New Release Notes 6/7/2022: The City Inside by Samit Basu

The City Inside by Samit Basu

“Peopled with a vivid cast of characters in an eerily plausible near-future setting echoing the horrors and absurdities of our present moment, The City Inside is SF at its best—fizzing with ideas, entertaining, revelatory and humane. I've never read anything quite like it.” —Zen Cho, author of Black Water Sister

Science fiction isn’t always time travel and aliens (even though, when it is, it’s a hell of a good time). Sometimes, it’s just pushing the technology we already have to a little bit further up the road, and seeing where that put’s us; emotionally, socially, spiritually. This book does what all good science fiction does; using the plot, it asks questions about relationships and how technology can complicate them, but also how it can sometimes bring us together.

Joey is a Reality Controller in near-future Delhi. Her job is to supervise the multimedia multi-reality livestreams of Indi, one of South Asia’s fastest rising online celebrities—who also happens to be her college ex. Joey’s job gives her considerable culture power, but she’s too caught up in day-to-day crisis handling to see this, or to figure out what she wants from her life.

Rudra is a recluse estranged from his wealthy and powerful family, now living in an impoverished immigrant neighborhood. When his father’s death pulls him back into his family’s orbit, an impulsive job offer from Joey becomes his only escape from the life he never wanted.

But as Joey and Rudra become enmeshed in multiple conspiracies, their lives start to spin out of control—complicated by dysfunctional relationships, corporate loyalty, and the never-ending pressures of surveillance capitalism. When a bigger picture begins to unfold, they must each decide how to do the right thing in a world where simply maintaining the status quo feels like an accomplishment. Ultimately, resistance will not—cannot—take the same shape for these two very different people.