India, July 18 -- Could your dreams be used against you?

In Moroccan-American author Laila Lalami's new novel, The Dream Hotel, pre-crime surveillance has stretched its tentacles into our sleeping brains.

Lalami's heroine, Sara Hussein, is a researcher with the Getty Museum and a busy mother of toddler twins. She is returning to the US from a work trip to London when she is detained at the airport and told that her dreams have raised her risk score too high. She is then transported to a "retention centre".

These centres are privately run and have been in the news for holding people for extended periods; to say "without trial" would be a misnomer, since they have been accused of no crime yet. They must simply stay here until their risk ...