The Atopia Chronicles

Kindle Unlimited is slowing me down by offering free audiobook readings. I like audiobooks, but they go slower than reading a book myself. On the other hand, I'll probably drop Unlimited in a few days when the free trial expires, and it's been a nice interlude.

The most recent 'read' from my list is Matthew Mathers' The Atopia Chronicles, a complex novel of interweaving narratives set largely on the artificial floating island state of Atopia at the dawn of an era of synthetic reality. A fusion of AI and VR, synthetic reality is intended to save the world by giving everyone everything they could want at a fraction of the material cost of real-world equivalents. While adults struggle to adjust to the new technology - skins which overlay and filter reality, a proxxi alter ego to control your body while you explore the metaverse, and even the ability to distribute your consciousness into dozens of subjective viewpoints simultaneously - the first generation to have had access from birth are reaching maturity on Atopia.

The Atopia Chronicles begins as a series of interweaving narratives, each exploring aspects of the PSSI (poly-synthetic sensory interface) technology against the backdrop of a world on the brink of ecological collapse. An advertising executive filters out everyone who annoys her and ends up virtually isolated from humanity in a story reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode. Atopia's security chief and his wife adopt simulated children to try to save their ailing marriage; one of the pssi kids struggles with his relationship with his brothers while another misplaces his corporeal body; a millionaire fights for his life at the heart of a web of predicted future deaths; and the commercial launch of the system becomes intertwined with a plot to destroy Atopia.

The first two-thirds of the novel are the most successful, with the increased presence of the arc plot and the emergence of an almost cartoonish villain diminishing the core strengths as a speculative technological SF story. In a lot of ways, the distributed narrative is strong enough not to need the arc, and certainly not to need a villain, and there is a curious parallel with the fictional universe, with the more interesting technique ultimately being subjugated by conventional narrative devices even as Atopia's ideals are subjugated by a self-made monster.