Title: The Family Experiment
Author: John Marrs
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Futuristic,
Speculative Fiction, Dystopian
Release Date: 9th May 2024
BLURB
The world's population is soaring, creating overcrowded cities and an economic crisis. And in the UK, breaking point has arrived. A growing number of people can no longer afford to start families let alone raise them.
But for those desperate to experience parenthood, there is an alternative. For a monthly subscription fee, clients can create a virtual child from scratch who they can access via the metaverse and a VR headset. To launch this new initiative, the company behind Virtual Children has created a reality tv show. It will follow ten couples as they raise a Virtual Child from birth to the age of eighteen but in a condensed nine-month time period. The prize: the right to keep their virtual child or risk it all for the chance of a real baby . . .
REVIEW
The Family Experiment is set in the same universe as John Marrs' other novels The One, The Passenger, The Minders and The Marriage Act, so has all the futuristic elements within them in this book too. Such as the driverless cars, the marriage act, the DNA soul mate match as well as “15 Minute Cities” where everyone lives within just a 15 minute walk away from everything residents would need such as shops, workplaces, and healthcare. In this world there are still “pandemic lockdowns” occurring on a fairly regular basis so most people work from home. The virtual reality world and AI have made even more advancements, there is a company called Re:born and they actually have an advert advertising their upcoming service. They are a company where you can order a metaverse baby. It can be a 'new' baby, or a duplicate of your current child at an age of your choosing or more eerily a replacement for a loss.
You can pick & choose age, sex, eye & hair colour, skin tone, body shape, their accent, interests & speed of growth. Re:born advertise that "Designers can create the perfect blend of you & your partner just like mother nature intended"
These children have a digital memory, they have photo realistic faces & bodies that can react to you, the parent by using facial tracking & voice recognition. There is a deposit payable and then a monthly subscription fee of £19.99
Re:born is part of a larger company called Awakening Entertainment who also own the new TV Reality show called The Family Experiment. 11 contestants who have been through a lengthy application and vetting process. These prospective parents will wear a slimline headset which are about the size of normal sunglasses and a special “Haptic suit” which have thousands of tactile sensors which allow its wearer to feel every sensation of whatever they are doing in the MetaVerse. Over the next 9 months the contestants compete with each other, bringing up their child that will grow much rapidly than a normal child. The MetaBabies start out as newborns for the first month and jump quite a few years at a time until the final month when they are 18 years old and grown adults. Viewers can watch these parents with their MetaBabies 24 hours a day! The viewers get to vote which parents have to face the monthly challenge such as croup or chicken pox, despite the fact it has been eradicated in the real world.
Theres In App purchases for the viewers which mean you can spend time in the same room as the contestants and MetaBabies without the contestants knowing and literally watch the action as it unfolds. A monthly lottery is also held that allows the winner to interact & enjoy spending one on one time with the MetaChildren themselves.
As for the contestants they are given £250,000 the amount needed to raise a RealWorld child from birth to eighteen. However, it is up to the parents if/how they use it. It can be spent on education, health care, entertainment, travel & immersive experiences and other in App purchases to be used within the MetaVerse.
The Family Experiment is a very interactive for both contestants and viewers. The viewers’ interaction is encouraged and they become very judgmental using a system of red hearts if they approve of what the parents are doing and black hearts if they don’t. The viewers also get to vote for an ultimate winner after the 9 months is done. It is a very black and white ending as the losers see their MetaChild permanently switched off and also lose any of the £250,000 they still have at that time. The Winners are given a choice, they can keep any of the £250,000 they have left and their MetaChild, Or pull the plug on their MetaChild and receive a quarter of a million pounds to start a family in the real world. The money will be paid on the live birth of their child whether that child is conceived by traditional means, IVF, surrogacy or adoption.
It soon becomes apparent that each contestant has a past, a secret they are desperately trying to hide from the viewers. All the contestants have issues/problems to hide or overcome. They all have their unique reasons as to why they want to take part, to have the MetaChild, or to have a final goal of being able to afford a real world child, and some are taking part to further careers and simply make money. Newspapers report on The Family Experiment, saying that it is the return of the original great social experiments.
The book is very cleverly presented in different types of chapters and sections. There’s the “show” parts that Autumn Taylor presents. There’s adverts for Re;Born, then statistics 'information' on the individual parents such as ages, jobs, and backgrounds. There are also the online chat parts where viewers speak to each other about what is currently happening and what they think. At times the viewers in this chat are more aware in some cases than us the reader. As online chat know who Adam is, when Zoe accidentally calls Lenny, Adam. It is through the chats that more facts are revealed to the reader.
There are also the chapters telling you what is happening with the contestants both in the MetaVerse with their MetaChild and in the real world with their relationships and how they are coping with the virtual and real-world balance.
I really enjoyed the references to the other books such as the driverless car hijacking in The Passengers, the finding your one true soul mate partner in The One, and the family dynamics in The Marriage Contract. There were also some character crossovers too within the book but you don’t have to have read all the other books to be able to read and thoroughly enjoy this one. There is so much packed into this one book with all the different contestants, their reasons for wanting to take part in the reality show, the secrets they are hiding and why they are wishing to hide them. The contestants may all be in the same experiment but they all handle the situation differently. For example, Cadman, uses sponsorship to generate more interest and earn money at every single stage of their MetaChild growing up, from the baby clothes and other outfits as the child grows to the furniture in both their virtual and real world apartments. Slowly but surely the secrets of the contestants are revealed and they are eliminated from the show until there are just two contestants left, and there is one heck of a twist as one contestant divulges some shock revelations about the company behind the show and his treatment at their hands. The ugly truth of how the technology behind The Family Experiment show was made and finessed.
My immediate thoughts upon finishing the book were, Wow.....just wow! A fantastic, well thought out, highly detailed plot with likeable, relatable characters all in a futuristic, yet believable world.....loved it!
Summing up, if you love speculative, futuristic fiction that makes you stop and think wow that’s crazy, but at the same time wow that could actually happen then this is a must read book for you!
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