The Logoharp: A Cyborg Novel of China and America in the Year 2121 - Paperback

by Arielle S. Emmett (Author)

WINNER: NAUTILUS BOOK AWARDS SILVER (Science Fiction, 2025)

WINNER: LITERARY TITAN BOLD BOOK (2024)

FINALIST: AMERICAN FICTION AWARDS (Sci-Fi/Cyberpunk)

EDITOR'S PICK: PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BOOKLIFE (2024)

EDITOR'S CHOICE: THE READER'S HOUSE (2025, UK)

The Logoharp chronicles the life of a young American reporter who becomes an AI-driven propagandist for her Mother Country, China, in the 22nd century. Naomi starts out as a mistress of disinformation. She's surgically transplanted, giving her extraordinary powers of foresight and physical strength. Hearing street conversation and government instructions in her Logoharp, a universal translator of 104 human languages, she predicts future political events with deadly precision.

But Naomi also hears discordant voices coming from unidentified sources. These strange and contradictory voices sing to her of other worlds, other freedoms. When she's tasked with finding a flaw in a State system that balances births and deaths-a system devised by a Chinese architect, Naomi's lover who abandoned her in youth-she experiences "unintentional contradiction." Suppressed human memories and emotions resurface, compelling her to act. Her decision has unexpected consequences for the men and women she loves, and for the global masses she's sworn to protect.

MEET NAOMI, CHINA'S MISTRESS OF PROPHECY & DISINFORMATION

The story of a young American journalist -hardened after a lover's betrayal-who elects

to become an AI-driven propagandist, a.k.a. "Reverse Journalist" for China, the dominant world power 100 years from now. Naomi's mission isn't to report current events. She extracts the "truth of probable outcomes"-the most likely political and social scenarios from a Database of Crowds-and then the future happens exactly as she predicts.

Driven by voices she hears in her Logoharp, a neural receptor and translator that "sings music to the masses," ensuring their compliance, Naomi obeys instructions from the State. But she also detects strange, contradictory voices from sources she can't identify. In frozen Manchuria, assigned to discover a flaw in the State's Harmonious Recycling System that balances births and deaths, Naomi discovers a terrifying secret. She must decide whether to obey the Synaptic Armies invading her mind-or an extant human conscience that loves and defies reason.