There couldn't be a better time to read Matt Witten's cyberpunk novel, 51%, in which Ayn Randian corporate power and philosophy controls and permeates all parts of American life, including the NYPD (New York's police), which are named NYPDInc, and in which police need payment from the people to do their work. Apple's adaptation of William Gibson's Neuromancer will be streaming this coming January. Even more important, Trump's hijacking of American democracy is claiming more innocent lives via ICE and other Federal police every week, and that requires vigorous response in all aspects of communication, including science fiction.
Witten's novel, published this past April, takes place 20 years from now. People who are not rich pay for their medical treatment, education, and other essential needs by selling percentages of themselves to corporations. If they sell more than 50%, they become corporate property, with where they live and work completely controlled by their owners. To make sure that the 51%ers don't try to evade this corporate slavery, biochips are implanted in them, and their owners are alerted if anyone tries to remove them.
This is the environment in which NYPDInc Detective Luke and his partner Haley must work in as they attempt to find the killer of Talia, a young immigrant 51% woman in New York City, and get drawn into a desperate, ingenious plan to break free of the corporate enslavement. Witten has a keen sense of what the city would look like in such a corporate-glorified country, with streets renamed "Ayn Rand", "Randy Weaver", "Fountainhead", and "John Galt" -- right alongside current names like "Waverly" -- and gun models called "Hestons" and "Ruby Ridges". Witten also knows his kittens, writing "She started down the hall -- and tripped on a kitten, which had slipped out of the speck between her legs". ("Speck", by way, is slang for apartment in this Big Corporate Apple, in which NYPDInc cops are called "Dincs" and the FBI cleverly called "Fincs".)
Given the ascent of AI in our world today, there of course is an AI character in 51% who, in another move that will make you smile, speaks with Margaret Thatcher's voice. There's also use of fireflies in the story, which I'm also glad to see because they harken at least as far back in science fiction as my 1999 novel The Silk Code and Peter Watt's 2006 Blindsight, and they warrant more widespread use in our world. And in the last third of the novel, there's almost nonstop action that will keep you glued for at least a few hours or longer, capping the memorable love story throughout.
But those are the science fiction and police fiction wheels of 51%, and its most important raison d'etre, along with the enjoyment it provides, is the lesson it gives us about the likes of Trump and his allies and the damage they continue to do to our country and our world, and why we must show up at the ballot box this November and begin to get them out of office.
***
Watch here for my interview with Matt Witten, which is coming soon. 51% is his seventh published novel, and he's written for Law & Order, House, Homicide, and many more TV series.
***
more about The Silk Code here
