Some critics panned it as too dark, too gloomy, too depressing. Again, they couldn’t be more wrong. While yes, it does seem obvious that Kent’s dark vision of the future is based on where he thinks society is heading, but the final section, wherein the President initiates an investigation, knowing full well that it would mean the end of his Presidency, instills hope that people will do the right thing, that society can be saved.

This is the book that made me want to be a writer. I read an interview with him around this time in which he said that any one who wants to be a writer should write whenever possible. After that, I began carrying a small notepad and a pen with me wherever I went. If I had to wait around for something, I would pull out the small notebook and scribble furiously, writing whatever came to mind. I filled that first notepad quickly, bought another, and kept writing. Over the course of three months, I filled six small notebooks with words. Some were short stories, some were just scenes, still others were just lines of dialogue, or ideas for stories.

• • •

“Mind if I turn on the radio?” Trevor says. We’ve been riding in silence for nearly an hour now. He’s attempted to strike up conversations, but I haven’t been in the mood to talk. I tell him it’s fine. He turns it on and starts scanning through the stations. “We should be able to find a college station around here.” He flips past a variety of modern rock, country, and random chatter before settling on something that sounds like sculpted static broken up with bursts of tortured electronics. “This is Jim Henson’s Illegitimate Children,” he declares.

“I didn’t know Jim Henson had illegitimate kids,” I say.

“No, that’s the name of the band.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah,” he says, bobbing his head in time to some rhythm that I could not discern. “They don’t use traditional instruments. They take toys based on Henson’s shows and movies, sample the sounds into computers, then slice up the sounds, making songs out of them.”

The song warps and shifts, and sounds like a cat walking across a synthesizer while a scrambled cable channel plays in the background.

“What is this one?” I ask.