Creators

Title ~ Creators
Series ~ Contributors, #0.5
Author ~ Nicole Ciacchella
Publisher ~ NPC Books
Published ~ 14 July 2012
Genre ~ Post-Apocalyptic/YA/Short

*Book source ~ Picked up for free on Amazon

My Rating ~ 4 bites and a nibble out of 5

The food system on Earth is collapsing despite the best efforts of the Job Creators and their staff of Contributors to find ways to feed the masses. The human race is about to be wiped out and the only way to save it is to choose the ones who will be admitted to the newly constructed Domes.

With the death of his father, 19-year-old Liang Zhang’s shoulders now have the unenviable responsibility of choosing who to allow into his company’s Dome. Each family, each person, is evaluated and he must make the final decision as to who lives and who dies because the Dome will only sustain 125,000 people and the population needs to be diverse to take care of the jobs that need doing. Every person needs to Contribute in order to qualify for the limited resources. I wouldn’t want to make those decisions. Would you? Liang Zhang sure doesn’t, but he must. Time is running out.

After reading Contributor I saw that there was a prequel short available, one that describes how and why the Domes came about. This short story is filled with tension, lots of tension and a thousand, a million, terrible choices that must be made. To top it off those choices land squarely on a 19-year-old. I can’t imagine making those choices at the age I am now, making them at 19 seems grossly unfair. To be put into that position before you have had a chance to really live will shape a person for the rest of their life. But will it be a good thing or a bad thing? Will it give the person a God-complex, break his mind or remind him that life is precious and those left behind should never be forgotten? What do you think it would do to you?