#319/B – Shatter Dark by R. Graeme Cameron

Imagine Mad Max, only instead of intimidating tyrants like Lord Humungus or Immortan Joe, you have ambitious but incompetent middle management types.

That’s the core of the novel Shatter Dark, a brand new post-apocalyptic novel set in a future that has been teetering on the edge of collapse like a bus leaning off a cliff for a very, very long time. The world has endured limited nuclear war, rising oceans, and has a life expectancy on par with our perceptions of medieval Europe.

It’s also a world that is highly automated, thanks to the techgrid, the worldwide AI that runs just about everything. People living in what’s left of civilization are often accompanied by nanotech “mentations,” essentially AI assistants implanted directly in their brains, which they can talk to. These mentations can also talk to each other, connected by the techgrid.

It’s important not to understate just how much those who are still in what passes for civilization rely on the techgrid. During a flight, for example, the human pilots are essentially only there as ballast.

But humans are humans, and there are those fighting over the scraps of power as best they can, making alliances, breaking them, solidifying their grip locally, and trying to one-up the other world leaders. This is the niche that our protagonist has found the perfect place to make money in.

Rudwulf is a Smiter, the last living one. He’s an advisor, having the ear of the great leaders of the world to solve their problems… those problems generally being other people, armies, or nations they want out of the picture.

But Rudwulf isn’t a fighter, he’s a plotter and schemer. He has a personal bodyguard named Myriad to do any actual fighting near him. His mentation is named Buddy-Bod, who advises him based on the info it gathers from the techgrid, giving Rudwulf the edge he needs in his line of work.

However, we don’t have much time to get used to this world because a butterfly has just landed on the nose of the bus and we’re all going over.

The majority of the story revolves around Rudwulf and his companions surviving in an already devastated world that now finds itself without a techgrid. That’s a bigger problem than you might think. Much of the infrastructure that kept things going was not only run by the techgrid, it was sealed off to keep ignorant primates (us) from messing with the inner workings. Some things still work, as they were designed to be autonomous, but it’s only a matter of time before they break down as well.

What’s a Smiter to do in a world like this? Well, logically, cozy up to the nearest Big Chief and offer your Smiting services.

Rudwulf is always talking internally with Buddy-Bod, which means a great deal of the conversations in the novel are literally inside his own head. This allows us to see Rudwulf’s personality in a way that no one on the outside can. To everyone else, Rudwulf is confident, cunning, and self-assured. But when he talks to Buddy-Bod, we see just how unsure of himself he is all the time, and how he’s just trying to survive.

That brings us back to the nature of this world. All those Big Chiefs out there? They’re all examples of the Peter Principle: “Everyone rises to the level of their incompetence. Eventually, all positions in every hierarchy will be filled by incompetents.” These leaders use ancient history to justify their rule and try to recreate it in their image—everything from the Roman Empire to Ancient Egypt to the Aztec Kingdom. Rudwulf has his work cut out for him.

While I compared this setting to Mad Max earlier, I should point out that this is not an action/adventure novel. It’s a satire of our present-day, a look at the blown-out bridge ahead of us in this age of growing reliance on computers and incompetent people rising to the top of corporations and governments. Is it possible that humanity can survive a world like this, even despite itself?

There’s only one way to find out!