UTOPIA PROJECT- EVERYONE MUST DIE

In Dering’s debut, a trilogy opener, a band of young adults near Long Beach Island find themselves survivors of a vast neutron-beam attack that wipes out Earth’s civilization.

Reacting to the riots and unrest of 2020, U.S. government elites launch the Utopia Project. The program brainwashes the offspring of military-base families to ultimately create a compliant society. When one Army wife dies trying to save her child from the scheme, bad PR and protests cancel the Project. But the idea returns a generation later with vengeance. In 2044, a few young adults from the New York/New Jersey area are enjoying a winter evening on the Atlantic shore. They see the unearthly red light of an array of neutron-beam weapons installed on GPS/navigation satellites orbiting the world. Death rays melt all flesh (leaving plants and structures unscathed), killing 99.9% of humans. Young Sara Hyland; her devoted boyfriend, Kid Carlson; and their friends have somehow been spared. They soon meet the culprits—the Utopia Project, which comprises high-level international military types; mindless, cloned drones; and supersoldiers. The Project now plans to enforce a peaceful society—by simply wiping out everyone else—and to establish their principal colony on Long Beach Island. The hunted survivors retreat into the empty (except for grisly piles of viscera and bones) houses and the Pinelands of frozen New Jersey and face the daunting question of how to fight back against this extinction-level menace. At times, Dering reaches the same sort of frisson achieved by Dean R. Koontz in depicting common people caught up in monstrous, beyond-belief circumstances. Considerable airtime goes to fleshing out the individuals in this mini-resistance and putting some believability into their wildly overmatched attempt to penetrate the villains’ defenses. Like Koontz, the author is able to take some slightly shopworn genre tropes and spin them enough to make for an addictive read.

Planetwide casualties and careful pacing open this attention-grabbing SF trilogy.