Seoul Survivors (2013)
As global warming hits catastrophic new peaks, and the rumoured meteorite Lucifer’s Hammer threatens Earth, three determined young people escaping troubled pasts attempt to remake their lives in South Korea.
Impetuous blonde Canadian Sydney Travers has flown into Seoul with her new boyfriend Johnny Sandman – jumping at his promise to help her start a modelling career in this global centre of hi-tech fashion. Brighton collapsenik Damien Meadows is convinced he can make enough money as an inept drug smuggler and untrained English tutor to buy a fake passport to the planet’s safest terrain. And Lee Mee Hee, a starving North Korean peasant, is persuaded by a kind doctor to leave her village in the bottom of a truck.
When Sydney meets the glamorous bioengineer Dr Kim Da Mi what she doesn’t know is that the scientist is engaged in a secret power struggle with Johnny that will threaten her very life. But just whose blood will spill is far from certain until the final pages of this tense cyber-chiller, a novel that splices SF, horror, noir, satire and erotica into an ultimately uncategorisable read.
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Praise for Seoul Survivors:
‘Among the best of recent SF . . . Foyle’s strengths are her impeccable plotting, her rendering of a futuristic Seoul and the depiction of Sydney Travers’ gradual inveiglement in the nightmare of Dr Kim’s cloning experiment.’ Eric Brown, The Guardian
‘A snappy near-future thriller about impending world’s-end and sinister fertility-plan shenanigans . . . I read the whole thing rapidly and with enjoyment.’ Adam Roberts, award-winning author of Jack Glass
‘It’s so brilliant to read a book which is so international, with such strong and diverse and active characters, but more than anything I love the energy of the book. It’s sheer adrenaline to read, pumping and fast, breaking down all genre clichés and genre distinctions in its unstoppable momentum. It’s very addictive and so now, full of electricity and interest and deserves to be an enormous hit.’ Bidisha, bestselling author of Seahorses and Too Fast to Live
‘This novel is the work of a remarkable mind, and a remarkable writer. It’s fast-moving and incredibly inventive, with all-too-real characters that leap off the page. And it also grapples with some very big questions indeed. With style, wit and great fearlessness, Naomi Foyle has written a book that will shock, entertain, move and keep you gripped to the very last page.’ Bethan Roberts
‘In Seoul Survivors, themes of love, control, and betrayal are drawn like intricate neon glyphs at the imploding epicentre of the emerging New World Order. Having lived and worked two years in Seoul, Naomi Foyle brings the little known complexities of Korea’s contemporary cultural scene to the foreground of her imaginative leap into our common future.’ Mia Yun
‘The best English-language novel written about Korea that I have read. Makes Alex Garland’s The Beach and Jay McInerney’s Ransom look like silly kid’s stuff.’ J.Scott Burgeson
‘An intoxicating read which unfolds with a nightmarish velocity. With both sharp and sympathetic wit, Naomi Foyle sketches an alternately seedy and shiny technocalypse that is quite clearly a portrait of our very current neuroses. Recommended.’ Bill Aitchison
‘Genetic engineering on an horrific scale, drugs, deceit, perverted sex, this frenetic account is not for the squeamish. Most characters are deeply unpleasant, and deserve all they get, but I did feel for those innocents who though they may escape Lucifer’s Hammer, are snared unwittingly in a deadly trap.’ Whichbook [Book of the Week, July 2014]
Special Thanks
It’s usual to thank one’s inspirations in the acknowledgements page but due to first a gross authorial oversight, and then an unfortunate proofreader’s error, four important people were not properly thanked for their massive contribution to Seoul Survivors until the US edition came out. So, for the record, the CD and the digital download:
THANK YOU Toby Benstead, Josh Schwartzentruber, Geoffrey Viljama and Michael David Yantzi of the legendary Mama Gold – for your infinitely memorable odes to the ex-pat experience, which were too good not to honour in the book – and for your infinite patience with my stumbling efforts to rectify my unintended grab at your glory!
Seoul Survivors is represented by John Berlyne of Zeno Agency. Please direct inquiries to berlyne@zenoagency.com