The Wellstone by Wil McCarthy

 

This is the second book in a series.  It can be read by itself.

 

In this story, two future technologies play important roles.  A vast variety of items are made out of "wellstone".  That is a substance that is basically like a scaffold into which one can control other "pseudo-atoms" being added or removed in desired arrangements.  This allows objects to be changed on command or according to internal routines.  This provides versatility and the ability to make what you need when you need it.

 

The second technology is "faxing".  This is the scanning, transmission and reproduction of people and objects.  A person can enter a "fax machine" at one location and come out of a "fax" somewhere else.  You can instruct the fax machine to make duplicates of yourself.  Once you've been scanned into the fax machine, the scanned image of you can be analyzed, and then aspects of disease and aging can be removed before you exit the system - as a result everyone is effectively immortal. 

 

So, it is a time and place of programmable matter, teleportation, replicators and immortality.  From the point of view of some of the children of the privileged, at least the immortality part is a point of frustration.  Their parents will never die or even age enough to make them retire.  The youths will never gain their own power and will always be viewed as children.

 

We have teenage-or-so angst and discontent nudged a notch higher among some of the children - especially those of the elite.  The story centers on a group of 15 youths who were sent to a "summer camp" on a tiny artificial planet.  There they are isolated and forced to live relatively rustic lives.  The group includes the prince of the solar system, who becomes their leader in trying to break out of the camp.

 

The largest section of the book is about them putting together a makeshift spaceship with a light sail.  Using that, they hope to reach somewhere they can use a fax machine to get back to Earth.  While they are clever and manage to do quite a lot, there are some important factors they fail to take into account before leaving in the spaceship.

 

The focus on youths, their status in the society and their efforts to find a place in the world might make this a possibility as a Young Adult book.  However, the level of profanity might prevent it from being officially labeled that way. 

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