What would a teenage Benjamin Franklin do with an iPhone after he discovers porn? From Philip K. Dick Award winning author Meg Elison comes this ingenious satire of U.S. history and modern technocracy gone terribly, terribly wrong.

“Relentlessly, brutally, scathingly, funny. I’d expect nothing less from the one and only Meg Elison.”
—Sarah Gailey, author of Spread Me

The trouble starts when a curious young man finds a smartphone in his privy. The problem is, it’s supposed to be the year 1750.

The Antediluvian Society—a shadowy cabal of right-wing billionaires—is fed up with a country they cannot fully control or understand. So they have done what any reasonable American patriots would do: Clone the Founding Fathers and raise them in secrecy. The plan, unbeknownst to the boys, is for them to restore America to its “original glory.”

Ben takes his technological discovery to his brothers, Thomas, John, and George. The boys have been raised on an isolated island plantation by Mary Libertas, a firm but kind woman, and Jeff Hancock, their de facto father. But the idyllic life is far too dull for young men. The boys have been chafing at the restrictions upon them (especially Tom, who has impregnated yet another of the servants). Hancock is complaining to the Society that it’s well past the time to tell the boys where they come from and what they must do.

Unfortunately for their keepers, the young men now have a phone…and many other notions.

Seamlessly combining science fiction and history with sharp, witty commentary, Meg Elison has once again shown why she is one of speculative fiction’s most exciting voices.

Bestselling writer Meg Elison is the author of The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, winner of the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award. The sequel, The Book of Etta, was a PKD finalist in 2018. Both books were on the long list for the Otherwise Award. Her third novel, The Book of Flora, was published in 2019. In 2020, she published her first young adult novel, Find Layla, with Skyscape. It was named one of Vanity Fair’s best books of the year. Her first collection, Big Girl, with PM Press, contains the Locus Award-winning novelette, The Pill. Her thriller novel, Number One Fan, was published by MIRA Books in 2022. An essayist and satirist, Elison has published nonfiction in McSweeney’s, Electric Literature, Tor.com, The Wild Hunt, and Psychopomp. Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley. She is married to the cartoonist Colin Lidston, and lives in the Berkshires.