THE VECTORIST (Book 1: Rise of the Tribes) is the debut novella in a series. The central conceit is both promising and terrifying, mostly because it seems to describe something akin to what is happening in front of our eyes today: What if the direction of humankind could be micromanaged at the level of influencing whole sections of society to act in certain ways? Author M.E. McMillan has not written a flesh-creeper as such, but in its matter-of-fact treatment of the common will' s subversion, this story chills the soul. The setting is New York just under twenty years from now. Marek is a vectorist whose powerful AI systems allow him to scrape metadata on every individual who ever goes online, tailoring their online experiences to nudge them in certain behavioral directions.
It is possible to find novelists who write far more bleakly in the speculative genres; Lovecraft, Gibson, perhaps Cormac McCarthy, or Ballard in one of his dourer moods come to mind. But few conjure the existential meaninglessness of a comprehensively algorithm-mediated future (one that is perhaps closer at hand than many of us like to think) as effortlessly as McMillan. His dystopic near-future is believable because he grasps the essential truth of power today: Those who have it wield it shamelessly, from the broligarchy to the stinking-rich clients whom Marek manipulates to maximize his profits. The worldbuilding is surprisingly rich, given the work’s brevity, and McMillan wisely leans into showing, not telling.
So it's a pity that the story, though serviceable, is not quite as compelling as it could have been. Marek’s concern for his estranged daughter—she has fallen in with an extremist group opposed to his industrial-scale manipulation of humankind—is badly undersold, and there is no prima facie reason why this man, whose morals are in question and who doesn't consider himself a father (“not anymore”), should care all that much about what happens to her. It is the sort of fault from which the opening episodes of a book series tend to suffer.
But the proof will be in how the narrative progresses from here. If the world described in THE VECTORIST—with its drones, AI therapists, and panopticonical surveillance—is anything to go by, it will be one remarkable ride.
M.E. McMillan's THE VECTORIST (Book 1: Rise of the Tribes) benefits from excellent worldbuilding and an intriguing, timely central premise.
~ Craig Jones for IndieReader