Young adult, early-mid 80s

[Jo Zebedee]

I've tried this before but it was a while ago and we have loads of new members. Here goes, everything I can remember:

The main character is a bloke, about seventeen with, irrc, green hair.
The society are programmed to obey without free will, but some of them are still free thinkers, and the mc is one of them
There is a scene with an escalator where there's a pile up due to the non-thinkers not stepping past the first person who fell - the mc steps past it
I think he ends up going on the run as he's exposed as a free thinker, with a female companion
It may have been a female author
The version I had was hardback (probably a UK author, as borrowed from the library) and showed the mc on the front cover.

Any bells, anyone?

 

[Michael Colton]

It is not ringing a bell for me, but you might try the BookSleuth forums over at AbeBooks if you have tried here before and nobody recognized it.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I'll have a go, thanks. They're a new one for me and a good one to know of.

 

[Michael Colton]

One of the benefits to AbeBooks is that a lot of booksellers are there - which tend to be people that are less involved in reader/writer forums. At least from my experience. So you may have a new 'subset' of people ask, in a way.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I know of Abe books and use them quite a lot, but their search forum is a new one.

One word of warning on Abe - some of their booksellers charge way over the market-value, especially for collectable books (I saw a Heaney priced on there for about three times its real value), so it's always worth searching through the lists.

It's really irking me this book because I have a photographic memory and I can remember the cover in good detail right down to the font style and colour, but can't bring up the title. It wasn't even that good a book, but just one that stuck in my mind. Grrr.

 

[Michael Colton]

I have the same thing with trying to remember the details of arguments by philosophers. It will drive me bonkers if I cannot remember a specific step in the process and have to go searching for wherever they laid it out.

And yes, I am aware that AbeBooks is very much a 'post your listings, everybody!' sort of place. I have some booksellers I trust but no longer live near that I check prices with before ordering anything.

 

[Danny McG]

I Appreciate this is an old thread but I have some memories of a story like this. Was this society controlled by a computer overmind ? people were told when and what to eat, when to sleep, when to breed etc ? Did it even control their hormone levels so men didn't grow facial hair and women didn't develop breasts? - there was an ominous title starting with 'S' for the ones who looked for free-thinkers. any of that seem familiar or am I thinking of another story?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Thanks, Danny. I can't remember a computer overmind, per se, but there was definitely some form of high level control. I also don't remember the facial hair etc. But the 'S' = freethinkers rings huge bells. I'll let that sit for a day or two and hope my subconscious makes the extra leap to what the term was. Jo

 

[Danny McG]

I was crossing my memories with Perfect Day by Ira Levin. however his tale doesn't have the S people who look for free thinkers. if only I could remember ........