We Are Satellites

paperback, 368 pages

Published May 10, 2021 by Berkley Pub Group, Berkley.

ISBN:: 978-1-9848-0260-6

(2 reviews)

From award-winning author Sarah Pinsker comes a novel about one family and the technology that divides them.

Everybody’s getting one.

Val and Julie just want what’s best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant to help with school, they reluctantly agree. This is the future, after all.

Soon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with her colleagues, leaving Val and Sophie part of the shrinking minority of people without the device.

Before long, the implications are clear, for the family and society: get a Pilot or get left behind. With government subsidies and no downside, why would anyone refuse? And how do you stop a technology once it’s everywhere? Those are the questions Sophie and her anti-Pilot movement rise up to answer, even if it puts them …

From award-winning author Sarah Pinsker comes a novel about one family and the technology that divides them.

Everybody’s getting one.

Val and Julie just want what’s best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant to help with school, they reluctantly agree. This is the future, after all.

Soon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with her colleagues, leaving Val and Sophie part of the shrinking minority of people without the device.

Before long, the implications are clear, for the family and society: get a Pilot or get left behind. With government subsidies and no downside, why would anyone refuse? And how do you stop a technology once it’s everywhere? Those are the questions Sophie and her anti-Pilot movement rise up to answer, even if it puts them up against the Pilot’s powerful manufacturer and pits Sophie against the people she loves most.

1 edition

moving to outside.ofa.dog reviewed We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker

Very relatable family in a very relatable dystopia

5 stars

This is the sort of near-future sci-fi that's really just one fictional innovation away from the world it was written in, and clearly used as a lens to look at ourselves. It follows one very relatable family and their challenges in adapting--and in some ways being unable to adapt--to a wave of fast social change. I identified strongly enough with each of the main characters in some way that each of their crises broke my heart a little.

The ending wrapped things up a little too neatly and I found that particularly disappointing because it broke the easy belieavability of the rest of the book. But the rest was so good that I can't hold it against book or author.

loppear reviewed We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker

well-meaning, lightly speculative

3 stars

A warmly thoughtful and engaged family pulled in all directions as society's definition of "neurotypical" shifts beneath them. Seems YA in many respects, extent of conflicts and constrained depths.

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