The Child Garden
Geoff Ryman
 In a future semitropical England cancer has been cured, but, as a result, the human lifespan has been halved. The novel tells the story of Milena, a young woman who is immune to the viruses which are routinely used to educate people. It is a world transformed by global warming and by advances in genetic engineering. Houses, machines, even spaceships are genetically-engineered life-forms. Milena works as an actress and the story follows her attempts to stage an opera based on Dante's ' Divine Comedy using holograms. The opera is written by her genetically modified friend Rolfa. As she works on the opera she encounters the ruling body of the world, "The Consensus", a hive mind made up of the mental patterns of billions of children. Milena slowly discovers that this gestalt consciousness is lonely and afraid of dying and is looking to Milena as a form of salvation.