Live out your dreams in the vU! You can go on a lavish vacation, live on a starship or explore magical lands in a vast, virtual reality that feels just like real life. Every taste, every touch, every smell… and it all comes free with your purchase of a vChip, plus installation fees. Join the billions of others Dreaming Under an Electric Moon.*
*Installation requires the painless procedure of having a microchip implanted in the right temple of the head. Side effects include dizziness, nausea, possession and death in less than one percent of the population and is approved for all ages.
Assessment:
Plot/Idea: Dreaming Under an Electric Moon, a clever cyberpunk adventure set in a futuristic America that is no longer unified, weaves a gripping thriller with fast-paced, inventive escapes into real and virtual settings. The likable cast of characters is pitted against a dangerous and malevolent hacker, and Powers builds stunning tension into the plot.
Prose: Powers does a good job of organically incorporating world-building into the plot, though some of the exposition embedded in dialogue can come off a bit stilted. The writing is consistent, with some strong descriptive prose and dialogue that reads naturally and supports characterization.
Originality: Dreaming Under an Electric Moon is heavy with ideas but successfully brings them all together. The world-building is spirited, with inventive concepts that Powers subtly draws out for readers.
Character/Execution: Though it deals with some weighty concepts, Dreaming Under an Electric Moon has a light, adventuresome tone that is reinforced through solid characterization. The primary characters are a plucky group, rich with camaraderie and rapport, while the antagonist Moloch is portrayed as a super villain of sorts, one that is menacing and over-the-top without being cheesy.
Date Submitted: August 30, 2024
In this genre-blending future thriller, FBI agents Zahra Washington and Mason Deane, a mind hacker, team up to "rescue the world from certain destruction" after investigating multiple cases with mysterious murders and a new case where the suspect swears she's been framed. Set in an imaginative future of hologram news, underwater colonies, and a United States that’s no longer united, Powers’s debut pits the agents against a high-tech mind-controlling killer named Moloch, “king of the mindhackers,” who’s bent on taking over the world one host at a time, making everyone a drone under his control. “You’re reasonably intelligent,” Moloch tells Deane, early on. “That will make your brain easier to rewire.” Then Moloch divides into an army and rushes for him.Inventive and unsettling scenes like that power Dreaming Under an Electric Moon, a fast-paced, impossible-to-predict ride starring two sharp-witted FBI agents each equipped with their own special set of skills. Powers pushes the narrative forward with surprising action, laugh-out-loud banter, and a tense storyline that takes full advantage of its future setting. Teaming up with software expert Ernestine Paul and her "black market guy", Garrett, the agents and their assembled team search both virtually online and multiple real-world locations to find Edward Blunt, the mysterious and supposedly dead creator of the vU, the virtual-reality "universe," in the hopes that he can help them stop Moloch, who is gathering countless drones.
In their race to save humanity, the team encounters characters from vNovels, aliens, ghoul-clowns, and Moloch himself in multiple hosts, creating a creepy level of distrust and uncertainty over who is an ally and who is the enemy. Blending shoe-leather procedural work, bursts of crisp but wild action, a viral update on super villainy, and a concluding reminder of the temptations of abusing cheat codes, this tech-run-amok plot will please fans of stories of investigating disturbing VR futures.
Takeaway: Inventive SF crime thriller pitting feds against “the king of the mindhackers.”
Comparable Titles: Caitlin Starling's The Luminous Dead Simon Jimenez's The Vanished Birds.
Production grades
Cover: B
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A-
