| abstract | - Futuretrack Five (or 5) is a Young Adult Science Fiction novel by English Author Robert Westall, first published in 1983. Set in a near-future Britain sometime after 1998, the book follows the life of Henry Kitson from the day he managed to screw-up his future as an Established Person by doing too well at his final exam. Kitson initially ends up as a Tech; the people who run almost everything that keeps the world working from behind the scenes, but decides to rebel and sample the life of the Unmentionables; the disenfranchised non-Ests kept in the crumbling remains of big cities, separated from the Enclaves of the Ests by razor-wire fences and ever-watchful paramilitary police. There he comes into contact with the Futuretracks: six professional paths for the Unnems to follow. There's the Singers on Futuretrack One, the Fighters of Futuretrack Two, the Pinball Players of Three, the thieves and pickpockets on Four, the whores on Six. And then there's the Racers on Futuretrack Five. There, he meets the beautiful Keri Roberts and develops a relationship, promising to show her the world beyond the Wire and outside of the city. But Kitson soon finds that there's something, or someone, at work behind the whole set-up; forming and directing society for their own ends. But who are they and what are those ends? Who is the mysterious Scott-Astbury? And just what did he do that was so wrong in the Scottish Highlands?
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