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gaaah. I've been trying to remember the name of a science fiction kids book I read years ago for a couple of days now and it's driving me bananas. I'd also quite like to read it as i remember it being interesting..
somebody must know... bear with me as my memories are rather garbled, think i read it in primary school...
Novel opens with the protagonist, a young 'woman' on some distant planet about to graduate from some academy... she's taking an oath and an initiation and I think there's some scene where a medeal is hung round her neck to siginfy membership of the academy. Having been trained in various skills including telepathy, telekinesis, languages etc etc, she and her fiance are graudating and are sent on different missions. (think her name's ilena/elena/irena ?)
The function of the academy is to send teams to planets which are about to discover interstellar travel, the agents being someway between anthropologists and intervention forces.
The theory is that when planets have the technological capacity for space travel, they also have the capacity to annihiliate themselves and that often two opposing regimes enter an arms race and as a by product discover the technology for space travel. And if all goes well, will abandom intergovernmental rivalries/potential armageddon to concentrate on this.
The academy sends observers/agents to these planets to observe them as they negotiate this process and tries to influence events so as to bring about this conclusion...
The novel follows the girl as she's sent to a planet as part of such a team, she's drugged to induce amnesia and then dropped outside a city in one of the two rival regimes, which as I remember it was a pretty typically depicted dictator-led state... secret police, monolithic leader figure etc.. she takes part in some meeting of an underground resistance group i think, but discovers to her digust that their resistance takes the form of taking drugs and 'dropping out' of sight...
Can't remember much more aside from that most of the narrative consists of her telling the events that led up to her current situation of being held captive by the secret police who try out various interrogation techniques, incluidng sensory deprivation (which i think serves only to enhance her telepathic link with another agent). And that I think thre were some quite graphic descriptions of torture, electrocution etc
I can remember all this but I can't for the life of me remember the title.... 
HELP! |
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