Chama, NM is a uniquely character-driven novel which starts as a modern-day look at the American fear of terrorism and viral pandemics and ends as a tale of near-future cyber fiction, filled with ubiquitous nanotech, sentient holograms, dreamspace (a virtual reality that only occurs while dreaming), and transcendence away from what it means to be a human being. When the city of Chama, New Mexico becomes the inadvertent target of a deadly weaponized spoor, it becomes ground zero for a rapidly-spreading pathogen called ataxia nvervosa. The ataxia spoors settle in the brain of the infected and blur the distinction between themselves and the world around them. Victims go mad, unable to tell the difference between their body, the air around it, or the noise of a car's engine hurtling in their direction. Everyone infected dies within days.
The ataxia spans the globe like ink in a glass of water, and millions perish. The village of Chama becomes a new Manhattan Project, but one focusing on medical and nano technologies instead of nuclear energy. The village is injected with life as doctors, specialists, scientists, and soldiers rebuild the town around the hastily erected Chama National Laboratories (CNL).
As Doctors Victoria Chamberlain and Jasper White Porch lead CNL's revolutionary nano-science, soldiers such as Major Finn help keep the sick away from town while recruiting scientists and even develop a government-sanctioned black market for the top-secret lab. Some people are there to help find a cure, others are human test subjects, and some are even reluctant rock stars.
While CNL works toward a cure, however, they also unleash side effects. The nanotechnology they develop could very well lead to ataxia's end, but it also infects eleven Navajo children with a set of radical neurological gifts that allow them to change humanity.
Each chapter focuses its narrative on a different person (seventeen in total) to give a sweeping look at how a diverse nation deals with the tragedy of the ataxia and limps forward, hoping for a cure. The characters all head inexorably to Chama, the growing village which acts as a central character around which the plot unfolds. Chama, NM is a novel that explores the growth of the city as much as the individual. This compelling narrative covers a decade of time as the ataxia grows alongside the village of Chama, all pushing toward a post-human world.
10% of all proceeds of The Sixth Paradigm novels will be given to scholarships dedicated to helping education on The Navajo Nation.
