Graedon, Alena
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(? - ) US author whose Dystopia The Word Exchange (2014), set in a recognizable Near Future New York, posits a coercively immersive Internet with most of the population glued to "Memes" (see Meme), and physical books almost entirely destroyed. The protagonist Anana's father, while editing the last print dictionary, disappears, leaving a pre-set SOS, the word ALICE. Tracing her father's trajectory Underground (see Lewis Carroll), Anana enters into territories close to allegory – though tellingly projected – as she uncovers a word plague: a proprietory language phage about to commit Entropy upon the spoken and printed world (see Linguistics), so that its owners can gain control over a suddenly stupid human population. [JC]
Alena Graedon
born Durham, North Carolina
works
- The Word Exchange (New York: Doubleday, 2014) [hb/nonpictorial]
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