Repo Virtual

Julius Dax, in-the-meat thief and online repo man, is tasked to steal an unknown object from the residence of tech billionaire Zero Lee. It turns out to be virtually magical, at once enthralling and disturbing. White’s (Static Ruin) economy of language pulls readers through heists, shoot-outs, and car chases—the smart-city of Neo Songdo’s skies haunted nightly by VOIDWAR, a game with millions of players. Aside from its augmented reality (only low-wage residents see the underlying grime and ruin), the world drawn here feels depressingly like now, its youths’ craving for speed and authenticity rendered moot by predatory capitalism’s eternal present moment. Akin to Philip K. Dick’s iconic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep??,this title’s philosophical base addresses the status of nonbiological presences and what that says about humanity.