I want you to imagine living in a tower block a thousand stories high, that has no windows. There is 'no outside'. There is a very ordered hierarchy where you are actively encouraged to remain within your level give or take a few levels. Your food is all supplied and entertainment is basic. This was a world called Britannia. There is no history, there is no plan for the future, just boring today. Sufficient very simple food is supplied, and at the lower levels, there is a constant supply of pop music all scheduled and controlled by the entertainment system in your Pod. That's where you live. As you move up the levels the entertainment increases in sophistication.
Living on the top floors are the people who control those below, who decide what can and cannot be done. One very big no-no is to be caught reading. The punishment if caught is ''To Be Introduced to the Vac.''
Now imagine being a small boy who witnesses the execution of his Father, and his mother banished from her high level to the very bottom and with whom he is allowed no contact. He is in the sole charge of his aunt.
He is going to discover there is more than just Britannia; what he discovers with the help of two computers Fred, and Spilberg, Britannia is a small component of an Arc built to save a very large proportion of the population of Earth before it is consumed by a Complete Extinction Event.
