The Resisters

The Resisters (2020) by Gish Jen is set in a near-future America governed by an AI system called AutoAmerica, or Aunt Nettie, which has sorted the population into two tiers: the Netted, who are useful to the system and enjoy its benefits, and the Surplus, who are not useful and are warehoused in floating Flotsam Towns on rising floodwaters. The narrator Grant and his wife Eleanor, a civil rights lawyer, are Surplus. Their daughter Gwen has an extraordinary gift for baseball. When AutoAmerica decides to rejoin the Olympics and needs to field a team competitive against ChinRussia, it recruits Gwen from the underground Surplus baseball league. What follows is both a sports novel and a meditation on assimilation, resistance, and what it costs to play for a system that considers you disposable. Jen is best known for her novels about the Chinese-American experience, and the novel's comic voice and structural lightness distinguish it from most contemporary dystopian fiction.

Signed copy. Signed by Jen on the title page.



Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, bound in white boards stamped in blind and silver. . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2020. ISBN: 9780525657217. #11200.
Near fine in near fine dust jacket.