“Unity is an astonishing debut, twisty and startling . . . an absorbing, thrilling ride.” —New York Times
In a desperate escape, Danae and her lover Naoto hire the enigmatic ex-mercenary Alexei to guide them out of the imploding city. But for Danae to reunify, the three new fugitives will have to flee across the otherworldly beauty of the postapocalyptic Southwest. Evoking the gritty cyberpunk of Mad Max and the fluid idealism of Sense8, Unity is a spectacular new re-envisioning of identity. Breakout author Elly Bangs has created an expressive, philosophical, science-fiction thriller that expands upon consciousness itself.
ISBN: Print ISBN: 9781616963422; Digital ISBN: 9781616963439
Published: April 2021
Available Format(s): Trade Paperback and Digital
“Unity is an astonishing debut, twisty and startling, demonstrating both the disciplined development of a long-gestated project and the raw, dynamic flashes of an author’s early work. It shows intense interest in the distance between conversation and communion . . . an absorbing, thrilling ride.”
—New York Times
“Imagine Neuromancer and Lilith’s Brood conceived a baby while listening to My Chemical Romance and then that baby was adopted by Ghost in the Shell and Blue Submarine no. 6. The baby’s name is Unity.”
—Meredith Russo, author of If I Were Your Girl
Evoking the gritty cyberpunk of Mad Max and the fluid idealism of Sense8, Unity is a spectacular new re-envisioning of humanity. Breakout author Elly Bangs has created an expressive, philosophical, science-fiction thriller that expands upon consciousness itself.
Danae is not only herself. She is concealing a connection to a grieving collective inside of her body. But while she labors as a tech servant in the dangerous underwater enclave of Bloom City, her fractured self cannot mend.
In a desperate escape, Danae and her lover Naoto hire the enigmatic ex-mercenary Alexei to guide them out of the imploding city.
But for Danae to reunify, the three new fugitives will have to flee across the otherworldly beauty of the postapocalyptic Southwest. Meanwhile, Danae’s warlord enemy, the Duke, and a strange new foe, the Borrower, already seek them at any price.
Check out Elly Bangs reading from Unity.
Aurealis Best Speculative Fiction of 2021 Washington Post Best SF, Fantasy, and Horror of 2021 The Times April 2021 Science Fiction Pick 2021 Locus Recommended Reading List
2022 Reader’s Advisory Reading List, shortlist
“Unity is an astonishing debut, twisty and startling, demonstrating both the disciplined development of a long-gestated project and the raw, dynamic flashes of an author’s early work. It shows intense interest in the distance between conversation and communion . . . an absorbing, thrilling ride.”
—New York Times
“Imagine Neuromancer and Lilith’s Brood conceived a baby while listening to My Chemical Romance and then that baby was adopted by Ghost in the Shell and Blue Submarine no. 6. The baby’s name is Unity.”
—Meredith Russo, author of If I Were Your Girl
“Unity manages to be simultaneously exciting and philosophical, a brilliant gut-punch of a novel. I cannot wait to see what Elly Bangs does next.”
—Kij Jonhson, author of At the Mouth of the River of Bees
“Unity is a wild firefight of a novel. But amidst the vivid dystopian worldbuilding—the undersea metropolises and scorched badlands—and all the breakneck action is something deeper, a philosophically and emotionally resonant exploration of what it means to carry multiplicities of ourselves, our myriad shades of being. Elly Bangs is a writer of both kaleidoscopic imagination and deep literary empathy, a cyberpunk star in the making.”
—Omar El Akkad, author of American War
“Chock-full of both big ideas and high-energy action, Bangs’s thrilling debut centers on a mad chase across a dystopian Earth in search of a collective consciousness that could save humanity from itself. Danae works as an often overlooked tech servant to a criminal syndicate that controls an underwater metropolis, but she is secretly a severed piece of a group mind that encompasses hundreds of people. Determined to get back to her larger self, she hires Alexei, a mercenary with a death-wish, to help her escape her employers. With Danae’s lover, Naoto, tagging along, the trio flees the city and heads to what was once Arizona—but they are doggedly pursued by bounty hunters and a shadowy figure from Danae’s past. . . . This gritty, thought-provoking cyberpunk adventure does the genre justice.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Delivers on the huge, mind-bending promise made in its first few pages.”
—The Times
“Elly Bangs has created a vivid, fascinating, and utterly believable future world, and she immerses the reader into it skillfully and seamlessly . . . Echoes of Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon or the Netflix series Sens8, but this is an entirely original and ambitious creation.”
—New York Journal of Books
“Breakneck pacing, non-stop action, and delightfully-damaged characters combine with some of the most intricate and clever worldbuilding I’ve seen in ages to make this an incredibly memorable debut.”
—Sam J. Miller, author of The Art of Starving
“Unity is a gorgeous post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel about relationships and civilisational collapse. It builds slowly, almost randomly, to what I felt to be a satisfying conclusion, showing that even the most hopeless situations can be overcome as long as even one person refuses to believe the future is outside of their control.”
—Aurealis Magazine
“The high-powered energy of such nth-gen cyberpunk as Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon.” —Locus
“Epic science fiction, and intimately personal at the same time, thanks to the clever and revolutionary trick of disassembling the individual subject.”
—Nick Mamatas, author of The People’s Republic of Everything
“Thousands of years in the future, the United States has fractured into various countries. Crossing the borders can be tricky, and violence is an easy way to settle disputes. Danae is a unique being: they are old and claim responsibility for saving humanity a few times, but they are in pieces. In order to reunite with their whole self, they must escape their current city. Danae and her lover Naoto hire an ex-mercenary, Alexi, to guide them and keep them safe as they attempt their reunion. Danae and Naoto show a softer side of the apocalypse as they love one another completely. Naoto supports and loves Danae, through the difficult—and probably fatal—journey. But with mercenaries and—Danae’s biggest fear—evangelicals around, the book has an end-of-the-world vibe. The apocalyptic landscape is terrifying, beautiful, and well thought out. Readers may very well draw parallels between this future-U.S. and our current reality.”
—Booklist
“Unity is a killer debut by a thrilling new writer. Trust me, you’re all going to be hearing a lot about Elly Bangs and this gleaming and gritty world she’s created. And cyberpunk fans? Put down the game controller and read this now. This is the real stuff.”
—Daryl Gregory, author of We Are All Completely Fine and Spoonbenders
“Danae is a woman of many secrets, chiefly that she isn’t a woman at all: She is many people in one body. It takes a while to get to the specifics of what exactly that means, mainly because Danae begins the novel escaping a rapidly collapsing futuristic underwater city with her partner, Naoto, and a hired gun named Alexei. Danae hires Alexei to escort her and Naoto back to dry land and across the climate change–ravaged former United States . . . stick around for the good stuff at the end.”
—Kirkus
“An intense and enthralling ride that kept me thinking long after I finished the last page.”
—Reviews in a Minute
“Elly Bangs’ Unity is a fascinating little novel, filled with unexpected turns and twists.”
—A Green Man Review
“Unity is a bold and impressive debut novel from author Elly Bangs . . . I did feel a sense of awe over Elly Bangs’ achievement. It’s a fantastic story and very capably told.”
—SF Crowsnest
“Highly recommended for all science fiction/cyberpunk fans! . . . The world building was superb, the two main characters were likeable despite their flaws, and the villains were unhinged and legitimately terrifying.”
—Planet Whileaway
“Unity completely lived up to its descriptions, and my expectations, and it ended up being one spectacular, wild ride. Not only is this novel exciting, but it’s also profoundly thoughtful, especially thinking about the intersection of technology and humanity, and the possible implications in our not-so-distant future.”
—Lovely Bookshelf
“Unity is a blistering post-apocalyptic interrogation of personhood and society. Elly Bangs brings grief, revelation, and humanity to bear in this incredible debut novel.”
—dave ring, editor of Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World That Wouldn’t Die
Elly Bangs was raised in a New Age cult and once rode her bicycle alone from Washington State to the Panama Canal. She lives in Seattle, where she spends her days fixing machines and her nights writing short stories, novellas, and novels—usually speculative fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, and uncategorized weirdness—with a thematic emphasis on longing, heartbreak, and the grim fate of humankind. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Escape Pod, and others, and she’s a graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2017). Learn more about her at elbangs.com, where you can use her “Story Premise Bot,” and discover A Pocket Guide to Nuclear War Survival & Preparedness.
Praise for Elly Bangs
On “Dandelion”
“A rather beautiful and hopeful story, for all that it’s more realistic in what might be possible in terms of space travel. A wonderful read!”
—Quick Sip Reviews
On “A Handful of Sky”
“Power, love, and hope are stitched together into a colorful and compelling whole.”
—Barnes & Noble
On “The Last Stellar Death Metal Opera”
“If you fail to read this story with a big old stupid grin on your face from the first page to the last you should probably stop reading things.”
—The 1000 Year Plan
Unity
Elly Bangs
“Unity is an astonishing debut, twisty and startling . . . an absorbing, thrilling ride.”
—New York Times
In a desperate escape, Danae and her lover Naoto hire the enigmatic ex-mercenary Alexei to guide them out of the imploding city. But for Danae to reunify, the three new fugitives will have to flee across the otherworldly beauty of the postapocalyptic Southwest. Evoking the gritty cyberpunk of Mad Max and the fluid idealism of Sense8, Unity is a spectacular new re-envisioning of identity. Breakout author Elly Bangs has created an expressive, philosophical, science-fiction thriller that expands upon consciousness itself.
Unity
by Elly Bangs
ISBN: Print ISBN: 9781616963422; Digital ISBN: 9781616963439
Published: April 2021
Available Format(s): Trade Paperback and Digital
“Unity is an astonishing debut, twisty and startling, demonstrating both the disciplined development of a long-gestated project and the raw, dynamic flashes of an author’s early work. It shows intense interest in the distance between conversation and communion . . . an absorbing, thrilling ride.”
—New York Times
“Imagine Neuromancer and Lilith’s Brood conceived a baby while listening to My Chemical Romance and then that baby was adopted by Ghost in the Shell and Blue Submarine no. 6. The baby’s name is Unity.”
—Meredith Russo, author of If I Were Your Girl
Evoking the gritty cyberpunk of Mad Max and the fluid idealism of Sense8, Unity is a spectacular new re-envisioning of humanity. Breakout author Elly Bangs has created an expressive, philosophical, science-fiction thriller that expands upon consciousness itself.
Danae is not only herself. She is concealing a connection to a grieving collective inside of her body. But while she labors as a tech servant in the dangerous underwater enclave of Bloom City, her fractured self cannot mend.
In a desperate escape, Danae and her lover Naoto hire the enigmatic ex-mercenary Alexei to guide them out of the imploding city.
But for Danae to reunify, the three new fugitives will have to flee across the otherworldly beauty of the postapocalyptic Southwest. Meanwhile, Danae’s warlord enemy, the Duke, and a strange new foe, the Borrower, already seek them at any price.
Check out Elly Bangs reading from Unity.
Aurealis Best Speculative Fiction of 2021
Washington Post Best SF, Fantasy, and Horror of 2021
The Times April 2021 Science Fiction Pick
2021 Locus Recommended Reading List
2022 Reader’s Advisory Reading List, shortlist
“Unity is an astonishing debut, twisty and startling, demonstrating both the disciplined development of a long-gestated project and the raw, dynamic flashes of an author’s early work. It shows intense interest in the distance between conversation and communion . . . an absorbing, thrilling ride.”
—New York Times
“Imagine Neuromancer and Lilith’s Brood conceived a baby while listening to My Chemical Romance and then that baby was adopted by Ghost in the Shell and Blue Submarine no. 6. The baby’s name is Unity.”
—Meredith Russo, author of If I Were Your Girl
“Unity manages to be simultaneously exciting and philosophical, a brilliant gut-punch of a novel. I cannot wait to see what Elly Bangs does next.”
—Kij Jonhson, author of At the Mouth of the River of Bees
“Unity is a wild firefight of a novel. But amidst the vivid dystopian worldbuilding—the undersea metropolises and scorched badlands—and all the breakneck action is something deeper, a philosophically and emotionally resonant exploration of what it means to carry multiplicities of ourselves, our myriad shades of being. Elly Bangs is a writer of both kaleidoscopic imagination and deep literary empathy, a cyberpunk star in the making.”
—Omar El Akkad, author of American War
“Chock-full of both big ideas and high-energy action, Bangs’s thrilling debut centers on a mad chase across a dystopian Earth in search of a collective consciousness that could save humanity from itself. Danae works as an often overlooked tech servant to a criminal syndicate that controls an underwater metropolis, but she is secretly a severed piece of a group mind that encompasses hundreds of people. Determined to get back to her larger self, she hires Alexei, a mercenary with a death-wish, to help her escape her employers. With Danae’s lover, Naoto, tagging along, the trio flees the city and heads to what was once Arizona—but they are doggedly pursued by bounty hunters and a shadowy figure from Danae’s past. . . . This gritty, thought-provoking cyberpunk adventure does the genre justice.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Delivers on the huge, mind-bending promise made in its first few pages.”
—The Times
“Elly Bangs has created a vivid, fascinating, and utterly believable future world, and she immerses the reader into it skillfully and seamlessly . . . Echoes of Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon or the Netflix series Sens8, but this is an entirely original and ambitious creation.”
—New York Journal of Books
“Breakneck pacing, non-stop action, and delightfully-damaged characters combine with some of the most intricate and clever worldbuilding I’ve seen in ages to make this an incredibly memorable debut.”
—Sam J. Miller, author of The Art of Starving
“Unity is a gorgeous post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel about relationships and civilisational collapse. It builds slowly, almost randomly, to what I felt to be a satisfying conclusion, showing that even the most hopeless situations can be overcome as long as even one person refuses to believe the future is outside of their control.”
—Aurealis Magazine
“The high-powered energy of such nth-gen cyberpunk as Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon.”
—Locus
“Epic science fiction, and intimately personal at the same time, thanks to the clever and revolutionary trick of disassembling the individual subject.”
—Nick Mamatas, author of The People’s Republic of Everything
“Thousands of years in the future, the United States has fractured into various countries. Crossing the borders can be tricky, and violence is an easy way to settle disputes. Danae is a unique being: they are old and claim responsibility for saving humanity a few times, but they are in pieces. In order to reunite with their whole self, they must escape their current city. Danae and her lover Naoto hire an ex-mercenary, Alexi, to guide them and keep them safe as they attempt their reunion. Danae and Naoto show a softer side of the apocalypse as they love one another completely. Naoto supports and loves Danae, through the difficult—and probably fatal—journey. But with mercenaries and—Danae’s biggest fear—evangelicals around, the book has an end-of-the-world vibe. The apocalyptic landscape is terrifying, beautiful, and well thought out. Readers may very well draw parallels between this future-U.S. and our current reality.”
—Booklist
“Unity is a killer debut by a thrilling new writer. Trust me, you’re all going to be hearing a lot about Elly Bangs and this gleaming and gritty world she’s created. And cyberpunk fans? Put down the game controller and read this now. This is the real stuff.”
—Daryl Gregory, author of We Are All Completely Fine and Spoonbenders
“Danae is a woman of many secrets, chiefly that she isn’t a woman at all: She is many people in one body. It takes a while to get to the specifics of what exactly that means, mainly because Danae begins the novel escaping a rapidly collapsing futuristic underwater city with her partner, Naoto, and a hired gun named Alexei. Danae hires Alexei to escort her and Naoto back to dry land and across the climate change–ravaged former United States . . . stick around for the good stuff at the end.”
—Kirkus
“An intense and enthralling ride that kept me thinking long after I finished the last page.”
—Reviews in a Minute
“Elly Bangs’ Unity is a fascinating little novel, filled with unexpected turns and twists.”
—A Green Man Review
“Unity is a bold and impressive debut novel from author Elly Bangs . . . I did feel a sense of awe over Elly Bangs’ achievement. It’s a fantastic story and very capably told.”
—SF Crowsnest
“Highly recommended for all science fiction/cyberpunk fans! . . . The world building was superb, the two main characters were likeable despite their flaws, and the villains were unhinged and legitimately terrifying.”
—Planet Whileaway
“Unity completely lived up to its descriptions, and my expectations, and it ended up being one spectacular, wild ride. Not only is this novel exciting, but it’s also profoundly thoughtful, especially thinking about the intersection of technology and humanity, and the possible implications in our not-so-distant future.”
—Lovely Bookshelf
“Unity is a blistering post-apocalyptic interrogation of personhood and society. Elly Bangs brings grief, revelation, and humanity to bear in this incredible debut novel.”
—dave ring, editor of Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World That Wouldn’t Die
Elly Bangs was raised in a New Age cult and once rode her bicycle alone from Washington State to the Panama Canal. She lives in Seattle, where she spends her days fixing machines and her nights writing short stories, novellas, and novels—usually speculative fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, and uncategorized weirdness—with a thematic emphasis on longing, heartbreak, and the grim fate of humankind. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Escape Pod, and others, and she’s a graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2017). Learn more about her at elbangs.com, where you can use her “Story Premise Bot,” and discover A Pocket Guide to Nuclear War Survival & Preparedness.
Praise for Elly Bangs
On “Dandelion”
“A rather beautiful and hopeful story, for all that it’s more realistic in what might be possible in terms of space travel. A wonderful read!”
—Quick Sip Reviews
On “A Handful of Sky”
“Power, love, and hope are stitched together into a colorful and compelling whole.”
—Barnes & Noble
On “The Last Stellar Death Metal Opera”
“If you fail to read this story with a big old stupid grin on your face from the first page to the last you should probably stop reading things.”
—The 1000 Year Plan
Visit Elly Bangs website and on Twitter.