The Affirmation

Author: Christopher Priest

In contemporary Britain, a young man called Peter Sinclair loses his job and his girlfriend, and retreats to a remote cottage where he sets out to write his life story. But the story he writes is set in a place called the Dream Archipelago. In the Dream Archipelago, a young man called Peter Sinclair wins the lottery to receive immortality treatment. But the treatment will wipe out his memory, so he is required to write the story of his life. But the story he writes is set in contemporary Britain. We never know which is real, but there are curious and often disturbing resonances between the two worlds. Both Peter Sinclairs may, indeed, be deluded; there is a shattering moment when the long manuscript by Peter Sinclair in Britain, which we think we've been reading in the Dream Archipelago sections of the novel, turns out to be just a pile of blank pages. Why it's on the list: One of the major themes that has developed in science fiction over the last 30-40 years has been the questioning of the nature of reality. Can we trust our world? Is everything an illusion? That strand of sf has been largely set in motion by Priest, particularly in this novel. He had already written a number of stories set in the Dream Archipelago, where it was a place of psycho-sexual allure and terror, and he has returned to it in recent novels, such as The Islanders and The Adjacent, but it was here that it acquired its most charged expression.