An antidote to all dystopian books. A funeral opens a door to the past when the narrator is presented with a large box. The contents are all the hopes the friends shared when they were hot headed adolescents hungry to change the world. His dead friend's suicide note inspires an idea to validate a life obsessed with writing 'The book that needs to be written', the one that will cure all the ills of the world. Their hero in those far off days was George Orwell. His books defined his generation and the times, a snap shot of the world, warts and all. The ambition was to reflect reality in all its extreme of beauty and ugliness. The ideas from the sixties and seventies are revisited as he reads through the box, but instead of finding a complete manuscript, all that can be found are the 'First Three Chapters' of a number of incomplete books, any one of which could be 'The book that needs to be written'. He can hear his friend's voice as he discusses as he reflects the brave new world based on a post war utopia. After reading the entire contents which amount to a life's work, he wants to release all those people imprisoned in those unfinished manuscripts, and in so doing share his friend's insights to a new generation, in his case avoiding war by reconciling the financial world of humans and the natural world and the tough decisions to be made with burgeoning populations and diminishing resources. The narrator had long since forgotten their drink-fuelled adolescent late night discussions, some of which described the parallel dimensions of a distant present, a task that ultimately drove his friend to commit suicide because of its impossible ambition: to find a cure for all the ills of the world. The new codes are all there for those who want to explore human destiny.
About the Author: Adrian Donovan has lived all over England. He is married with two children, and has for the last 25 years lived in Suffolk. Now that his community service has expired, he would quite like to ride one of his motorcycles beyond the borders and explore different counties. He lists such eminent people as Thor Heyerdahl, Donald Campbell and Germaine Greer as his heroes. He has not as yet sailed across the pacific or attempted any land or water speed records, though living in a house dominated by women, has burned a few bras in the name of feminism and general de-cluttering. The main themes of his books involve human destiny and take their inspiration from the surreal distant present.