ON WINGS OF SONG

Magnum paperback, 1981. Cover illustration: Chris Moore.

"The twenty-first century in the United States. 

Society ranges from the extremes of megadecadent New York to the bleakly repressive and religiously obsessed mid-western states like Iowa. A future where the ultimate trip is to release the spirit through singing and fly, leaving the body behind in suspension. But in Iowa singing and music are taboo. 

Daniel Weinrib grows up in Iowa, and as a teenager is sent to Spirit Lake detention centre for circulating a radical newspaper - a prison without bars where each prisoner carries an electrically controlled explosive in his stomach. 

Although embittered by this experience, Daniel is determined to learn to fly. His struggle leads him through the grotesque extremes of the country in which he lives."