The Adult Winter Reading Program is an annual initiative of the Library aimed at encouraging leisure reading among adults. Every year, the program advances a different theme (such as Altered States) as a means of recommending literary classics and overlooked gems to the reading public.
The timeline of human history presents innumerable crossroads, junctions where individual actions proved decisive – perhaps even more so if these actions were altered even slightly. This premise has proved irresistible for authors of such stature as Mark Twain, Margaret Atwood, and Ray Bradbury. Novelists habitually manipulate time and transform our world, twisting its shape and cultures and characters to conform to their own imaginations and authorial ambitions. The resulting conflicts are insightful and rewarding – and the best examples ring true.
Altered States features masterful writers from a wide spectrum of genres to provide unique perspectives on what our lives might look like if humanity took a different turn – or takes a dive in the future.