The City Inside

There’s a chilling effect to Basu’s (The Simoqin Prophecies) new near-future sf epic, set in a social media–glutted world where surveillance is everywhere. In the near-future city of Delhi, Joey is a Reality Controller. It’s her job to create a safe, sanitized version of the social media star she showcases, while the government uses censorship to spoon-feed news, opinions, and entertainment to numb a populace that can’t keep up with the constant re-writing of history and alternate political realities. The “surveillance capitalism” of the State is designed to keep the wealthy in power while convincing the people being exploited that everything is fine. When Joey learns that the exploitation is even more heinous and literal than she imagined, she has to decide whether to resist. She is caught between protecting herself and her loved ones and exposing a rot that everyone is programmed to ignore.