Whatever Happened to Genie Magee?
Hammer & Tong - 2025
ASIN : B0DZTLNJHW
ISBN-13: 978-1-7385181-1-1
USA link
'A welcome and ultimately reassuring novel about life, memory, and friendship.' Amazon
When visiting the USA a year ago I told a friend that I was going to write another sequel to The Repossession of Genie Magee series, and they said all your readers for that first book will be about thirty now. They aren’t reading YA anymore. They want sex, fantasy, and dragons if they’re reading at all. And it is true, but just maybe some of them will want to know what happened next. I woke up one morning in Miami, went for a walk and sat down on the terrace of the Pérez Gallery to drink coffee overlooking the bay. I kept thinking, what would Genie Magee be like now? Did she survive?
It’s fourteen years since so many kids disappeared from Spurlake – some to be found, but then disappeared all over again. It was a scandal at the time, forced the closure of the experimental labs locally called The Fortress and led to half the town leaving to seek jobs elsewhere.
Genie survived all the horror of being teleported, hunted, betrayed and just when she’d thought she was safe the apple farm burned to the ground. Her refuge and security all gone.
I began to write.
Why would anyone start reading at No 4? Good question. By all mean go find No 1: The Repossession Genie Magee followed by The Hunting of Genie Magee and The Heaviness. That would be normal, but Whatever Happened to Genie Magee is a different kind of book. I think it can be read as a standalone because this is fourteen years later. What happened to Genie after her protector and mentor Marshall died? Did Rian stay with her or go to college? I wanted to know what had happened to her, in fact felt it was my responsibility to discover how she had fared, especially considering all the terrible things that had happened to her.
Psychologically, Genie and her fellow survivors Miho, Renée should be in a kind of permanent meltdown but if they had survived and somehow grown up and found a role in life what were they like now? What repercussions were taking place in their heads and what about their physical wellbeing? These were the first (and last) to be successfully teleported. Are there defects? What is their life expectancy? How are they coping? All this I felt needed to be explored.
We are all familiar with teleportation via Star Trek and other sci-fi shows. Few ever explore the incredible amount of power needed to digitise human DNA (let alone their uniforms and weapons) and reassemble it all in the right order. The characters in these shows think nothing of it. It’s as normal as walking. But frankly it’s never going to happen as each time you transmit you would be a copy of a copy and there are so many risks with also transmitting their memories. All this was discussed in the earlier books, but I especially worry about the psychological effects over time. Sure, this not the place to discuss this – we’re not meant to, we just except it works and ask no questions. But Genie and her friends were the first successful teleporters. If you’ve read the book, you’ll realise they aren’t ageing and that places an incredible value upon their heads.
So, this then isn’t a YA novel, it’s a story about one or more characters at a different stage in their lives. Just like you or me. We all reach different stages and to cope you have to compartmentalise what has gone before. I know it’s fashionable to dwell on the past, come to terms with the terrors of teenhood or those traumatic heartbreaks. Everyone needs therapy now it seems.
But Genie Magee is resilient to say the least. She had a terrible childhood, a wicked mother, her abusive father killed by her grandmother (in self-defense I might add). These were not good portents for her future. But initially she doesn’t remember all this. Because that’s how this book begins. She has lost her memory after a terrible car crash.
Genie Magee then has a future. How long that might be, will be interesting. She has spurned therapy. In any case she has a secret coping mechanism in the guise of her Grandmother Munby.
You might think none of this will ever happen but then along comes A.G.I and suddenly there are no taboos anymore, no restraints. If teleportation of humans is ever going to start up, I think right now you can imagine that there really are unscrupulous billionaires out there who would be willing to try... just don’t be a volunteer.
© Sam Hawksmoor May 2025
https://www.samhawksmoor.com
 Whatever Happened to Genie Magee? *Extract
USA Amazon link
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