USERS

The inventor of a cutting-edge VR project descends into a state of profound alienation.

Winnette’s recent novels have ventured into the realm of surreal Westerns (Haints Stay, 2015) and unsettling ghost stories (The Job of the Wasp, 2018). With this new novel, he’s opted for a different route, following the life of Miles, a man working for a virtual reality company who has been receiving death threats. There are clues early on that Miles is not the greatest of co-workers—an early passage describes him manipulating his colleague Lily’s schedule so she's working on his brainchild, an “experience” called The Ghost Lover, instead of her own ambitious project. His penchant for working late hours is but one manifestation of his profound alienation from life, which Winnette also evokes by barely using the proper names of Miles’ wife and children. Winnette links this anomie to larger questions of technology and corporatization; later on, Winnette shares details of Miles’ previous job, when he’d worked on an acclaimed television series that gradually compromised its aesthetic until it lost its audience. In the novel’s second half, the VR company Miles and Lily work for has embraced an idea that the two of them proposed—an expanded virtual reality presence that utilizes a device called the Egg. Gradually, Miles’ waking life, dreams, and VR experiences begin to blur together—eventually arriving at a shocking image that both reframes Miles’ alienation and sets him spiraling even further. The sense of menace that Winnette establishes early on with the death threats continues to evolve over the course of the novel—eventually arriving at a haunted, haunting place.

A disquieting cautionary tale for an age of virtual spaces.