Amped

Amped is a science fiction novel by the American writer Daniel H. Wilson, published in June 2012.

The technology in the book is a set of implants that began as a way of treating mental disability and ended as an advantage, which means that the people who fight against them are not only frightened of machinery but of a hierarchy they cannot compete with. Owen was operated on by his own father, a surgeon involved in developing the devices, and his whole adult life has been built on the assumption that his implant is a piece of medical history rather than a marker of belonging. When the court's decision arrives, the ordinary arrangements of his work and his neighbourhood come apart, and what he discovers about the device in his own head is worse than the legal change. Wilson wrote the novel after Robopocalypse and made a point of changing the scale of the disaster, since a legal ruling that turns a medical condition into a social category can empty out a life as thoroughly as any machine uprising, and the book's interest is in how quickly the people around Owen adjust to treating him as an enemy.