Kelly Justice will lead this discussion about Neil's debut novel, and we will be joined by John Scalzi!

NEIL SHARPSON is a Dublin-based writer and playwright who was selected for the Irish Writer’s Center’s Novel Fair in 2018. When the Sparrow Falls was initially staged as a play as The Caspian Sea before being adapted into a novel. When he’s not penning a long-form story, he blogs as Unshaved Mouse and hosts the popular YouTube channel Sharuf. Visit him online at unshavedmouse.com, or on Twitter @UnshavedMouse

Life in the Caspian Republic has taught Agent Nikolai South two rules. Trust No One. And work just hard enough not to make enemies.

Here, in the last sanctuary for the dying embers of the human race in a world run by artificial intelligence, if you stray from the path – your life is forfeit. But when a Party propagandist is killed – and is discovered as a “machine” – he’s given a new mission: chaperone the widow, Lily, who has arrived to claim her husband’s remains.

But when South sees that she, the first “machine” ever allowed into the country, bears an uncanny resemblance to his late wife, he’s thrown into a maelstrom of betrayal, murder, and conspiracy that may bring down the Republic for good.

WHEN THE SPARROW FALLS illuminates authoritarianism, complicity, and identity in the digital age, in a page turning, darkly-funny, frightening and touching story that recalls Philip K. Dick, John le Carré and Kurt Vonnegut in equal measure.

JOHN SCALZI is one of the most popular SF authors to emerge in the last decade. His debut, Old Man's War, won him the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His New York Times bestsellers include The Last Colony, Fuzzy Nation, Redshirts (which won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel), and 2020's The Last Emperox. Material from his blog, Whatever, has earned him two other Hugo Awards. Scalzi also serves as critic-at-large for the Los Angeles Times. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.

Sci-fi Launch Party with Neil Sharpson and John Scalzi!