Imprint
By: Paul L. Bates.
Edition: 1st ed.
Series: Imprint Cycle #1
Publisher: Five Star
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Waterville, Me
Language: eng
Number of pages: 323
Subjects: People with disabilities -- Fiction.; City and town life -- Fiction.; Missing persons -- Fiction.; Street cleaners -- Fiction.
Genres: Fiction.
First sentence: In his dreaming, a child screams piteously. Face down inside a utility crate, it is soiled, dirty, hungry, goes ignored. The child screams louder. Something in his awareness responds with: That is not the voice of a child. The image fades quickly, but the sound does not. That is the sound of an animal. 
     He awakens on the dirty cot by simply opening his eyes and staring at the dingy wall. More of the faded yellow paper has peeled loose in the sweltering August night. He takes a deep breath, takes stock of his life, as he does every morning, lest he lose any more of it.
     It’s Monday morning, the rats are fighting again in the hall. They have invaded my dreaming for the third night in a row.
     He listens to the sounds of their skittering feet within the hollow walls. He moves his eyes to the right, focuses his attention on the wand sitting on the crate beside the cot. Reaching over his chest with his right hand, he notices that his left arm has melted into a gelatinous pool beside him, seeping into the stained sheet. He lets out his breath. The wand seems to hum with delight as he closes his fingers about it. He does not move his torso, lest he lose contact with the missing arm, then points the wand at the gaping rat hole on the other side of the room.
     There is a red glint somewhere in the darkness beyond the peeling wallpaper. He aims the wand and gently presses the discharge stud. An arcing bolt of vibrant purple flashes across the room, illuminating the startled rat for the briefest instant. Another hideous scream fills the morning, as the bolt incinerates the rat. The cockroaches clustered under the table scatter and vanish into their crevasses beneath the baseboard. He sets the wand back on the plastic crate that serves him as a night table.
     His heart is racing, like it does every time he kills a rat. It reminds him of the sweep. It also reminds him that his morning litany has been disrupted. He looks at the clock Rachel has given him. It is five after nine.
     Damn, I’ve overslept again.
Description: Welcome to the post apocalyptic world of Wyatt Weston, where most of the population lives within a single sprawling city in a perpetual state of psychosis, poverty, denial.  It is a place without mass media, private transportation, where police hover above the streets keeping order, where knowledge is limited to one's immediate surroundings, the collective amnesia of the population.  Wyatt rises from the bottom of the foodchain searching for his sanity, his memory, his missing lover, the solution to why parts of his body dissolve while he sleeps.  Wyatt's only marketable skill is his ability to kill, kill fast, kill often—a skill prized by those who rule and live within the Heartland, a protective dome beyond the city.  He is recruited by Victor Crist, a bizarre father figure, who needs Wyatt to help him upend the existing world order by unleashing an ancient weapon upon the unsuspecting city—the weapon that brought the world we know to an end.
Notes: "...a fast-paced, convoluted maze of revelations, deceptions, and master plans in which the cartels that hold sway over life and death clash and loyalties dissolve and re-align like the flesh on Wyatt’s constantly re-forming body – a peculiarity Wyatt attempts to disguise out of fear for his life, but which makes him a valuable prize for any of the powerful corporate enterprises that run the world...Atmospheric like A. E. van Vogt, bitterly inventive like Burroughs, Bates takes on the task of science fiction – to offer consoling dreams and instructive nightmares – with a blend of what feels like gleeful relish and rancorous exasperation. His book is as startling and vivid as any of the best American sci-fi from the so-called Golden Age." --Kilian Melloy, EDGEBoston "...Bates imagines a dystopic future of restricted knowledge and omnipresent police observation, a world in which a few people struggle to remain human against the odds..." --Jackie Cassada, Library Journal "...Bates has given us a story that captivates not only through plot but also through its surreal, lushly dark prose."--Peter Horan "An interesting premise and an even more intriguing hero make IMPRINT a book to remember."--Kathy Samuels, Romance Reviews Today "...Far from being escapist fiction, this story is a thoughtful meditation on the meaning of civilization, the shaping of a society and the uses of power. I highly recommend it."--Sheryl Tempchin, Zahir "This book grabs you right from the start....The action...is the be all and end all ... and very fortunately the action is compelling." Steve Mazey, The Eternal Night "Bates vividly realizes a surrealistic, haunting world; unforgettable characters; and a mature narrative style that, in a first novel, spotlights him as a promising new voice in sf." Carl Hays © American Library Association. "...Paul L. Bates has written a work that takes the reader one step beyond the edge." --Harriet Klausner