Are you a slave to your computer? Welded to your mobile phone? Joined at the hip to your iPod? Maybe, one day, you will be…
A thrilling sci-fi novel set in a believable - and terrifying - near future, Hybrids is the winning entry to the HarperCollins nationwide new author competition with Saga Magazine.
Johnny Online and Kestrella are hybrids - victims of "Creep", a pandemic sweeping the country which causes sufferers to merge with items of technology when over-exposed to their use. Kestrella persuades a wary Johnny to help her find her missing mother, but the sinister Gene Police have other plans for him...
Powerful, compelling, and narrated alternately by Johnny and Kes, the book questions our human dependence on technology, and our reactions in the face of nationwide panic. The reader is instantly drawn into a world which is current, but not quite; which is real, but only just; which is horribly close to our fears of what is happening and may happen in the future. It’s exciting, page-turning, vivid and unputdownable.
Hybrids was the outstanding winner of the Children's Book Writing Competition run in conjunction with Saga Magazine. A budding writer since he was very young, author David Thorpe received a complimentary copy of Saga on his 50th birthday, the copy that just happened to feature a competition to discover a strong new voice in children’s book writing. The response was staggering – almost 900 entries were received and read, whittled down to a longlist of fifteen, and then a final shortlist of three before Hybrids was picked as overall winner.
Orange-prize winning author Helen Dunmore – one of the competition judges – says of Hybrids: “The writing is sharp, the dialogue good, and the action
pacey and page-turning. But there’s a real depth to this story, too. Like all good fiction, it makes the reader see the world in a different light.”
Publishing News says:
“What singles out Hybrids is its well-crafted characters and finely spun tension. It’s an impressive debut and clearly demonstrates why it beat nearly 900 other manuscripts to win a HarperCollins/Saga magazine writing competition. I certainly look forward to seeing what other ideas David Thorpe has to explore in the future.”
David Thorpe is an environmental journalist, sometime scriptwriter and cartoon-strip inventor who now runs his own media consultancy. He moved from London to Powys, Wales, with his wife and two teenage sons.
David dictated the book using voice recognition software, as mild childhood cerebral palsy has progressed into painful carpel tunnel syndrome which makes extensive typing almost impossible.
A dedicated film enthusiast, David was a co-founder and committee member of the London Screenwriters Workshop, and co-wrote The Fastest Forward for Comic Relief, a feature film starring Jerry Hall.
David’s sons, who conveniently fell into the intended age group for Hybrids while it was being written, helped their dad with editing the book – they took sections to school to see how their friends responded to it and were instantly the hub of the playground. Insistent requests of “turn the page!” suggest that David was on to a winner from the start!
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