Once an internet conspiracy theorist and briefly an anti-corporate activist, Cabalynne now goes from temp job to temp job just hoping to buy groceries and pay rent. Arrgle, the mega-corporation insidiously controlling more and more of the world, continues expanding despite spirited protest. But when Cabalynne learns that Arrgle’s augmented-reality technology will soon entirely hide the world of the ultra-rich from the eyes of the poor—and that the poor will be hidden from the ultra-rich, too—she can’t help but return to the fight.

Bruce Berls’s VEILPIERCER is a fast-paced sci-fi adventure with timely social concerns. As in the best speculative fiction, much of the world of VEILPIERCER feels familiar; people have neurological implants instead of handheld devices, but the prevalence of surveillance capitalism is just one or two steps greater than it is today. Misinformation and conspiratorial thinking are omnipresent, mostly as tools for corporations to distract the general public from their malfeasance. Technologies that could be put to the benefit of all humankind are instead reserved for the pleasure and profit of a select few. This makes VEILPIERCER darkly funny, but, more importantly, relatable. Whatever Cabalynne and her activist team get up to with incomprehensible tech (including an increasingly sentient AI companion), almost any reader will appreciate feeling economic precarity while capitalists enjoy a blithe, rarefied existence.

Though the subject matter is dark, the fast pace and light tone keep the narrative moving. VEILPIERCER nails the humor of a surprise at the end of a well-constructed list: a haggard Cabalynne must wait for all the airplane boarding groups before her, including “Platinum, Diamond, Gold, Elite, Special, Premier, Red Carpet, Shag Carpet, Economy, Basic, and Single-Ply.” Arrgle CEO Lexi Xenos has a palatial home like the unholy love child of “a French mansion, a Japanese temple, and a Cheesecake Factory.” The supple prose is also rich and effective in quieter moments: Cabalynne thinks fondly of the “comforting gauze” of online conspiracy forums she used to frequent; and when the protagonists are briefly imprisoned by organized criminals, they find themselves in a capacious old hangar where “carcasses of partially disassembled airport shuttles scattered around the floor like dinosaur bones.” The flexible narrative voice keeps the plot moving, the characters sympathetic, and the world appealingly tangible—an especially crucial quality in a story that fixates on the distinction between the “real” world and the high-tech decorations used to obscure it.

Thoughtful and sharp, VEILPIERCER is perfect for any sci-fi reader with concern for the present and hope for the future.

With both dry absurdism and great humanity, Bruce Berls’s VEILPIERCER successfully turns 21st-century concerns about technology and society into a rollicking vision of their looming consequences.

~Dan Accardi for IndieReader