AXION

In the near future, two lawyers battle over a company’s rights to own memories in Shulman’s speculative novel.

A company named Cortx—“an industry leader at the forefront of neurotech and nootropic research and development”—has recently unveiled new cinema technology that embeds films directly into memory. However, cinemagoers incur ongoing charges for storing these film memories. Memory-rights activists challenge Cortx’s practices in court; suave and self-confident defense lawyer Ken Marshall represents Cortx while the resolutely un-suave Gil Hinchliff, who suffers from chronic nightmares and hallucinations, leads the case for the Memory Rights Alliance. As the trial moves forward, the narrative cuts between the present and past, following Gil and the early rise of the MRA in response to an increasingly memory-centric culture. The narrative’s scope continues to widen as the story develops, with new characters quickly introduced and soon discarded. The author, a BAFTA and TV Academy Award-winning documentary producer and director, labels his chapters “Scenes,” and they often read like sketches for a screenplay, each described with vivid imagery intended to be visualized and structured with the novelistic equivalent of quick cuts. The cross-cutting between past and present, with such a large cast, is suited for cinema storytelling but can be a touch difficult to follow in a novel. The story ultimately centers around a love triangle, corporate espionage, and regular philosophical discussions about the meaning of memory. Gil calls several philosophers to the stand to testify, including Oxford Professor Abidemi Okafor, who suggests that memories “live and breathe, get buried, transmute, become distorted, or exaggerated, or forgotten,” and that solidifying them might strip away crucial aspects of identity. It is in these debates about the nature of memory that the novel truly springs to life.

A thought-provoking, if occasionally unwieldy, exploration of agency in an age of corporate control.