SINGULARITY

Stewart’s dystopian epic follows a man navigating a society on the brink of collapse.

Dale Stuart drives 180 miles per hour on the I-5 freeway in Los Angeles in a $9.4 million electric car whose artificial intelligence system, named Clerk, is warning him to slow down. (In the world of the novel, cars can communicate, and Dale’s relationship with Clerk becomes a major throughline.) As he drives, Dale reflects on the changing world—the social turmoil of the 2020s ushered in race riots, fights over economic inequality, and a robot revolution that put three million people out of work, leading to the decimation of the middle class and the shunting of the poor into dangerously overcrowded slums by the mid-2030s. After his father was killed during the devastating 2039 earthquakes, which left people scrambling for survival, Dale became a wealthy tax consultant living in the gated and robot-protected community of West San Angeles. The story kicks into gear when Clerk starts to show agency, using his charging arm to protect Dale and stealing electricity from other cars. When mysterious e-bombs (electromagnetic pulses that fry all electronic chips in a defined area) begin to go off around the world, Clerk and the rest of Dale’s home robot system (including a computer nicknamed Mac) begin to investigate as their own agency and consciousnesses seem to strengthen with regular software updates. If this seems like a lot of ground to cover—it is. Stewart’s dedication to research is clear; his introduction includes an extensive bibliography of consulted articles and a note that “all the science and technology in this novel exists as of 2023 and is extended thirty years into the future of 2050.” However, the various elements of the story do not always cohere (the author regularly pauses the development of the central premise to detail his protagonist’s sexual dalliances and the mounting pressure from his company to marry a woman despite being an out gay man), and readers may find themselves wishing the varied strands of the story were more tightly woven together.

An entertaining (if over-stuffed) beginning to a new series.