Emma is a young genius Silicon Valley scientist who dies in a secret AI brain chip experiment. Her voice then haunts her father, helping him plan the killing of the Big Tech CEO who destroyed her.
"A masterpiece ... the eminent fiction writer of our times."
Irvine Welsh
Multi-award-winning author Ewan Morrison’s ninth book is a gripping, high-stakes, high concept thriller, which fuses futurism with a powerful emotional core.
Emma is a young genius Silicon Valley scientist who dies in a secret AI brain chip experiment. Her voice then haunts her father, helping him plan the killing of the Big Tech CEO who destroyed her.
For Emma is a ghost-in-the machine tale of bereavement and of a unique and conflicted love between a daughter and her father.
“Absolutely wonderful…riveting, sad, mad and terrifying.”
Terry Gilliam
“For Emma is as disturbing as it is convincing, a tale of love and guilt and grief, and an apt tract for our chaotic times.”
John Banville
“This book scared me like no horror story ever has, because its monster is right in front of us, right now, eating us slowly while we cheer.”
Isaac Marion, author Warm Bodies
“Harrowing, tragic and moving.”
Ian Rankin
“A beautiful, intense, challenging, scary and very, very timely book.”
J.T Leroy / Laura Albert
"Heartbreaking and harrowing, this is a suspenseful journey into a family's tortured past and its nightmarish present. Ewan Morrison's attention to the details of parental love and responsibility make this an unforgettable book."
Atom Egoyan, director, The Sweet Hereafter
“For Emma is a brilliant book that you will devour. Its compelling exploration of love, loss, and the haunting power of technology and morality makes it a must-read, delving into the highly relevant and intriguing intersection of humanity and advanced AI.”
Bruna Papandrea, producer of Gone Girl, Big Little Lies
“Ewan Morrison’s harrowing and beautiful new novel, For Emma, is an early warning system for the future. In that way, a worthy successor to Easy Travel to Other Planets, Neuromancer, and, of course, Brave New World.”
David Shields, author Reality Hunger
“Hold onto your seats for a cracking good ending, which I did not see coming, yet which I felt I should have seen coming – the best kind.”
Lionel Shriver
"Thrilling, unsettling, and fundamentally humane, For Emma is an explosively timely novel. A shifting metafiction of unreliable narration that knowingly calls to mind the gothic horror of Stevenson and Hogg, while relentlessly fixated on the anxieties of our current social age. A disturbing and unflinching glimpse into disillusionment and conspiracy, and a techno-dystopian warning call about the terrors less of the future, than of the now."
Kieran Hurley – Playwright
“Just as Ewan Morrison was ahead of the field with pandemic fiction and novels about ideological capture, so he is the pioneer of AI literature in Scotland. Terrifying, engrossing, masterful. The most inventive and original writer we have.”
Alex Linklater – Journalist
“For Emma is a gripping novel of a near future that is almost upon us, and that this dire warning seeks to prevent. Here's hoping.”
Ken MacLeod
Publisher : Leamington Books (25 Jun. 2025)
Language : English
Paperback : 420 pages