The future is a grim place in which the declining human population wanders, drugged and lulled by electronic bliss. It's a world without art, reading and children, a world where people would rather burn themselves alive than endure.
 
Even Spofforth, the most perfect machine ever created, cannot bear it and seeks only that which he cannot have - to cease to be. But there is hope for the future in the passion and joy that a man and woman discover in love and in books, hope even for Spofforth.
 
A haunting novel, reverberating with anguish but also celebrating love and the magic of a dream.
 
Walter Tevis is the acclaimed author of The Hustler, The Man Who Fell to Earth and The Queen's Gambit.