Mockingbird — Walter Tevis

This sci-fi masterpiece is “a moral tale that has elements of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Superman, and Star Wars” (Los Angeles Times Book Review).
 
In a world where the human population has suffered devastating losses, a handful of survivors cling to what passes for life in a post-apocalyptic, dying landscape. People wander, drugged and lulled by electronic bliss, through a barren landscape with no children, no art, and where reading is forbidden. From this bleak existence, a tragic love triangle springs forth. Spofforth, the most perfect machine ever created, runs the world, but his only wish is to die. Paul and Mary Lou are a man and a woman whose passion for each other sparks a jealousy in Spofforth -- and provides the only hope for the future of human beings on Earth.
 
Walter Tevis, author of The Hustler, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and The Color of Money, delivers an elegiac dystopia of mankind coming to terms with its own imminent extinction.
 
“Because of its affirmation of such persistent human values as curiosity, courage, compassion, along with its undeniable narrative power, Mockingbird will become one of those books that coming generations will periodically rediscover with wonder and delight.” -- The Washington Post