Cash Crash Jubilee

Debut novelist William reverses the outsider perspective of cyberpunk in this intricate tale of a digitally claustrophobic future. Amon Kenzaki works as an Identity Executioner for the main financial authority, GATA, hunting down and closing out the accounts of overdrawn Free Citizens. In a world where all actions, ideas, and bodily functions are priced (“Blinking is money”), bankruptcy is the only real offense. Amon believes in GATA and its copyright economy until he is forced to take down a personal hero, Lawrence Barrow, the chief executive minister of Japan. Seeking truth, he becomes caught up in the rivalry between the two richest sisters in the world. William creates a wraparound horror of a commercialized infosphere, the ImmaNet that pervades and monetizes everything, with InfoClouds in the InfoSky dropping InfoRain ads on pedestrians. Readers who can accept the awkwardness of the setup (Amon types phonetically because all imaginable strings of text have been patented) will get an immersion in a runaway capitalist landscape. (May)