George

Ever thought about why you're the person you are? This book will give you a whole new perspective on identity. In essence, we are the person we remember being. But what if those memories could be altered? A bump on the head, or some traumatic occurrence could cause a temporary bout of amnesia. In such an event we would not get up in the morning and go to our jobs, because we simply wouldn't remember doing it. Our memories virtually control us. We busy ourselves with the daily routines that we remember. If we woke up one morning with no memory of going to a particular job, we would not go to that job. George is a concept story, based on the idea that memories can be deliberately manipulated. Its central character, Steve Hull, believes that a top-secret government office is conducting a devious experiment in memory engineering, and that he himself has been selected to be the guinea pig for the project. He is convinced that they are undertaking such an unusual endeavor for the express purpose of learning how to completely control people. His rationale is based on a very simple, and very sinister, premise: if you could make someone remember being a slave, they would become a slave. The ability to manipulate a person's memories would truly be one of the greatest powers that technology (along with the right pharmacology) could ever achieve. Anyone who wielded such power could indeed rule the world.