The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

by D.G. Compton

Book Overview

A prescient 1970s sci-fi novel about death, celebrity, and the ubiquity of reality television, and the basis for the movie Death Watch.

Katherine Mortenhoe lives in a near future very similar to the present day. Only in her time, dying from anything but old age is unheard of; death has been cured. So when Katherine is diagnosed with a terminal brain disease brought on by an inability to process an ever increasing volume of sensory...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590179714
• ISBN13: 9781590179710
• Release Date: July 2016
• Publisher: New York Review of Books
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Prescient and Brilliant Book to Film

This enormously provocative book, prescient in that it makes the current "real life" dreck on the tube mere faint copies of itself, should be read. It is a Bad New World out there, and DC had it right, alas. And his effort was made grander by the brilliant Bertrand Tavernier, with a cast to die for, pun intended, became Death Watch, now shamefully out of print and rarely seen in the film and video world.

Masterpiece on our very near future

The amusement industry, at the end of the 20th century, is forced to make ever more sensational program's. And what could be more moving and gripping, then a very private report of the dying process of a young woman, Katherine, who doesn't know that she's been filmed, by Rod "the man with the eyes". Who, with the oldest trics and the newest equipment, does everything to get the best shots. But, then, some things turn out to be not exactly what they seemed to be. And surely everything is not what they had hoped for. An intelligently written book that shows us what our society can become within the next 5 to 10 years. Compton has an eye for details, for drama and for the human interchanges. A masterpiece! (also published as: "The continuous Katherine Mortenhoe"