Reading Post - Post #2

Question: What is the setting of the novel? Is the setting important or could the novel happen anywhere?

Answer: The setting begins in London but rapidly shifts to New York City. The time of the novel is definitely the present - near future where the presence of nanotechnology is not widely known but still exists. An interesting thought is that it could be a little in the future because all the political leaders in the book do not correspond to their real life counterparts. The setting of the novel was in my opinion selected very carefully. The Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation tower, known as 'the Tulip', was located in NYC mostly because the UN is in NYC. This way, the AFGC could keep track of all the political leaders that they were planning to take control of. In no other city is there a major event where many of the world's leaders would gather in one spot than in NYC's UN building. The final battle of the book would have many of the AFGC's twitchers in one spot to wire the brains of many world leaders who all reside in foreign countries but have gathered in NYC. Nowhere else could the events of the book have taken place. If the time of the book were a little in the past, the technology of nanobots would probably not be able to exist. To store data in a chip invisible to the naked eye would be virtually impossible. If the time was set in the future, the presence of nanotechnology would probably be widely known and used by the government and other major corporations. In the novel, both sides would do anything to keep the technology hidden to avoid the consequences of having nanotechnology be leaked into the world. This once again provides evidence that the novel could not have taken place anywhere outside of New York or in any other time period.