ARCADE

Thomas’ (A Sickness in Time, 2016, etc.) post-apocalyptic tale features a man hunting for his family and a lone technology company that’s survived the downfall of the power grid.

A series of electromagnetic pulses have rendered Earth’s electronic devices useless, throwing civilization back hundreds of years; most people call this event “the Change.” Vicious gangs, including the powerful, widespread Seventh, have hobbled law enforcement. Before the Change, FBI agent Walter Jackson had traveled from Memphis, Tennessee, to California’s Bay Area in search of his wife and daughter. Sarah and college-bound Maddie had left him because his work always seemed to be his primary focus. Now, eight years after learning Sarah’s grim fate, Walter remains in Sunnyvale as a cop, still searching for Maddie. One day, he and his partner, Hernandez, are investigating Seventh activity at an old roller rink. They break up a dogfighting pit, and one of the canines brings Walter to a corpse with a “red and black yin-yang” symbol tattooed on its arm. Using additional information from an acquaintance called Captain Anthem, Walter locates the Palo Alto company Terrestrial Economic Solutions. In their heavily guarded and somehow electrically powered underground facility, he finds a video arcade. A woman named Sloan Holt runs it, allowing teenagers to play nonstop and live on the site. She enigmatically tells Walter that TES researches “neurological topics.” The complex truth is that TES sent a manned mission to the Trappist star system; Sloan’s brother, Frank, was a crewmember with whom they lost contact after the Change. The author draws readers through his post-apocalypse in provocative stages. Echoes of Orson Scott Card’s Ender's Game (1986) and Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One (2011) set up the interlocking arcs of the characters, with each missing family in a broken world. The narration offers snarky critiques of how many people live today: “World-wide, precious snowflakes were...rediscovering how to survive without Twitter, skinny lattes, yoga pants, and beard wax.” He also mentions changes that happened before the EMP blasts; about mining asteroids for precious metals, readers learn that “Zuckerburg [sic] might have been involved after Facebook was broken-up by the Feds.” After Walter and Sloan meet, their quests combine; the mystery of Frank’s crew drives the plot, with Maddie’s whereabouts taking something of a back seat. Interpersonal drama at TES simmers as a man named Ashif Showkat pines for Sloan; he’s a Blender, maneuvering “bots” remotely from a special pod to explore the Trappist planet. Sloan, like Walter, puts work ahead of love and believes that Ashif “expected her to be his prize, which was both embarrassing and flattering.” Nostalgia is a force unto itself, as when Walter discovers the arcade, packed with hypnotic lights and sounds. Far from being regressive, the characters’ faith in the past proves to be a way forward. Thomas shows impressive skill at placing well-timed plot twists. Revelations about who finances TES, the origin of the EMP blasts, and Frank himself send the narrative soaring.

A confident SF thriller that deftly addresses themes of resilience, faith, and the value of video games.