close to the dark, violent humour which drives this amazing book. This is narrative which just goes to prove that independently published fiction often dares to courageously push at boundaries that mainstream publishers might be wary of.

"In a fragmented global economy, the characters in the first volume of Dean C. Moore's Renaissance 2.0 go 'postal' in a range of disturbing, unexpected ways. Surviving in this off-kilter parallel world is a question of accessing mind-evolving drugs or technology. Social-adjustment, well-being and stability are very much relative concepts, and notions of gender and sexual identity have become so fluid as to have been rendered virtually irrelevant.

"Moore's characters are often obliterated from the Carnival almost as soon as they emerge: 'ensemble players' who fade in and out of view. Thrown into the middle of their stories, the reader is swept into an environment in which the only way to respond to the fall-out from an economy in meltdown is through acts of extreme violence or, in some cases through chemical mind-expansion. The human psyche is simply not strong enough to cope alone with the forces to which it is exposed. There are, however, a few characters who anchor the narrative around a series of plots which reflect the larger crisis at hand. These include Robin, a policeman attempting to come to terms with the fact that his wife has opted for a sex change in order to secure her position amongst the social elite, and Hartmann, a super-human college professor whose experimentations on his own students have devastating consequences.

"It is not, however, simply Moore's narrative experimentation which makes this such a powerful read. The pyrotechnics of his prose are reminiscent of Martin Amis, in terms of the zest which Moore extracts from his language, and dialogue which drips with black, cynical humour.

"This is writing which throws into relief the failings of our own globalised society - which takes the dynamics of twenty-first century living and pushes them to their extremes. It is a fable for our times, and I strongly recommend it." Kate Cudahy, Hal