Cell: no service. Email: down. Internet: off. TV: nothing. Radio: static. Communication: minimal. Chaos: unstoppable. Press Any Key to Start. PR hack Tristan Schultz is buried deep in the endless code of Millennial life, slogging away for a major pharmaceutical company in Seattle. Hopelessly drowning in a world of texts, emails, Tweets and status updates, he's light years from a family he once had. His mother deceased, he's lost touch with his only sibling, a sister he keeps in contact through Facebook, and a father who's now shown up at his doorstep unannounced. Inexplicably, a blank white sky appears one morning, bringing with it complete communication failure. Making peace with his father has taken a backseat to a race against time towards his sister, now in imminent danger: her war-torn ex-boyfriend is also on the chase. With no way to call for help, it's a desperate sprint as the whole world crashes back into the Dark Ages. Forced into a dangerous trek across the Pacific Northwest, what unfolds in The Fatalists is a purely terrifying glimpse into just how dependent we've become on technology--and how far two men will go to save their family.

Patrick Blennerhassett is a Vancouver-based writer and journalist. He is a Jack Webster Fellowship Award winner and the author of the biography A Forgotten Legend: Balbir Singh Sr., Triple Olympic Gold & Modi's New India as well as the novels Monument and Random Acts of Vandalism.

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"A parable for our times. Patrick Blennerhassett understands it's not technology that's dangerous, but our dependency on it. A harrowing tale, tersely told." - Will Ferguson, Giller Prize winning author of 419

"I'm sitting in an orthodontist's office waiting for my daughter to finish her appointment. I notice there are about two dozen people in the room, more than half of whom are under the spell of one electronic device or another--smartphone, tablet, e-reader, whatever. I swear I could strip naked and dance the Lindy right now and none of them would notice; that's how dependent upon these gadgets we've become. They're not really even gadgets anymore--they're organs. External, perhaps, but just as essential as the others. What would it be like, I wonder, if they suddenly went dead in our hands? What if the Internet disappeared . . . and text messaging . . . and email . . . and every other cyberaddiction we've developed? Here's the thing--we don't have to imagine any of it, because Patrick Blennerhassett has done it for us in The Fatalists. In today's hopelessly digital world, this is a harrowing scenario we all need to consider--because it's not as far-fetched as we like to believe." - Wil Mara, author of The Gemini Virus

"A clipped, fast-paced post-apocalyptic cerebral thriller that strips our reliance on technology, replacing it with a disillusioned young man's struggle to survive against the breakdown of society, a ruthless corrupt cop, and his own profane but tough father. A page-turner I consumed in two sittings. Fans of The Road might really enjoy this." - Sever Bronny, Amazon best-selling author of The Arinthian Line

"The Fatalists is a highly imaginative thriller that amps up the tension from page one. After tearing through this one-stop read you'll never look at technology--or people--the same way again. Don't miss this one." - Douglas Corleone, author of Robert Ludlum's The Janson Equation and Good as Gone