Bounty
$23.95
SKU:
9780888017741
A bold new vision of a world on the edge of disaster.
The year is 2120, and Nikos Wulf is at the top of his game. Within Winnipeg’s sublevels, he is the undisputed king of bounty hunters, working for the elite Bounty Commission Eco-Terror Taskforce. The job: defend the ecological infrastructure holding back climate collapse. But when a series of bounties go wrong, Nikos finds himself on the trail of a troubling new player among the city’s anti-establishment. Duty bound to protect the people, Nikos must risk it all to unearth an insidious enemy bent on destroying everything he’s ever known.
Read a thrilling excerpt from the book now!
Book Club Questions:
- Discuss the dual meaning behind the novel's title "Bounty" and how it appears implicitly and explicitly throughout the story.
- The novel concerns a business/market-focused response to climate change, in what ways, large and small, can you see this throughout the story? Discuss potential alternative responses to the climate crisis.
- The cli-fi genre, of which the novel is a part, concerns social, cultural, and political changes in response to climate change. Discuss aspects of the novel's world where this is shown. Would you consider these changes good or bad by today's standards? Could you see any of these occurring?
- Human enhancement, through cybernetic prothesis, medication, and technology, are a major component to this world. Many bioethicists believe we already live in an era of human enhancement. In what ways do you see yourselves or the people around you being "enhanced" by technology?
- In the novel, climate change has effectively been halted, and humanity is beginning the process of "pushing the climate clock back." Do you think that's possible with how we currently view solutions to the climate crisis? Or do things need to get worse before they can get better.
- Do you think there is a price humanity should be willing to pay to respond to climate change, or ensure humanity is more resilient?
- Nikos Wulf, and many of the other characters in the novel, are bounty hunters, a group of citizen peacekeepers. This vocation was created to put policing and criminal justice back "in the hands of the people." In an era with rampant police spending, and calls for complete overhauls or curtailing of such spending, do you think there will ever be an appetite for such a system? In what ways does it exacerbate or maintain the issues with criminal justice that already exist today?
- In the novel, Nikos states that the anti-establishment groups have legal and illegal purposes/businesses in the city. The Plainswalkers, for instance, provide locally grown and processed food to the people of the sublevels, creating jobs and ensuring the less fortunate of the city have healthy things to eat. In your mind, does the good outweigh the bad?
- While drinking at Haven, Mack remarks that credits are a universal currency, meaning they are the preferred currency across the globe. Do you think this is a feasible idea in today's world and beyond? Could concepts like the Eurozone be extended far enough to encompass the whole planet?
- Would you describe the world presented in Bounty as a utopia or dystopia? Why or why not?
- Is this a future you'd be ok living in? Why or why not?
- At its core, Bounty explores what would happen if we continued to look to corporations and billionaires to save us from the challenges of our lives (i.e. climate change). Do you believe this is inherently good or bad? At what point do "benevolent corporations" become less-than benevolent? Or do human needs clash too much with corporate needs.
Turnstone Press Ltd.
