Mal Goes to War

Ashton (Antimatter Blues) shrewdly injects satire into a dystopian thriller helmed by Mal, an AI (though he prefers to be called a Silico-American). In the near future, debate around technological human augmentations has led to civil war. The conflict began with a paranoid rumor that the NIH developed a nanobot that, after being injected into a person, transformed them into a superhuman capable of infecting others, as part of a government scheme to control the population. That belief sparked riots in Maryland, which devolved into all-out war, with so-called Humanists dumping anyone suspected of being augmented into burn pits. Amid this violent chaos, Mal, who is untethered to any system, slips inside the body of an augmented female corpse which had the necessary hardware for him to “puppeteer” it. Mal finds himself with more than he’d bargained for, however, when the dead woman, Mika, turns out to have been the protector of Kayleigh, a genetically modified 18-year-old, who insists that Mal continue to serve as her bodyguard against the Humanists. Ashton’s vision of the future feels all too plausible and his blend of action and humor keeps the pages flying. This is sure to please the author’s fans. (Apr.)