cover image Chimpanzee

Chimpanzee

Darin Bradley. Resurrection/Underland, $18.95 trade paper (220p) ISBN 978-1-63023-000-5

In this disturbingly believable near-future dystopia, a “New Depression” has impoverished America, and people who default on their college loans have their educations neurologically “repossessed.” Such is the plight of Benjamin Cade, an unemployed Ph.D., whose default was inspired by his desire to purchase a home with his wife, a professor. When Cade decides to teach a free class in rhetoric while he is still intellectually capable, he becomes a “new Socrates” to members of an anti-authoritarian underground who use simulation technology called “chimping” to preserve his disappearing knowledge and share it with others. Bradley (Noise) injects his tale with a paranoid 1984 vibe through the elaboration of the Homeland Renewal Project, a government program that employs the indigent to spy on the populace. Readers will identify strongly with Cade, whose increasing realization that he is only a powerless pawn—alternately pushed around by Homeland Renewal, the rebel underground, and other social and political forces beyond his control—adds gravitas to the novel’s grim mantra: “We are not ‘in charge.’ ” (Sept.)