Invention Is a Mother by Rob Brownell

RESPONSIBILITY IS OVERRATED. A recently graduated and happily unemployed engineer, Shaughnessy shirks responsibility whenever possible. He coasts through life, sidestepping every opportunity to follow in his father Walton’s footsteps, until Walton begins to suspect that he has MFD (Mysterious Fatal Disease). The family coerces Shaughnessy to impersonate his father as a senior engineer at Critical Think Inc. There, he is immediately entangled in the development of an irrational consumer product. Pressured to innovate in the face of absurd challenges and fantastical demands, Shaughnessy teeters on the edge between breakthrough and breakdown. In a near future where you are what you wear, can an idling young engineer successfully navigate corporate startup culture, accept his family’s medical crisis, and harness his full creative potential? Fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Good Omens will enjoy laugh-out-loud collisions with the limits of reason in Invention Is a Mother.

Adult • Literary Fiction • Humor and Satire • Science Fiction/Comic and Light SF • Science Fiction • Diversity Representation/Disability