I say that because Old Me would have done that calculation, and given a rough ballpark word count for Alex Irvine's 2020 book Anthropocene Rag. It's a 250-page book that I think claims to be a novella, and my (now unsupported by data) opinion is that it's probably north of the 40,000 words that was the traditional SF marker of "novel," renowned in song and story and Hugo rules. What I mean is: if Irvine had somehow written and published this in the 1950s - quite unlikely since he, like me, was born in 1969 - it would have been considered a novel then.
That and $12.95 will get you a ham sandwich at a deli, but I like to mention random things like that. It makes me relatable as a blogger and helps pad out the word count, neither of which is an actual concern for me.
This is a post-Singularity story, set in the vaguely near future. The actual Boom happened sometime in the mid-21st century, and is maybe twenty years in the past. Our main characters are all about twenty - Irvine doesn't underline this, but they were all born around the time of the Boom and have lived their entire lives, growing to new adulthood, in this transformed America. And it's structured like a novella, though with a fairly large cast, so we don't get all of the details and explanations.
The narrative voice does point out that there are still millions of people living normal lives in this nano-transformed USA, which I suppose is meant to be reassuring. I instead remembered that there are well over three hundred million people in the USA right this moment, and going from there to just "millions" is a die-off unprecedented in human history. Perhaps that's not what Irvine, or the narrative voice, meant. But life is clearly contingent and random in this newly transformed world: traffic across the country is rare, and I don't see how large-scale business entities can still be operating. (SF is always good at small business - shops, places to get a meal, small marketplaces, artisans and individual tinkerers - but often is more cartoonish, dismissive, or simply ignorant of larger enterprises.)
As the book goes on, the narrative voice makes a distinction - not always clear, as it's not necessarily clear to the entity telling the story - between what I guess I might as well call sentients and sapients. (The book does not.) Sentients have minds, and models of the world, and affect change; various constructs and elements of the Boom, or its echoing and constituent Boomlets, are sentient. They are self-motivated actors doing things in the world, the constructs in the form of humans or other large organic entities, and others seemingly entirely in the software spaces of a world saturated with nano. Sapients are aware of themselves, their choices and options, and can question what they're doing - all humans are sapients, and one construct wakes up along those lines during the course of the action.
We do learn the origin point of this world, how this specific Singularity happened. I won't spoil it completely, but it was a combination of a natural disaster (made worse by global warming) and an arrogant billionaire's technology. We don't know if it's worldwide; we only see America here. Canada is mentioned, but may be quite different. The rest is blank spaces on the map.
So we should start with the legend, the story as told: Monument City is a myth, but possibly real. Built by Moses Barnum somewhere in the Rockies, containing many of the greatest major structures of mankind, in the immediate aftermath of the initial Boom. A city of mysteries and wonders, forbidden to almost everyone. Once in a while, Life-7 - which may be the main AI entity dominant in America after the Boom, or maybe just the entity that runs Monument City - sends out a construct to invite a small group of humans to Monument City, for whatever reasons that time.
The construct this time is Prospector Ed: he's the one that starts developing self-doubt and awareness. The invitees are six people, from across the country: Teeny from San Francisco, Kyle from Orlando, Henry from New York, and three others. All orphans; all orphans of the Boom. All get a Wonka-esque ticket, which only they can touch, which will help them get safe passage to Monument City.
It's a short book, so it happens quickly. They get their tickets; they set off. Well, mostly. Kyle is a twin, and isn't all that interested in cross-country travel - so his twin, nicknamed Geck, grabs the ticket and heads off instead. But Kyle's girlfriend Reenie hates that, and spurs the two of them to follow. So there are eight people, in various permutations and circumstances, traveling from various points across America, all trying to find a place they all think is probably mostly myth.
They all get there. They meet Moses Barnum, who I should say is not nearly as horrible and self-centered as some real-world tech billionaires, which is a small comfort. They also meet Life-7, going though some transformations of its own, and also not nearly as unpleasant as so many AIs from past SF stories - mostly benevolent, even.
The ending is quick, more evocative than explanatory. I don't know if Irvine plans more stories in this world, or had planned for this one to be longer and more detailed. He does end this story well, but he ends it like a novella, with more questions than answers.
It's a kaleidoscopic, phantasmagorical journey through a transformed America, full of mythic and historical wonders, full of transformative entities that can remember and change and build but not plan or understand or reflect. I think it changes again at the very end of this story, but that's always a question for individual readers: a story can never tell you what happens after the end. You have to decide that for yourself.
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