Travel Documents 133: Extremophile
Genre: ecopunk, near-future, social change, dystopia
The Dust Cover Copy
Charlie and Parker are punks by night, biohackers by day, living in the stuttering decay of near-future climate-collapse London.
They pay for the beer they don't steal with money from their sketchy astronomy site Zodiac Code, while Charlie's bio-bespoke augments equip the criminals, punks, and eco-warriors of London. They have to deal with disgruntled clients, scene kids who don't dig their band, and a city that's run by corporates and criminals. Their world is split into three factions: Green – who are still trying to save the world; Blue – who try to profit while they can, and Black – who see no hope left.
When a group of extremist Green activists hire them for a series of jobs ranging from robbery to murder, Charlie – who struggles to feel anything except Black – wants to walk away. But Parker still believes they can make a difference, and urges her to accept.
As they enter an escalating biological arms race against faceless corporations, amoral biohackers, and criminal cyberpunks, Charlie will have to choose what she believes in. Is there still hope, and does she have a right to grab it?
The Scene
Worldbuilding
Okay, so you guys know I took a pretty big break from writing book reviews.
Well, this is the book that got me back in. This is one of those books that makes you want to pin down all your friends and gush ‘okay I just read this book and lemme tell you…”
In this work, Green has done something very similar to what I wanted to do when I wrote the Aces High, Jokers Wild series. Put all the fears on the page. Then figure out what the hell to do about them. In this case, it’s a an eco-punk/scene punk rollick set in a tropical-hot and miasmatic London and a future where all the powers that be did jack. Nothing got better, even when we knew just how much we were screwing over the environment. So we got what we paid for. We got climate change to the max. We got one wave of pandemic after another. We got drowned and baked and fried and we still didn’t learn. At a certain point everything got deregulated, everybody got cut loose by the government, and now the only thing that really gets protected is corporate profits. The power went off and all the bills came due, but the human race was partying too hard to pay attention.
The new generation born into this mess got depressed. Some locked out the world and lived in VR. Some died. Or they got focused. Some zeroed in on making their own lives as perfect and self-actualized as possible. Some looked for safety in corporate jobs with walled enclaves and worked away their fears. Some got creative. They screwed with their own genes to let them sleep less, grew interesting/strange/gross vat meat for something new to taste, got crazy tattoos and implants and haircuts to have something to be excited about. Live now, screw the world.
Some of the newcomers, they got angry. They went to the marches and screamed the chants and did everything they could to say THE WORLD IS BEING KILLED AND IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY!!! Some went further. They started throwing molotov cocktails at petrol-burning cars. They made plans. They performed eco-sabotage. They raided mining operations and killed climate criminals. They sank tankers and bombed electric stations. They stopped asking nicely and stated: stop fucking the world up. Or else.
And some kids born into the middle of this whole mess just lived and did their best. They turned up the music and danced. They’ve got three rules:
No snitching
No pigs, no corpos.
Don’t be a cunt
And somehow, some way, they still have resolve. They still have the drive to make things better. At least on the good days, they do. Hope is going out. But it isn’t gone yet.
The Crowd
Characterization
Told in the shifting voices of four main characters, this work holds up a cast that are both interesting people in their own right and avatars of the approaches we can take to living well in a hard world full of hard choices.
Charlie: your access character and every-girl. Torn between the Black (read, nihilism and learned helplessness at the overwhelming eco-devastation) and the Green (read, relentless fighting to do everything you can to help the environment heal). In love, in a band, in a squat on old industrial land. World-weary but still smiling, when she can. Trying her best on the good days. About to be in more trouble than she can imagine.
Scrimshaw: Too much drugs, too much violence, too little common sense, too much machismo. The inevitable human result of a ‘take what you can and screw the other guy’ culture. Loyal to very few things. And did I mention INSANE? This POV has most of the truly cyberpunk stuff in it. The splattery ‘oh I did not want to know the human body could come apart that way’ kind of stuff. And yet, under all that, there is a loyalty. And a code. And something…dare I say something that could be redeemed?
The Mole: Through this character’s eyes, you are faced with the raw and bloody results of our cultural decisions. You want a sleek little smart watch? Then somewhere, a child is stuck in a mining camp that provides selenium, being worked to death. And when genetic modification and bio-tech become cheap, then somewhere, someone says ‘these are my tools, optimize them’. And the tools he’s talking about are children.
Mole was one of those kids from one of those exploited countries. She can never have a normal human life, not after what the owners did to her. But she might just have her revenge.
The Ghost: A true-blue. Power matters. Profit matters. Knowledge matters. Nothing else matters. Except maybe his amusement. Psychopath? Probably. Clever? Yes. Sophisticated? Definitely. Evil? Oh you don’t know the half of it yet.
Woven around these characters are their various communities: friends, followers, enemies, and guys you run into when you’re in the scene. In fact, it’s one of the friends that probably sums the message and the philosophy of this work up perfectly.
“I’m not saying they are going to save the world. But fuck me, I’d rather try than not.”
-Zoot
Writing Style
This story made me want to march. It made me want to put on The Interrupters and Flobots and Gaslight Anthem and Social Distortion and Mischief Brew and just rock out for a while. It made me want to act and it made me want to dance. It made me feel.
It pulled this off with tight, punchy lines that still had room for punk poetry. Its word choice was voicey. The narrator nailed that so hard in the audio. You can taste London fog and weird vape fumes in the slang. You can hear the slick of tires and the shouts of the street in the rhythms. When it switched points of view, it really switched. You got to know the urbane rhythms of the corporate psychopath. The hair trigger one-liners of the adrenaline junkie. The clean composure of the zealot with exactly one cause to live for. And the tired humor of the punk-rock bio gal just trying to get through the day. That made it all so much more real. In the print copy it’s pulled off visually with syncopated layouts, cute and clever glyphs, and—get this—no dialogue tags. As in, none of “this stuff”. Yeah, it’s a little confusing to read at first. But let me tell you, it sure tells the reading eye that all the rules are out the window.
The Moves
Plot
This is a book written on several levels. On the surface, it’s a cleanly written adventure story with a punk-rock soundtrack and classic Brit-dystopic vibes. The goals couldn’t be set more clearly. Steal the flower. Kill the ghost. Save the world. Three missions. Clean. Simple. Direct. Oh, and don’t die. That’s important too. On the surface it’s an energetic, punchy rollick of a story with a swagger-step, a South London accent and a plot you could make a movie out of.
Below that, this story is a love letter to the punk scene and the liminal spaces we make for ourselves on the edges of things. The really cool shows that are all the more exciting because you’re holding them where you shouldn’t. The meal that tastes so good because you’ve been living on beans and toast for a week. The little piece of good luck that can feel so amazing when things have been bad a while.
One level down from that, Extremophile is a meditation on what’s worth doing, what’s worth living for, and what it takes to live in this beautiful and broken world. It’s a taking into account all the tenuous joys and sorrows of being a living, social being in a bad time for society. One day you realize you hurt a peer, and have to figure out how to make amends. Another day your favorite band notices you, and you’re on top of the world. One day, you remember all the things you’ve messed up and you want to cry and you want to die. Another day you see something so wicked cool that all you can do is grin and be in that moment and enjoy it. Another day you’re so furiously outraged by the fuckers who screwed the world that you vow to die fighting them. And some days, that’s all the same day.
And at its deepest level, this work is a poem of love and loss and grief. The final chapter makes that achingly clear. It’s just…well, here. Read it.
That right there? That’s poetry. That’s loving a broken world that is so, so beautiful. That right there made me cry happy tears.
Overall Rating
A stoked and synthed strut through a future I really hope we don’t have to live in. But if we do, this is our promise that there will still be blackbirds and people to love, guitars and something to do and songs to sing. That, I’ll raise a glass to.