VIRTUALLY DEAD

Thomas’ SF novel follows a disabled soldier operating a humanoid fighting drone in a future war.

The story begins in the present day, hunkered down in the forests of war-torn Ukraine. Lt. Audie Hunter commands a small regiment of soldiers “built for speed” as they move through the Ukrainian countryside fighting off the advancing Russian forces conducting the ongoing invasion begun in 2021. The men notice encroaching tanks, and, after several minutes of indecision—Audie wants to retreat to safety, but his men insist on staying to help the civilians being killed by the Russians—one of the soldiers opens fire. This decision changes things forever: Several of the men are killed, and Audie is paralyzed from the waist down. As the regiment is gunned down by the better-armed Russian forces, their tactical command abandons them, only furthering Audie’s suspicion that they’ve been set up by someone higher up the chain of command. The narrative then jumps nearly 30 years to 2054, when readers find Audie in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He uses a wheelchair and is still engaged in what has come to be known as the “Thirty-Year War,” a seemingly endless clash that’s included a series of geopolitical disasters that have drawn many of the world’s powers into violent conflict. No longer fit for “boots on the ground” action, Audie now pilots a “mech,” a bipedal armed robot with whom he and his team are fully synced from overseas. Audie has settled admirably into his post-injury life; he’s still married to his wife, Angela, and caring for a German shepherd named Claymore, named after his friend killed in action in Ukraine. But Audie is plagued by the friction between the remote mech operators and those who are physically on the front lines in the “mud and blood.” This war has also cost Audie his son, and yet he receives vitriol from civilians who consider the relative safety enjoyed by remote soldiers as tantamount to cowardice. This tension is only amplified by his sense that, just like back in Ukraine, the powerful forces on top who are responsible for his safety—and the safety of the men and women in his command—have other agendas in mind.

Thomas’ novel showcases a refreshing, sharp prose style: “The weak gray light, filtered through the canopy and mist, turned pine trees into twisted shapes flickering at the edge of his vision. Command’s silence and the empty sky felt like two pieces of the same lie.” Readers may find the descriptions of futuristic military technology a bit turgid in the novel’s early portions, but the time spent on this material pays dividends in the long run as the reader picks up the rhythm and specialized vocabulary that enhance the fictional near future the author has rendered. Some of the themes at play may be familiar, like the challenges of survivor’s guilt or the Everyman soldier who grows disillusioned with the violent, rapacious tendencies of the military-industrial complex, but the depth of pathos Thomas grants Audie helps to elevate this novel above a simple retread of well-worn tropes into something much more effective.

A taut military-SF yarn memorable for its well-crafted prose and character development.