Lucid
by Michael S. Milano
Style: Science Fiction / Dystopia
Print Size: 292 pages
Reviewed by Erica Ball
A daunting futuristic story about company manipulation and fear-based management
Within the combat towards a lethal virus, The Pansophical Company has develop into the individuals’s savior. It not solely manufactures and distributes the life-saving vaccine for the always mutating Tembakoo virus, it’s also the de facto authorities, regulation enforcement company, and solely supply of stories. Life beneath Pansophical is regressively patriarchal, extremely managed, and extremely automated.
However everybody believes they like it.
Set in Seattle in 2084, the motion in Lucid facilities round Antony Sartori, a former Pansophical robotics engineer who, by means of a horrible accident and the lack of his beloved spouse to the virus, has been relegated to the margins of respectable society.
One evening, after a couple of too many drinks at his favourite hang-out, Antony by accident breaks the strict curfew and comes face-to-face with an overzealous public security officer.
Within the aftermath of this run-in, Antony begins to expertise flashes of repressed reminiscences and emotions of disquiet that unnerve him. He begins to note he’s not the one one displaying indicators of being psychologically manipulated, and he begins to suspect that the world he inhabits is just not as well-ordered because it appears.
As Antony tries to regain management of his thoughts and his life, he’s pressured many times to decide on between ignorance and security—or a probably devastating and harmful reality. On this, Lucid is written within the vein of a lot basic dystopian fiction. However what units it aside is the writing type, which one way or the other mixes the grand verbiage of propaganda, the sweeping questions of philosophy, and the detailed technical interior workings of each human and machine.
Reflecting Antony’s personal previous as a robotics engineer, the reductionist means through which people are handled on this world mirrors the methods through which Pansophical has overly automated just about every little thing, from newsstands to medical care, to quick meals, and even to social dynamics. Groupthink is widespread, and paranoia is rampant. Persons are petrified of any indicators of sickness but in addition of disruptions to the delicate synthetic social cohesion, reminiscent of hints of sympathy towards Pansophical’s solely challenger, the “terrorist group” generally known as Praxis.
With its darkish tackle humanity’s response to a worldwide pandemic, Lucid would attraction to followers of post-apocalyptic fiction and tales of the combat towards a bleak future. At its darkest, it reads very similar to a psychological horror, whereas the detailed descriptions of futuristic applied sciences will draw readers of science fiction. The social dynamics at play will attraction to those that have an interest within the mechanisms of coercion, whereas the depiction of Pansophical and its rise to energy will probably be a draw to those that are alert for indicators of company overreach, particularly within the identify of philanthropy and social duty.
Dry, sarcastic, sardonic, and at occasions, absurdist, Lucid is a chilling tackle a potential fear-filled future. It’s in regards to the refined erosion of human rights by a strong entity within the identify of public security. It’s about using worry to fabricate consensus, and of coercion to attain false unity. And it’s in regards to the stripping away of our final proper, by means of the final word manipulation: the manipulation of our minds.
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