#BlogTour ‘The Offset’ by Calder Szewczak

About the book…

It is your eighteenth birthday and one of your parents must die. You are the one who decides. Whom do you pick?

In a dying world, the Offset ceremony has been introduced to counteract and discourage procreation. It is a rule that is simultaneously accepted, celebrated and abhorred. But in this world, survival demands sacrifice so for every birth, there must be a death.

Professor Jac Boltanski is leading Project Salix, a ground-breaking new mission to save the world by replanting radioactive Greenland with genetically-modified willow trees. But things aren’t working out and there are discrepancies in the data. Has someone intervened to sabotage her life’s work?

In the meantime, her daughter Miri, an anti-natalist, has run away from home. Days before their Offset ceremony where one of her mothers must be sentenced to death, she is brought back against her will following a run-in with the law. Which parent will Miri pick to die: the one she loves, or the one she hates who is working to save the world?

Hugest of thanks to Caroline and Ailsa at Angry Robot books for my gifted e-arc of ‘The Offset’ by Calder Szewczak, which is out on 14th September in e-book and paperback!

This is a classic race against time for a life changing decision to be made, and in  The Offset, this choice is to be made by the genetic creation, Miri, formed in a lab to combine the love of her two mothers. Using sperm created from Jac’s DNA and an egg from Alix, the environmentalist scientist and consultant paediatrician have, in effect, signed a death warrant for one of them.

At the start of the novel, Miri , who has been on the run for the past two years, has been found after attending a public Offset. She is 2 days away from the decision over which of her parents will die, her ascendency to adulthood marked, irretrievably, by the death of one of her parents.

The problem is, who does she choose?

Alix, the mother she loves, or Jac, the mother she hates?

Things get more complicated when you consider that Jac has spearheaded a campaign to plant nuclear resistant trees across the entire landmass of Greenland, to counterbalance the carbon dioxide from the world wide lack of trees.

So will it be the woman who gives her life, or the woman who could possibly save the world whose rising population has created a situation in which this hideous Offset ceremony has become the solution?

The crime of procreation results, in the majority of cases, in the public death of the mothers.

Centered in  London, the stark imagery of this ceremony is really brought home to the reader from the opening chapter, this is a brutal ceremony with changing methods of death, where the chosen parent is expected to present themself to the ‘pigsuits’, automated police type figures which have grown out of their function as wearable units and have taken a life of their own on. They are intensely creepy and cannibalise machines to patch themsleves and keep going.

Pretty quickly, the reader and Miri realise that this balancing act is not only necessary in this dystopian future, but that is a situation which has been entirely created by human greed. The taking of the planets resources can never be remade, but the population can be controlled.

As Jac travels to Albans (Scotland), to work out just what has happened to her experiments which should have had a much better effect than it currently has, Alix and Miri have the opportunity to go over the events which led to her leaving, to discuss her anti-natalist proclivities and explore, through their eyes, just what has been happening since the population became in need of controlling.

The value of a life is to be decided by the child, their stepping into adulthood forever marked in bloody footsteps to ‘atone’ for their existence.

Miri could have come across as a spoilt, entitled brat, but as you get to know her, you really empathise with the situation she has been put in. Her unresolved issues could remain forever , stubbornly stuck in time as she could decide to sacrifice Jac. But as she begins to realise that Jac’s research is being sabotaged, will she support her to come to the truth on who, or what is doing this?

It is a dystopian novel told with a sense of narrative detachment leaving the reader to bring their emotions to the table and apply them to the issues under consideration.

Eugenics is not merely something which came about with the rise of fascism, it pre-existed this as a means of social control and when you consider that each year, the planet runs out of resources at an earlier and earlier date, decisive action does seem to be called for in order to recreate a sense of balance between environment and humanity.

And it is particularly timely given the events of this week in Texas, it appears that it is even  more relevant, and terrifying, that the continuing assault on the rights of women’s self determination is always predicated against the women in this situation, and not the men.

The use of names verse nouns really highlights the individual, versus collective, sense of responsibility . As well as helping to frame the central characters, it lends a sense of dissonance between ‘The Engineer’, ‘The Student’, ‘The Thief’ and Miri, Jac and Alix.

There are some truly horrible moments in this book which give you pause for thought in the way that we see, and measure, evidence of humanity and in the application of technology to carry out the Offset, and to act as a form of justice, the abdication of responsibility into the realm of machinery is even more chilling. The future use of the London Eye, a rusted  monument to vanity and ‘progress’ , used a nightmare prison, will definitely stay with me.

As a debut novel, this is a smooth, engaging and accessible read, I would highly recommend it to those who think that science fiction is not for them, I found myself ripping through the chapters at speed, desperate to find out what was behind this social calamity and who could be the key to the solution. A highly enjoyable read, which seems odd given how disturbing it is, I am excited to see what this duo will write next!

About the authors…

Calder Szewczak is writing duo Natasha C. Calder and Emma Szewczak, who met while studying at Cambridge University.

Natasha is a graduate of Clarion West 2018 and her work has previously appeared in The Stinging Fly, Lackington’s and Curiosities, amongst others.

Emma researches contemporary representations of the Holocaust and has published work with T&T Clark and the Paulist Press.

Links-https://natashaccalder.com/

https://www.pewliterary.com/author/emma-szewczak/