Ride Sally Ride: Sex Rules

It's two decades into the future. Ace Hartwick, a Christian college student, has just destroyed his neighbor's sexbot, a machine named Sally, legally recognized as a wife, in a trash compactor. Now he's on trial for murder. The jury is fixed. Everyone hates his brand of Christianity. And the fragile future version of America has no patience for his convictions. So goes the setup of Douglas Wilson's darkly comic satirical novel: a gleefully provocative exploration of love, technology, cultural collapse, and the peculiar courage it takes to refuse to back down when the whole world calls you crazy. Wilson, already labeled "the controversialist" by Christianity Today, and then handed its Best Fiction award in 2012 for Evangellyfish, pulls absolutely no punches here. Sex, hypocrisy, providence, the crack-up of American civilization: all of it gets the Wilson treatment, which means it's funny, sharp, uncomfortable, and impossible to put down. His darkly amused insights will make some readers furious. Others will laugh. Most will do both at the same time. But no one will be bored. Ride Sally Ride is a satire for the age of artificial everything, and it hits harder than you'd expect.