Buyout is Out to Buy

Fellow Michigan alumnus Alex Irvine’s new book Buyout is on shelves today. I worked with Alex on the Beast several years back, and I came to respect this talent then. As the marketing copy says:

From acclaimed author Alexander C. Irvine comes a gritty near-future thriller in the paranoid, prophetic vein of Philip K. Dick and Richard K. Morgan.

One hundred years from now, with Americans hooked into an Internet far more expansive and intrusive than today’s, the world has become a seamless market-driven experience. In this culture of capitalism run amok, entrepreneurs and politicians faced with rampant overcrowding in the nation’s penal system turn to a controversial new method of cutting costs: life-term buyouts. In theory, buyouts offer convicted murderers the chance to atone for their crimes by voluntarily allowing themselves to be put to death by the state in exchange for a one-time cash payment, shared among their heirs and victims, based on a percentage of what it would have cost taxpayers to house and feed them for the rest of their natural lives. It’s a win-win situation.

See, he’s got me right there. My copy’s already on the way.