The Jazz

Melissa Scott

See the full ranking

Melissa Scott won the John W. Campbell Award and was twice winner of the Lambda Award for best novel. Tin Lizzy, a respected Jazz artist with a checkered past, is a theatrical Web site designer who does backgrounds for Jazz productions. When a nifty new script shows up on the web, Lizzy is surprised to learn it came from a teenage boy named Keyz. It turns out Keyz used his parents' access codes to borrow a Hollywood studio's editing program—the true, hidden source of the studio's success. Now the studio head wants to lock him in jail and throw away the key. So Lizzy rescues him and takes him on the road, across the altered landscape of twenty-first century USA, trying to stay one step ahead of the police and the vengeance of a megalomaniac CEO. The Jazz is a road chase novel of the future, filled with shady characters, close calls, and colorful neat ideas.