KID: A History of the Future is the debut YA novel from actor & screen-writer Sebastian de Souza, marking the launch of a major time-travelling, dystopian YA trilogy which sees our physical and virtual worlds spectacularly collide. Join the Offliner movement. Use the past to save our future.
Sebastian, who is currently starring in Channel 4’s Golden Globe nominated comedy-drama The Great alongside Elle Fanning and fellow Skins alumni Nicholas Hoult – has been building KID’s intricate universe for the past five years, inspired by the young climate change activists making politicians sit up and listen. It is activist fiction with a call to arms: to bring climate change back to the top of our agenda, to ‘log out’ from our dependence social media and technology – a call to live life not through the phones in our palms, but to be resourceful, be creative, be imaginative. To keep the human spirit thriving.
Ahead of publication, chapters from KID: A History of the Future will be released weekly on the Offliner Universe to read for free, alongside a weekly podcast of the serialised story read by Sebastian and Sadie Soverall (The Winx Saga, Netflix). An original pod-opera and ‘Stillspeare’ collector’s edition are set to follow later in 2021. Join The Offliner movement: www.offlineruniverse.com | @OfflinerUniverse | #Offliner
London, 2060: Following a series of deadly pandemics, devastating environmental disasters and a violent surge in cyber terrorism, the UN has made it compulsory for every tax paying citizen to login to the Perspecta Universe: a totally safe, pollution free, environmentally friendly virtual reality world.
Eighteen years later, ‘The Upload’ is complete, and billions of people all around the world exist in massive dormitory complexes surrounding the major cities, all totally unconscious of the crumbling world around them. Apart from the renegades, the ‘Offliners’ who live in London’s silent wasteland, making the disused Piccadilly Circus Tube station their home: a fully self-sufficient, subterranean community.
When Josh ‘Kid’ Jones, a young Offliner, discovers that an antiquated piece of technology called an ‘iPhone left to him by his father seems able to communicate with the past through social media. He strikes up a friendship with Isabel Parry, a 16-year-old living in 2021, and the two begin communicating through time and space via Instagram. But what Kid and Izzy don’t realise is that by doing so they are not only changing their own fate, but also the fate of the rest of the world…
Sebastian de Souza is an actor, producer, screenwriter and musician. Sebastian can currently be seen on Channel 4, playing the leading role of Leo in the Hulu Original series The Great, opposite Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult, written by Oscar-nominated and BAFTA award-winning writer Tony MacNamara (The Favourite). Previous roles include Gareth in the BBC/Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney’s best-selling novel Normal People directed by Oscar-nominated Lenny Abrahamson (Room); in Netflix’s Medici, playing the iconic painter Sandro Botticelli; Alfonso d’Aragona in Showtime’s Emmy award-winning The Borgias, opposite Jeremy Irons and Holliday Grainger; and in the multiple BAFTA award-winning Skins, as lead Matty Levan. Sebastian has also played the lead role of Rafa in Paramount Pictures’ Brit-Crime thriller Plastic, opposite Will Poulter and Alfie Allen, and can currently be seen on Netflix playing Edmund in Ophelia opposite Naomi Watts, Daisy Ridley and Clive Owen. As a writer, at the age of 20 Sebastian wrote the feature film Kids In Love, which he also starred in opposite Will Poulter and Cara Delevingne. The film was produced by Ealing Studios, the oldest and most prestigious studio in the UK. He wrote and directed the short ‘Evelyne’s World’, starring Evelyne Brochu at Korda Studios in Budapest. His debut YA novel KID: A History of the Future is published by Offliner Press in Spring 2021. © Finn Constantine
