Runtime
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3.9 • 12 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
2016 Nebula Award finalist for Best Novella
The Minerva Sierra Challenge is a grueling spectacle, the cyborg's Tour de France. Rich thrill-seekers with corporate sponsorships, extensive support teams, and top-of-the-line exoskeletal and internal augmentations pit themselves against the elements in a day-long race across the Sierra Nevada.
Marmeg Guinto doesn’t have funding, and she doesn’t have support. She cobbled her gear together from parts she found in rich people’s garbage and spent the money her mother wanted her to use for nursing school to enter the race. But the Minerva Challenge is the only chance she has at a better life for herself and her younger brothers, and she’s ready to risk it all.
Runtime is S. B. Divya's exciting science fiction debut.
PRAISE FOR RUNTIME
“A thrilling romp through a gleaming cybernetic future that's neither dystopia nor utopia, but embedded in our reality— I wish more science fiction were as exciting and relevant as Runtime.” — Ken Liu, Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award winner and author of The Grace of Kings
"S. B. Divya is a new light on the science fiction scene, a writer with the promise and talent to become one of our genre's stars. Have a read; she's a wonderful storyteller." — Catherine Asaro, Nebula Award winning author.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this fast-paced thriller set in a futuristic California, a cybernetically augmented young woman participates in a grueling outdoor competition in order to achieve financial freedom and follow her dreams. For Mary Margaret "Marmeg" Guinto, winning the Minerva Sierra Challenge is the only way she can afford to defy her old-fashioned mother's wishes and get the education she wants, rather than ending up working in a nursing home. As Marmeg battles the unforgiving elements, mountainous terrain, and unexpected sabotage, a chance encounter in the wilderness forces her to make several moral choices that could grant her the victory, but at a high cost. Debut author Divya packs a lot into this novella, leaving the reader wanting more from this complicated, provocative world; the author sets up many interesting social, gender, and technological issues but doesn't have room to really get into them. The whole idea of becoming "moot" an androgynous state achieved through elective surgery, to which Marmeg aspires could stand much more exploration, as could the way in which American citizens must be licensed to receive social services. There's enough here to justify a much longer story; in its current form, it doesn't quite go far enough.
