Future-phobic SF as a delivery system for enough philosophy to keep the School of Athens busy into the AI age.
In Diviacchi’s SF novel, in a highly regulated, high-tech future, a former soldier wrestles with morality and philosophical conundrums.
Society, after suffering various crises (including pandemics), has returned from the brink via a carefully controlled, male-dominated technocracy called the “SCS.” Only “Upper Sphere” elites have the right to easily marry, bear children, and serve useful functions as artists, planners, legislators, and the like. “Outcastes,” at the opposite end of the social spectrum, are simply housed, tolerated, and kept amused. Former soldier John Wilson—who was raised in reduced circumstances in embattled Chicago, distinguished himself in military service in a war against an Islamist empire, and was rewarded with a Harvard Law education—has a modest legal practice. But he secretly opposes the establishment’s foundations, particularly its religious aspects. Though he cooperates with SCS strictures on “pragmatic” grounds, he avoids opportunities for coveted class advancement, dwelling in a condo in a committed relationship with a sex robot. After Wilson transgresses an absurd tangle of laws by preventing a woman’s suicide on the waterfront, he’s summoned to a hearing to determine his suitability (the surveillance state has been monitoring him) for a dizzying Upper Sphere upgrade. The plotline—which is quite thin, though it strengthens in the third act—provides a framework for postulations, rants, classical allusions, arguments about the existence of God, and lengthy discussions of ethics, justice, altruism, love, and other heady subjects (the author has published numerous works, fiction and nonfiction, centered around the idea of adopting nihilism as a practical approach to life). Patient readers will ultimately be rewarded with an especially affecting conclusion, but first they must navigate the disassociated hero’s dense, often circular internal monologues and heady musings: “Struggle and doubt exist and with them Others exist, otherwise nothing exists. Without struggle and doubt, I would be one with the universe and disappear. I do not want to be one with the universe. I reject it as it rejects me.”
Future-phobic SF as a delivery system for enough philosophy to keep the School of Athens busy into the AI age.Pub Date: March 28, 2026
ISBN: 9798253917879
Page Count: 237
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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