uncovers Synchronics’ plot to inflate prices on the Word Exchange by polluting the Dictionary with nefarious neologisms, and he barely escapes with his life. To contain the word flu contagion, nations are closing their borders to Americans, but Ana arrives in London just in time. From there, she is followed all the way to Oxford, captured, and imprisoned in silent quarantine for three days before finding her father under the protection of the Oxford English Dictionary. Major themes Information technology "The Word Exchange insists readers think critically about how digital media is controlled and how language could be usurped by technology." While in the novel, dictionaries are burned, printed books usually get distributed, enabling the persistence of some copies, while the content of digital databases remain centrally controlled by publishers, hence they are subject to manipulation at the discretion of the owner. Even with "Memes" affecting the way people think and learn, the very idea of cornering the market for words depends on shifting from the immutability of printed texts to the fluidity of the all digital world. "I want my novel to be part of the ongoing conversation we’re having in our culture about the degree to which we want the intrusion of these devices into our lives," Graedon said, "because it’ll continue to happen, but we have control over it. I just wanted to offer a window onto what might happen if things went a little bit wrong." Development history Graedon's initial inspiration for the novel was an experience while she was in college, a fire that started in a neighbor's house burned her apartment, including all her books, leading her to contemplate loss of the printed word. "Losing all my books got me thinking about the ephemerality of words and language," Graedon said, "and also the significance of these cultural artifacts such as dictionaries, and the ways in which they link us to other consciousnesses, and to the past and future." During the six years she was writing the novel, Graedon said, she had to revise constantly in order to keep up with the rapid development of technology -- "amending details to accommodate each new digital breakthrough—from self-driving automobiles, to videogame technology that allows users to move avatars with their minds, to Google Glass (which was remarkably similar to Graedon's initial iteration of the Nautilus, before she felt compelled to change it)." Reception As the debut novel