En cours de chargement...
The H LYW OD sign presides over a Los Angeles devastated by a weaponized microbe that has been accidentally spread around the globe, deleting human identity. In post-NK3 Los Angeles, a sixty-foot-tall fence surrounds the hills where the rich used to live, but the mansions have been taken over by those with the only power that matters : the power of memory. Inside the Fence, life for the new aristocracy, a society of the partially rehabilitated who call themselves the Verified, is a perpetual party.
Outside the Fence, in downtown Los Angeles, the Verified use an invented mythology to keep control over the mindless Drifters, Shamblers and Bottle Bangers who serve the gift economy until no longer needed. The ruler, Chief, takes his guidance from gigantic effigies of a man and a woman in the heart of the Fence. They warn him of trouble to come, but who is the person to watch : the elusive Eckmann, holed up with the last functioning plane at LAX ; Shannon Squier, the chisel-wielding pop superstar from the pre-NK3 world, pulled from the shambling masses ; a treacherous member of Chief's inner circle ; or Hopper, the uncommon Drifter compelled by an inner voice to search for a wife whose name and face he doesn't know ? Each threatens to upset the delicate power balance in this fragile world.
In deliciously dark prose, Tolkin winds a noose-like plot around this melee of despots, prophets and rebels as they struggle for command and survival in a town that still manages to exert a magnetic force, even as a ruined husk.
NK3 : the future is not what it was cracked up to be...
Michael Tolkin's 'NK3' provides a satirical and rather original take on the dystopian novel genre popular rising in popularity in the past decade or so. The author imagines the repercussions of a North Korean biological warfare attack on America in the guise of an amnesia inducing genetically engineered bacterium which radically transforms all forms of social organisation in rather unsuspecting ways. With a keen eye for the most absurd aspects of pop culture as an organizing agent in post-epidemic Los Angeles, Tolkin looks beyond the glitter and sleaze of the bread and circuses when evaluating what will be of worth in a society reduced to mentally handicapped wanderers. A fun cautionary tale about our possible future and ultimately our value system for ensuring a simply functional society.