Machinehood

Starred review from December 14, 2020
This stunning near-future thriller from Divya (Runtime) tackles issues of economic inequality, workers’ rights, privacy, and the nature of intelligence. Bodyguard Welga Ramírez is a disillusioned former Special Forces soldier who makes her living protecting CEOs and celebrities, using mechanical implants and a course of high-tech drugs to enhance her combat skills. It’s much more exciting work than the other options available to humans: “babysitting” the bots that have taken over most skilled labor or scrounging for low-paying online gigs. Welga especially enjoys the opportunity to perform for the ubiquitous microdrone swarms that film and broadcast her every move. She even adds stylish action moves to her fights to improve her tips from her viewers. But when a job goes wrong, Welga faces a mysterious pro-AI terrorist group called The Machinehood. Determined to learn who they are and what they want, Welga heads into the very heart of The Machinehood’s operation, despite a worrying medical issue. Divya keeps the pace rapid, and her crack worldbuilding and vivid characters make for a memorable, page-turning adventure, while the thematic inquiries into human and AI labor rights offer plenty to chew on for fans of big idea sci-fi. Readers will be blown away. Agent: Cameron McClure, Donald Maas Literary.

January 1, 2021
Welga Ramirez thought she was done in the security field. She couldn't have been more wrong. Welga is a shield--a bodyguard working for wealthy funders who develop pills to enhance human performance so people can compete with bots and AIs. It's all theater. Fight with style and watch the tips roll in from the public watching via swarms of microcam drones. Welga is three months from the end of her contract when an attack on one of her clients actually turns deadly. Something called "the Machinehood" takes credit and gives humankind a week to stop producing pills, or else. Now Welga, along with the rest of the world, must race to answer the question: Is the Machinehood really the world's first truly sentient AI? And if not, who's threatening the entire world's way of life--and why? Meanwhile, Welga's having muscle spasms when she comes down from pills, which aren't supposed to have side effects. Can her biogeneticist sister-in-law, Nithya, figure out what's going on before the spasms get worse? Divya has created a richly imagined and eerily familiar world filled with insecure workers cobbling together freelance gigs and families dependent on rapidly designed and home-manufactured vaccines to protect against new bugs. It's a world without privacy, where every activity is performed for a crowd in hopes of getting tips--and a world confronting urgent questions about humans' place in a society increasingly run by AIs. Simply taking a tour of this world is well worth the reader's time, but Welga's and Nithya's quests also rocket the plot along toward an unexpected yet satisfying conclusion. Intriguing worldbuilding plus a fast-paced plot equals catnip for SF fans.

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February 15, 2021
Divya's debut mines the fear of sentient artificial intelligence. In 2095, computerized personal assistants and miniature mobile camera swarms have put an end to violent crime. Suborbital flight and instantaneous global communication allow easy connection to anywhere on the planet, low-level robotic AI's perform all manual labor, and medical companies produce designer tablets that can enhance a human's speed, strength, and stamina. But there is a financial downside to this new reality. Using machines for most of the paying jobs has forced people to scramble for short-term work just to pay for basic expenses, and there are limits to pill enhancement. Humanity reacts with terror when a publicized manifesto, demanding recognition of the rights of artificial intelligence and the immediate end of all pill production, is followed by the assassination of a major pharmaceutical CEO. Investigations appear to point to a repressive nation state but may lead in a direction no one thought possible. For fans of hard science fiction chase tales like Corey J. White's Repo Virtual (2020) or Daniel Suarez's Change Agent (2017).

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