Rumor has it that she was involved in a possible terrorist-linked bombing there, but there is no real information about her whereabouts. His idea is that he'll stay long enough to pack up her belongings so he can start to try to put things behind him. The only thing that is lacking seems to be reality behind the scenes and unaware to the public, every movement in the city has been calculated and planned, trends are thoroughly analyzed, and decisions are made based on revenue and profit.Ĭedric is a has-been film director and has come to Eutopia where two months earlier his wife Mila (who had been in on the creation of the city) had disappeared. "It was almost as if everybody was in a trance-like state, monitoring their social channels, connecting to billboards, transacting with each other." On the streets, as main character Cedric Travers reveals, Eutopia also exists as entertainment for the young up-and-comers of the world they can find and do anything there.
More than a theme park, it is a place where people can "live-broadcast their lives" and are "incentivized" to do so in Eutopia, "everybody has the chance to be a star." Giant screens exist everywhere on which ads run almost constantly, and between them there is "never a dull moment" - car chases, scandals, crimes and people looking for stardom and social cache all find their way up onto the big screen. So how does a celebrity or social media star keep his or her public abreast of his or her vacation doings? Take a trip to Eutopia where everything and anything does happen.
It is referred to as an "integrated city," where tourists can get "Europe's greatest hits without having to go there." That is a necessity at the moment in time that this novel is set, since worries about political unrest on the European continent leave a lot of people unwilling to travel. Set not so far off from our present, social media and social currency is the basis of everything and everybody in this novel, which is set in the fictional desert city of Eutopia, a sort of glitzy conglomerate of replica cities pieced together on a piece of land belonging to the Navajos. In a rare outing away from my reading diet of the supernatural and weird, I stray into the realm of science fiction-ish, dystopian-ish, cyberpunk-ish here with the recently-released Neon Empire, which although set in the future, builds a world that resonates with our modern times in terms of social media, corruption, and corporate greed. California Coldblood/Rare Bird Books, 2019
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