In 2121, death is no longer the end—it is a product for the powerful, and survival becomes an act of revolution.
In Awakening, acclaimed nonfiction author Tony Sunderland (The Obelisk and the Cross, The Secret Religion) pivots to speculative fiction, delivering a bleak and blistering dystopian thriller. For years, Sunderland’s work has interrogated the battle between reason and religion and humanity’s desperate search for meaning. In this novel, those urgent questions are thrust into a dark, simulated future.
While Awakening is a work of speculative fiction, its central questions reach into older, darker territory: What do people cling to when the world itself feels like a prison? Who profits from despair, and who builds the comforting illusions that keep others asleep? Can technology offer salvation, or does it become a counterfeit heaven ruled by new archons? And what does it mean to awaken to the truth in a civilisation sustained by beautiful lies?
Awakening is an intense, confrontational story of resistance—a brilliant fusion of high-concept science fiction and philosophical inquiry that asks what it truly means to remain human when civilization has chosen to sleep.