Subterranean (2018)
Written by: Sarah Colombo
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 259 (ebook)
Publisher: Spaceboy Books
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the author in exchange for a fair review.
Why I chose it: I volunteered to review it because I’m a fan of satire as well as stories about technology’s impact on society, and this promised me both.
The premise:
Hil Mills is missing. Worse, her boyfriend Ronnie can’t find out anything about her because she’s been living off-the-grid since childhood, and doesn’t even have an online profile. In a world loaded with Screens, where robots do almost every job, Ronnie and a team of misfits try to solve the mystery of Hil’s disappearance. Through warehouse raves, transcendentalism-obsessed communes, and bougie corporate parties, Ronnie digs for answers. Meanwhile, Hil’s busy saving herself from her past, and a future she never wanted. Is it a conspiracy, a terror plot, or just a bad break-up? Spoiler alert: it’s all that and more.
Extremely mild spoilers
Discussion: Colombo’s debut novel is a very smartass story about a near-future society obsessed with technology in nearly every form and 90s references. There’s a lot to like about it; from snarky robots to hippie existentialists, Colombo holds up a mirror to us and pokes fun at just about everything, from our constant social media updates to our propensity to build on quotes taken out of context. There were many points where I laughed out loud—something that, despite my love of humor, is difficult to do in fiction (but ask me about Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, because that novel is a riot—and in a lot of ways Subterranean is just like it).
Ronnie is a former children’s librarian whose job was taken over by a robot and whose girlfriend Hil recently ditched him. He finds work counseling other people whose jobs were also taken over by robots, but drops everything when he finds out Hil is missing. Ronnie’s suspicions that Hil is mixed up in something bad is at war with his feelings over being dumped, but the only way he’s going to find out how she feels about him is to find her. Unlike almost everyone else, Hil was raised away from technology, making her very difficult to track. Ronnie, accompanied by his first counseling client Colin and Ronnie’s personal robot RIFF23, trek through 90s rave reenactments, alien abductee meetings and nature communes. Hil manages to leave Ronnie a clue to her whereabouts, and Ronnie, Colin and company launch a desperately-cobbled rescue attempt with newfound colleagues.
The story is told from both Hil’s and Ronnie’s points of view. It isn’t surprising who has kidnapped Hil—her ex-boyfriend Johns, the CEO of Venus Syndicate (VS), who has coopted a peaceful anti-technology community (HDT, named after Henry David Thoreau) and made it over into a terrorist group–is set up from the beginning as the villain, since Ronnie is sure Hil went back to Johns after dumping him. This is a boy-meets-girl boy-falls-in-love-with-girl boy-rescues-girl boy-is-jealous-of-other-boy-because-of-girl story, and I admit I was a little annoyed by that at first. Toward the beginning I was sometimes unsure if what Ronnie and Hil actually had was a relationship. I could not decide if Ronnie loved Hil or if was he obsessed with someone who had every right to walk out on a relationship she thought wasn’t working. So I wish that the relationship setup had been made more clear—although anyone who goes through a breakup goes on a rollercoaster ride of emotions, and Ronnie’s strong characterization certainly reflected that. I was happy to find out later in the story that Hil does indeed return Ronnie’s affections.
There are a ton of acronyms in this story. That’s part of the humor. Besides our obsession with technology, our society is obsessed with nicknaming objects and organizations. Where she uses them, Colombo almost always explains them or weaves in gentle reminders, but honestly, if we readers can tell the difference between FBI, JLA, DVD, ATM, DSL, AT&T, LARP, WWE, MMA and so on, then readers are going to be Just Fine. In fact, the snarky dialogue and absurd situations (juxtaposed with Ronnie’s and Hil’s often tender musings and memories about their relationship) keep this story going.
I don’t want to spoil the ending, but I do want to say that while Ronnie and Hil are reunited, their story isn’t delivered in a neat little package. And that’s the best outcome for them, actually. If this book had ended any other way, I think I might not have liked it as much as I did.
In conclusion: Subterranean is an enjoyable, sometimes raucous satire that appears not to take itself too seriously while actually highlighting sobering themes such as tech addiction, corporate greed, and a wee bit of terrorism against a backdrop of ’90s nostalgia and zany existentialist flakiness. There’s a plot twist toward the end which I should have seen coming, but didn’t, and it made me like the main characters that much more. Sarah Colombo’s brilliantly underhanded story makes me look forward to her future work.
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