Immechanica, the debut post-cyberpunk novel by E. F. Coleman
from Luminastra Press
Bad news from 2054. I know, you wanted a more glitzy future, brushed chrome and glowing neon, a future where high-tech keiretsu invented new vistas in cyberspace while augmented salarymen engaged in corporate battles in bionic bodies. One where flying cars zip overhead, shuttling fantastically enhanced digital media stars to exotic destinations. Where pleasing Orientalist fantasies greet you with robotic smiles and open palms.
Sorry, kids. Sweet dream. But that’s not the future that lies in store for you.
My present is your future. It’ll be right with you. Thirty years will just fly by, the way a rollercoaster drops like a stone leaving your stomach, like your hopes and dreams, a hundred feet above you, receding into the distance. You thought it would be all Star Trek technology and justice, a world with ideals and without money? Really? Did Trump and Putin and Berlusconi and Bolsonaro teach you nothing? Where were you? It’s all about the money. Money is power. In my world, defence contractors are the law. They have almost limitless power. Maybe you can take comfort in the fact that the robot dog with infrared cameras, facial recognition, and a high-powered rifle trotting down the street toward you is there to keep you safe. It wouldn’t hurt you, would it? Probably. If it hurts you it’ll be because you did something wrong. The facts always back up to fit the events, just as nightmares in the mirror are always closer than they look.
We all think we’ve done nothing wrong...until they say we have.
But we got the future we deserved. The future that crossed fingers, looking the other way and hoping for the best made possible.
Hey, I loved those old classics too: Neuromancer, Bladerunner, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Gnomon.
But somewhere along the way, the future those books promised became…something else. The future you’re hurtling toward makes those futures look like a slice of heaven.
immechanica isn’t cyberpunk. It’s reportage. It’s my reality. This is me looking up from the street, one of millions of desperate, powerless people fighting insurmountable odds. There’s no glitz, no shiny high-tech wonderland. And what should worry you is that you can see my world already taking root in yours. The trends and technologies you created in your time found their ultimate expression in mine.
Let me show you my Los Angeles, 2054. No flying cars, no replicant slaves escaping off-world colonies. Instead, the LAPD has armed robot dogs connected to facial recognition databases, deepfake video can make it seem you were anywhere committing any crime, while municipal data services are outsourced on a lowest-bid basis.
You meet Nadine, failed actress turned office drone. Nadine meets a gorgeous woman at an underground rave, and ends up falling through the looking glass into a world even more dark and violent than the one she knew. She and her friends stumble upon something they shouldn’t have seen. They become targets. They are hunted down by police and…other people. Dangerous people. Nadine finds herself in a desperate fight against powerful, ruthless enemies, a struggle for survival that takes her from ramshackle Tijuana Town to the phantom cities of Texas—one of the founding members of the Federation of Free States.
Along the way, she finds up unexpected allies in unlikely places, because the only thing little people have is each other.
Does she make it? Do any of us? Well, I’m still breathing, more or less. That’s a miracle in itself some days.
