DAFT MEJORA'S INFINITE MADNESS

Dehmelt, in this debut SF novel, imagines how a group of extraterrestrials would view the United States based on what Americans put on the internet.

It’s 2021, and high schooler DJ Jones lives in Florida, where his QAnon-obsessed father serves in the state senate and is hellbent on resisting the mask mandates of Democratic president Moe Wyden. DJ himself prefers to spend his time playing video games and exploring the darker corners of the web. That’s where he first encounters the Daft One—real name: Daft Mejora—who claims to be a representative of an alien species assigned to study Earth and its violent tendencies. Along with his alien associates, the Donger Ponus (an inanimate horse made of porcelain that looks like a collection of penises) and the Wise Old Owl (a sentient owl who speaks in rhyming couplets), the Daft One studies Covid-era America. Disguised as a fellow teen, Daft follows DJ through a world that’s descending into chaos as intractable political battles affect seemingly every aspect of modern life. Still, Daft admires some humans—but can he and DJ come up with a way to keep them all from killing each other? The novel is told from Daft’s perspective, and his narrative voice gives the book a distinct texture and serves as its primary satirical device. Very early on, for instance, he describes the United States as “the LAND OF OPPORTUNITY, the place where dreams become real and what’s real becomes fake depending on exactly where you stand.” There is some fun spoofing of American mores here, and Dehmelt proves to have a voracious and playful imagination. The book’s prose is quite dense, however, and its topics are emotionally exhausting even without the freneticism of Daft’s obsessive and often obscene observations. A sequel is planned, but it doesn’t feel entirely necessary.

An ambitious, if sometimes overwhelming, take on an alien’s-eye view of a divided Earth.