A world full of dumbed-down sheep and one brave man.
IF YOU CAN'T HANDLE SOMETHING, LET IT GO. BUT WILL YOU STILL BE A NEIGHBOR TO ANOTHER?
And here we have the 25th century, just the way we wanted it. As a result of mindless robotization, the species Homo sapiens has degenerated to the stage where it can no longer think independently, let alone reproduce. He doesn't want to - and he doesn't even bother anymore. He just lets the problem out of his head, he takes narcocapsules like the former members of the "beautiful new world" Aldous Huxley's and rejoin the numb sheep, since the supervision of Orwell's Big Brother is no longer needed. Can New York daredevil Bentley, who is the only one of the surviving handful of moths who can read - having laboriously acquired the skill of honing vocabulary, memory, awareness of context, and the idea of beauty by studying tomes that are as forbidden here as in Ray Bradbury's sci-fi horror films? If so, he must first get out from under the control of the maniacal ninth-grade robot Spofforth. However, the superpowers of this android have matured to such an extent that he has become his rival not only in combat strategy, but also in the field of love...
The dystopia by the author of The Man Who Fell to Earth and The Lady's Gambit was nominated for the 1980 Nebula Award. With the power of a searing tragicomedy, it demonstrates the importance of having a philip and fervently defending the planetary survival called humanity.