Trump Sky Alpha

Following a cyber attack that takes down the Internet, the world is brought to a nuclear standoff that ends badly with a comprehensive strike launched by President Trump from his personal zeppelin. In the postapocalyptic aftermath, Rachel, a reporter sheltering from a nightmare of nuclear death, is tasked with doing a story on end-of-the-world web humor. In return for permission to visit the mass grave containing her wife and daughter, Rachel agrees to examine what remains of the Internet. Her discoveries about the devastating hack soon draw the attention of the authorities, who convince her to interview the radiation-sick author of a novel that foretold the catastrophe. This leads her to Birdcrash, the demented perpetrator of the attack. She is captured and tortured but kills Birdcrash and is rescued because the authorities suspect she still has important information. Will Rachel be able to find her own way in this bleak future? VERDICT This macabre vision of a future America presents a frighteningly real scenario and brings into focus the pervasive yet inane power of politicians and the Internet. Scary bedtime reading that will make you think. [See Prepub Alert, 8/27/18.]--Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

November 15, 2018
After the world ends, a widowed reporter is assigned to investigate whether the internet--and, by extension, human civilization--meant anything at all.This pitch-dark satire by Doten (The Infernal, 2015) takes all the author's previously demonstrated predilections for skewing popular culture and dials it up to 11, at least in the horrifying prelude to everything that comes after. The opening sequence is charitably meant to be an absurd and garish caricature of the American presidency, but it might well serve as a trigger to those disgusted by the lies and disinformation that emerge from the White House daily: A diseased and rambling leader, isolated on his titular airship, drops his ridiculous tweets even as he uses the military's "wonderful codes" to rain nuclear fire down on the world. By comparison, the rest of the novel is relatively benign despite launching with a fragment of text, alone on a page, that reads in total: "the sheriff of sucking u off is made of fire." Rachel is a horrified survivor first, former journalist second, who takes refuge in the Twin Cities Metro Containment Zone. She only wants to find out what happened to her presumably deceased wife and daughter and so reluctantly takes an assignment from a revived New York Times Magazine to write "a piece on internet humor at the end of the world." From here, Doten serves up an underground-flavored conspiracy thriller involving an obscure novel that inspires a true-life hacktivist group called the Aviary to take down the world that's left. The main narrative is seeded with fragments, memes, and pop-culture narratives, but the story that emerges is horrifying. The hunt for a password to unlock what's left of the internet takes Rachel to a sadistic cult leader who mutilates her in grotesque fashion and spends what's left of the novel confessing his crimes. The end result is imaginatively political and experientially gross.An acid satire that might have been funnier in sunnier times.

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January 1, 2019
One of Granta's 2017 Best Young American Novelists, Doten has used the name of Trump's supersize version of Air Force One as the title of this unconventional and darkly satirical mix of memes, Twitter jokes, Q&As, and tightly written stream-of-consciousness passages. The plot is devastatingly simple: a reckless braggart of a president delivers his typical YouTube address to the nation aboard his airship. As is his wont, he exaggerates his triumphs while excoriating his enemies. But one day, his incendiary blasts of hot air go too far, plunging the planet into full-scale nuclear war, ultimately decimating 90 percent of the world's population. Lesbian journalist Rachel is supposed to write a piece about internet humor for the first reconstituted issue of the New York Times Magazine on the first anniversary of the nuclear attack. But in this new world, digital technology no longer works, so she has to rely on old technology, such as dumphones, they could make calls, that was it. Doten's speculative tale is very strange and chilling, subversive and surreal, and disturbingly relevant.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)