AXION: The Memory Rights Uprising

AXION: The Memory Rights Uprising is a provocative cautionary tale set in the very near future when dramatic breakthroughs in neuroscience and the first complete molecular decoding of a human memory triggers an unthinkable gold rush to privatise human memory.

A high stakes courtroom battle parallels the dramatic rise of a militant memory rights movement which will stop at nothing to block the world's first 'memory tax'. The neurotech giant Cortx will stop at nothing to impose one.

Gil Hinchliff is a renegade attorney prepared to risk his life and sanity to expose the grisly atrocities of Cortx as they conduct human memory experiments off the grid of ethical oversight or accountability. Cortx is determined to use the courts and patent law to stake a property claim - and an ongoing financial claim - to a class of enhanced human memories which they insist belong to them.

The Memory Rights Alliance (MRA) - co-founded by Hinchliff - is at the vanguard of a new dimension of human rights battles on a global scale.

About the author

David Shulman is a BAFTA and TV Academy Award winning documentary producer and director. Originally from New York City, David moved to London in 2000 in the context of a U.S./UK Fulbright Fellowship. By 2005, he became one of the few Americans to gain a staff position at the BBC where for 10 years he produced and directed science, history, and arts programs.

David conceived the format and directed the first two seasons of the long running 'Reality TV' series Rough Science which was produced by the BBC in association with Open University scientists. It became one of the most successful and acclaimed science series in Open University history and is distributed globally.

A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in NYC, as an artist and experimental filmmaker, David has long been driven by a deep curiosity about how social systems work and a passion for social justice. His earliest experimental films focused on linguistic dimensions of memory, cognition, and consciousness - and were exhibited at the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Anthology Film Archives, and the New Museum. They were distributed by Castelli and Sonnabend Galleries.

David has made acclaimed feature documentaries about racism in American Network news coverage of urban violence - Race Against Prime Time (PBS), the pivotal role of Black landowners in Mississippi during the civil rights revolution of the 1960's - Dirt & Deeds in Mississippi (Smithsonian Channel), stories of resistance inside Nazi concentration camps - Auschwitz Untold: In Colour (Channel Four/History Channel), a BAFTA winning portrait of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat - Basquiat: Rage to Riches (PBS/BBC) and a feature documentary about digital art on the blockchain - NFT:WTF? (Netflix)

'AXION: The Memory Rights Uprising' is a story that combines several areas of passionate interest to the author: memory, social justice, and notions of property rights.