THE BOOK DEPOSITORY

A bookseller works to radicalize genetically engineered slaves in Apricot’s dystopian SF novel.

In the future, humanity employs a new type of servant, designed and manufactured by the Edison Angelics Corporation. Their “angels” aren’t born but rather hatch out of eggs, and they come equipped to perform a number of tasks, including sex work, housekeeping, and animal companionship. Housewife Mary Standish simply wants a nanny for her soon-to-born baby, but her husband, John, resents the very existence of angels—he’s a member of the fascistic Human Supremacy Party—and, as a sergeant in the Militia, he is charged with keeping them in their place. Even so, it doesn’t take long for John to turn their angel, Nara, into his sexual slave. Nara, feeling suicidal, visits a place she’s heard whispers of, a strange bookshop in the old, war-ravaged section of town—a place just for angels. There, she meets Robert Hedrock, proprietor of the Book Depository, a combination safehouse and academy for angels who have experienced the cruelty of humans. Hedrock’s angelic beneficiaries include Alexander, a manual laborer turned violent criminal who, after being imprisoned for 12 years in one of Hedrock’s reading rooms, reforms himself into a revolutionary leader; Arthur, a government accountant on the run after uncovering evidence of corruption among his human bosses (he decides to find a human lawyer and take his case before the courts); and Duchess Olivia Van Degarde, an angel who manages to pass as a human. Hedrock has his own secrets: Not only is he a roughly 250-year-old angel himself—he happens to know that the head of the Edison Angelics Corporation, Martin Remington, is one as well. Can Hedrock ensure that all of the “children of the Egg,” from Nara (or Uma, she renames herself) to Remington, free themselves and play their part in the Great Story?

Apricot’s episodic novel reveals its world and characters slowly. Each chapter or set of chapters reads almost like a self-contained story dealing with some aspect of the problems faced by angels. The premise has obvious parallels to American chattel slavery—some of the angels even speak in a Southern-like dialect—though the setting of Kipling Shire also bears some resemblance to the British Raj. The author slips in several nods to other dystopian works. (One of the possible roles for angels is listed as “Handmaiden”: “This activation creates a docile and sexually submissive role-player who wants to serve a commander or dominant male figure. Authorized for Neo-Christian use. Unavailable in some jurisdictions.”) There are brief moments of shocking physical and sexual violence—shocking in part because the book’s overall tone is closer to that of a Ray Bradbury story. Apricot dramatizes the processes of exploitation and liberation with ingenuity and humor. He reminds readers, especially, of the centrality of books in expanding our notions of who we are and who we might be, and in doing so he places himself in the fine tradition of idealistic speculative fiction.

A rich and philosophical novel in the vein of classic SF.