Sara is returning home from a conference abroad when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside at the airport. Using data from her dreams, their algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming her husband. For his safety, she must be transferred to a retention center, and kept under observation for twenty-one days.
But as Sara arrives to be monitored alongside other dangerous dreamers, she discovers that with every deviation from the facility's strict and ever-shifting rules, their stay can be extended - and that getting home to her family is going to cost much more than just three weeks of good behaviour.
A gripping tale about the technology that puts us in shackles even as it promises to make our lives easier, The Dream Hotel asks: how much must we keep private if we are to remain free? And can even the most invasive forms of surveillance ever capture who we really are?
But as Sara arrives to be monitored alongside other dangerous dreamers, she discovers that with every deviation from the facility's strict and ever-shifting rules, their stay can be extended - and that getting home to her family is going to cost much more than just three weeks of good behaviour.
A gripping tale about the technology that puts us in shackles even as it promises to make our lives easier, The Dream Hotel asks: how much must we keep private if we are to remain free? And can even the most invasive forms of surveillance ever capture who we really are?
Reading The Dream Hotel is a physical experience: it's rare for a novel to induce so strong a sense of powerlessness and frustration ... In this sharp, sophisticated novel of forecasts and insightful takes, what I found most powerful was the great bewilderment that the characters share ... Perhaps you wouldn't ordinarily pick up a novel in search of an experience of confusion. But The Dream Hotel has a burning quality, both in its swift, consuming escalation – you can't look away – and in the clarity and purpose of what it shows