Shop Indie eBooks
by Phil HarveyPhil Harvey
Future viewing audiences have become totally desensitized to violence and entirely dependent on sensation to escape their boring workaday lives an addiction nurtured by the media with graphic portrayals of war and crime and with so-called reality programming. Now, TV execs in pursuit of the only things they care about higher ratings and bigger paychecks have created the ultimate reality show: Seven people, each bearing the scars of his or her past, are deposited on an island in the middle of Lake Superior. Given some bare necessities and the promise of $400,000 each if they can endure, the three women and four men risk death by starvation or freezing as the Great Lakes winter approaches. The island is wired for sound, and flying drones provide the video feed, so everything the contestants do and say is broadcast worldwide. Their seven-month ordeal is entirely unscripted, they can t ask for help or they forfeit the prize, and as far as the network is concerned the fewer survivors the better.
Cypress House
PHIL HARVEY s fiction has appeared in fifteen literary magazines, including Phantasmagoria, which nominated one of his stories for a Pushcart Prize, and Antietam Review, which named another the winner of its annual contest. Most recently his work has appeared in The MacGuffin, Natural Bridge, and the Dos Passos Review.
Harvey nonfiction includes: Let Every Child Be Wanted, which drew praise from former President Jimmy Carter; Government Creep, which, as one reviewer noted, proves that government has invaded virtually every nook and cranny of our lives ; and The Government vs. Erotica, which Publishers Weekly and Booklist praised, the ALA Intellectual Freedom Roundtable nominated as the year s best book on intellectual freedom, and Media Coalition called a frightening, enlightening story.
By day, Phil Harvey is president of DKT International, a nonprofit family planning and AIDS prevention organization, and president and majority shareholder of Adam & Eve, a mail-order business that sells sexually oriented books and films. He lives with his wife, Harriet Lesser, in Cabin John, Maryland.
Phil Harvey has crafted a psychological thriller that takes reality shows, and in fact much of our popular culture, into a realm of true horror. His skill in delving into the psychology of the characters keeps the reader turning the pages. And Harvey does it not through any heavy-handed interior monologues but through the dialogue and interaction of the individuals. The book would easily lend itself not only to a successful movie script but to an intense stage play.
Washington Independent Review of Books - Darrell elamaide
Phil Harvey elegantly dissects the plummeting values of 21st-century America, while his plot twists seize the reader by the lapels. A great read!
author of American Emperor: Aaron Burr s Challenge to Jefferson s America - David Stewart
A vision of the future that is laugh-out-loud, until we realize how much it looks like the world we live in now.
author of To Love Mercy - Frank S. Joseph
Show Time 3.7 out of 5 based on 0 ratings. 3 reviews.
KimHolloway More than 1 year ago
A great read. It's about time someone wrote a thriller that both swept us away into its story and made us think more deeply about reality shows and what they're doing to our culture.
Maydacat on LibraryThing More than 1 year ago
This debut novel by Phil Harvey is meant to be a tense psychological thriller. I say ¿meant to be¿ because in reality it is tedious most of the time and almost boring at others. Seven people are dropped on an island in the middle of Lake Superior and must survive the brutal winter. For this feat, they will each win $400,000. No one is allowed on or off the island; indeed, no one may help them, even if they are injured or starving. All this is done for the sake of realty television and the viewing public. And so begins the struggle to survive: for shelter, for food. Alliances are formed, rules and agreements meted out. But plans do go awry, and bad things happen. The rules set down by the TV studio and by participants themselves are broken. The plot idea is an interesting one, but not well developed in this book. We have the struggle to find sufficient food, and the squabbling between the participants, but not much more. Oh, yes, there is the obligatory voyeuristic sex for the undiscriminating public. The characters are two dimensional figures with little to commend them. A smattering of facts is made known about them, but not nearly enough to make the reader care about what happens to them. The story ends abruptly, and life - and TV ratings ¿ goes on. What does this story teach us? Bad things happen and bad guys can get away with it. There are much better survival novels if that is your cup of tea, or maybe the goal of this book is just to survive reading it to the bitter end.
NYNeoma More than 1 year ago
This books is the ultimate page turner. I didn't want to put it down. I've always wondered what a "reality" show would look like without the safety nets and silly games. This book answered that question.