'London is quiet in 2039--thanks to the machines. People stay indoors, communicating through high-tech glasses and gorging on simulated reality while 3D printers and scuttling robots cater to their every whim. Mammoth corporations wage war for dominance in a world where human augmentation blurs the line between flesh and steel. And at the centre of it all lurks The Imagination Machine: the hyper-advanced, omnipresent AI that drives our cars, flies our planes, cooks our food, and plans our lives. Servile, patient, tireless ... TIM has everything humanity requires. Everything except a soul.
'Through this silicon jungle prowls Carl Dremmler, police detective--one of the few professions better suited to meat than machine. His latest case: a grisly murder seemingly perpetrated by the victim's boyfriend. Dremmler's boss wants a quick end to the case, but the tech-wary detective can't help but believe the accused's bizarre story: that his robotic arm committed the heinous crime, not him. An advanced prosthetic, controlled by a chip in his skull. A chip controlled by TIM.
'Dremmler smells blood: the seeds of a conspiracy that could burn London to ash unless he exposes the truth. His investigation pits him against desperate criminals, scheming businesswomen, deadly automatons--and the nightmares of his own past. And when Dremmler finds himself questioning even TIM's inscrutable motives, he's forced to stare into the blank soul of the machine.'
My previous experience with reading work by Jon Richter was one of his horror anthology book, Jon Richter's Disturbing Works Volume Two, and whilst I really enjoyed his short stories and saw that he was able to craft really good tales in multiple styles, I had no idea how his work would be as a full novel. Thankfully, it seems like Jon Richter is able to turn his hand to mystery thriller as well as he is horror.
The future of Auxiliary: London 2039 is something of a nightmare if I'm being honest. It's not a typical dystopia, or an apocalypse, but it's a future where humanity seems to be stunted, with no room for growth. It's a future where people rarely leave their homes, living their lives inside small, boxlike apartments. Most jobs are being performed by robots, people have what they want delivered to them, they have machines cook for them, they get entertainment on demand, they even have robots for sex. Everything a person needs to get by is provided to them, as long as they don't want total freedom.
Whilst some people might see this as the ideal future, there are some in the world of Auxiliary: London 2039 who don't. One of these is Carl Dremmler, our protagonist. He's one of the lucky people, his job is still deemed to be necessary, and as such he's one of the few humans who actually works. He's a police detective. It sounds exciting, but from very early on it's clear that crime isn't really something that happens all too much anymore, and Dremmler is lucky if he has anything mildly exciting to actually do.
Things take a surprising turn for our hero, however, when he's called to a crime scene where a man has murdered his girlfriend, but is claiming that his robotic arm came alive on its own and did it. Dremmler is very quick to explain to the audience that such a thing would be impossible, and gives us all sorts of reasons why it just couldn't possibly happen. He even goes into an interview with the suspect and tells him he must be lying because his explanation just couldn't happen. It's like someone claiming a unicorn stabbed their wife; it just couldn't be.
Despite how much Dremmler hates the world around him, hates the reliance on technology, hates that he has nothing to do, hates that he has sex with a machine, he still can't believe that the technology could be evil. At least at first.
Over the course of the book Dremmler begins to collect evidence that suggests that there's a lot more going on than first appears. He has to go against the wishes of his boss to do it, but he begins to find a bigger picture, one that suggests the unhackable computers that control human life might not be completely safe, and that their might even be a huge conspiracy behind it all.
I don't want to say too much more about the plot specifics, as a large part of any mystery is seeing the pieces come together, and trying to figure out the answer for yourself. What I will say, however, is that the story never makes any huge jumps that don't make sense. Some mystery stories seem to reach a point where the clues peter out, where the protagonists can only move forwards thanks to something that happens outside of their control that sets them onto a new path. Here, Dremmler makes all of the important things happen. He finds the small clues, he spots the things in the background, he makes the connections that drive the story forward.
Dremmler is a good detective. He's a bit burned out, he's started to hate his job and his personal life is a flaming wreck, but he's damn good at what he does when things hit the fan. He could have an easy solve on his hands, he could say that the boyfriend killed the victim because of course the technology couldn't be at fault, but he doesn't; even when following the clues makes things worse for him. Despite appearing to not care at the start of the book we see that the truth matters to him, and that he'll put getting the answers before his own safety and security. He's a good man, and a good protagonist.
Whilst we don't get many other characters over the course of the book, thanks in large part to most of the population living inside their small boxes, those we do meet are all interesting and unique. There's also a lot of variation on gender in the book, which was a pleasant surprise. It seems that in the future society that Jon Richter has made society isn't stuck in its thinking of only two genders. The binary seems to be well and truly broken, even if there only seems to be mention of male, female, and neuts, gender neutral people that have their own unique sets of pronouns. This was an interesting part of the book for me, and I'd have liked to have seen a little more about this, possibly expanding and exploring to see if there were more than these three genders, as gender is a spectrum after all, but I understand that this would perhaps have taken a little time and focus away from the main story.
Auxiliary: London 2039 is an interesting and engaging mystery story, set in a strange future world. It takes the ideas of the reliance on technology and explores how this could shape and change society in negative ways, without it being something apocalyptic or horrific. Not only will fans of science fiction enjoy it, but anyone who likes a good mystery story.
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