A Google user
In 2065, between an orbital sanctum and future space habitats, classical planet-based civilization is supported, as the title suggests, by the figuresque architectural columns of outlaw engineer clones of a Balkan war criminal, an Aryan Atlas-like brother and four sisters. They have risen to leadership of the major world domains. Amid the Acquis ln Mljet island, everyware, a senseweb of social software, monitors the brains and attentions of exoskeleton-equipped communal laborers and sensors. Earthquakes in LA arouse the Dispensation’s mil-entertainment complex global net’s’ autonomous emergency crews, while users view celebrities like paparazzi through homemade cams and plan the Next Web. Like a dragon, the Great Wall eyes Jiuquan, the city around China’s space center as military plot official immortality, while the political department extends to the far reaches.
Fashioned as a triptych, the novel balances coincidences along three generations, three competing political parties, and the lives of the clones in three different parts. A Synchronist philosophy combines Extinction 6.0, the climate crisis, and an “event heap” of a supervolcano and unstable sun in a decaying universe. The reader follows the expressions, gestures and emotions of the participants while, like an epic symphonist scratching for survival, the author paints a future composed of Beethoven on the bulldozer; a Mongolian Mozart and a touch of thrash metal. Contrasts are juxtaposed including mines and graves, politically agnostic religion, transparency and vanishing. He refers obliquely to writings of Austen, Poe, Lovecraft, and Stevenson.
Sound and color infuse the stories of the industrial Vera, theatrical Radmila, heroine of the state Red Sonja, Biserka’s incarnation of the goddess Artemis, and the sensitive executive George.