快猫短视频

Dave Hutchinson

REBCA

THE pulp novels of the 1950s are best remembered for their sense of wonder. This is exactly the feeling that billionaire tech funder Stanislaw Clayton tries to create in The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man, the latest novel by Dave Hutchinson, author of the deservedly praised Fractured Europe series.

The 1950s were also a golden age for social satire: for Pohl and Kornbluth鈥檚 The Space Merchants, and Vonnegut鈥檚 Player Piano. Hutchinson鈥檚 new book is, in truth, more this sort of science fiction. It bites.

The novel follows down-and-out journalist Alex Dolan as he agrees to write a book documenting the history of Clayton鈥檚 latest project: the Sioux Crossing Supercollider. What Clayton has in mind is a PR exercise designed to build support for his struggling project. He gets a lot more than he bargained for.

鈥淭he Cloud has become the only game in town: a vast system of warehouses sustaining a mini-ecosystem鈥�

The bulk of the novel is a slow-burn account of Dolan鈥檚 investigation into the mysteries surrounding the project, part le Carr茅 spycraft, part Crichtonesque scientific thriller. There is something of Stephen King, too, in the book鈥檚 close focus on the inhabitants of Sioux Crossing, ordinary folk transformed by Clayton鈥檚 regeneration of their town. For better or worse, they need him to succeed. If the project fails, it will take the town with it.

In the finale, we might expect this book to live up to its pulpy title, but by now Hutchinson has become more interested in the politics than in the science. Some readers might feel deflated, but Hutchinson鈥檚 point is well made: that we ought to be suspicious of technocrats bearing gifts.

The Warehouse by Rob Hart is similarly interested in the effects of a billionaire鈥檚 ambitions on everyday people. In it, Gibson Wells, an American entrepreneur peddling a dangerous brand of ultracapitalism with folksy charm, creates The Cloud. In the wake of climate change and a ravaged economy, The Cloud has become the only game in town: a vast system of warehouses supporting a mini-ecosystem with its own living spaces, restaurants, social ratings and credit system. Think Amazon, but on steroids.

Paxton, a former entrepreneur whose company failed after The Cloud undercut his business, has found work as a security officer, charged with stopping the flow of illegal drugs into The Cloud鈥檚 compound. Zinnia is ostensibly a picker, one of the redshirts running a daily marathon to locate cheap goods for drone delivery to the outside world. But she isn鈥檛 all she seems. A competing company has offered her a life-changing sum of money if she can ferret out The Cloud鈥檚 secrets.

The Warehouse depicts a world of systemic abuse, petty corruption and a callous disregard for the things we need to be properly human. But while Hart spends a decent amount of time exploring Wells鈥檚 justification for The Cloud, Paxton鈥檚 complicity is the main point: will he buy into a system he knows is fundamentally broken or will he risk his relative comfort to tear it down?

Ultimately, is The Warehouse a novel that puts the capstone on post-industrial capitalism? Not really. Rather than trusting his own story, Hart relies on references to Orwell, Atwood, Bradbury and Le Guin to explain his ethical stance. The result is an entertaining, almost cinematic read, but one that is content to let others do the intellectual heavy lifting.