BookList - Carl Hays
Would the world be a better place if everyone took a standard morality test before being offered a chance for success in life? In Oberndorf's slim but thoroughly probing second novel, this question--and its thorny contemplation--are explored through the eyes of Karl, a twenty-first-century adolescent on the brink of high school graduation. As a prerequisite to acceptance by a university and securing a job in economically precarious times, Karl must face three simulated moral dilemmas while strapped in a "dreamchair" and be grilled on his morally revealing decisions. Yet before the fateful day arrives, Karl finds himself already mired in ethical considerations: his girlfriend may be pregnant and his recent visit to a local bordello may jeopardize his test results even though, as only Karl himself knows, nothing happened. Writing in a deceptively simple style, Oberndorf perfectly scales his philosophical speculations to the workings of the adolescent mind and with penetrating insight quietly shatters another utopian ideal--the notion that morality can ever be taught.

Genre: Science Fiction