Wednesday, September 7, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Sleepless by Victor Manibo

 


Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on August 23, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

The Sleepless is the debut novel of Filipino author Victor Manibo, and the latest novel from excellent small publisher Erewhon Books.  The novel is a science fiction noir mystery, featuring a world in the 2040s in which people have come down with a "plague" that makes them "Sleepless" - unable to sleep and no longer needing it seemingly to function.  The protagonist of the novel, Jamie Vega, is a Sleepless journalist at a prominent journalism company facing a controversial corporate takeover, who gets caught up in conspiracies once his boss dies in a way that Jamie refuses to accept is actually suicide.  

The result is a story that's really interesting, dealing with the capitalist implications of a world where people could suddenly function for all 24 hours of the day, how that could be exploited and how that could be devastating for the world, all the while dealing with a pretty classic style noir plot.  The story has some issues with info-dumping, as we're entirely in the first person perspective of its hero from the beginning, and certain twists and new developments occur probably too easily, but it works really well to demonstrate the interesting ideas of its premise - one that has implications for our own world and how things are with capitalism, the environment, discrimination and more.  

------------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
In the 2030s, a new strange pandemic hit the world - turning people into "Sleepless", people who weren't able to...and did not sleep to function.  Spreading by means that could not be figured out, the Sleepless plague spread to 25% of the world's population and caused massive changes in society - with sleepless being feared and hated by some, envied by others, causing many Sleepless to hide their new status.  But when it became clear that the Sleepless seemed otherwise no different from regular humans, the discrimination and jealousy seemed to largely die down, especially when the number of people suddenly turning Sleepless declined precipitously.  

Jamie Vega is one of those new Sleepless, and he has been using that status in many ways - to learn new things for one, but mostly to avoid dreaming the nightmares that have haunted him since the tragedy of his past.  Jamie's a journalist for the country's most prominent journalism corporation, working directly under Simon, one of the two founders, and has been working to dig up extremely incriminating dirt on a rising politician.  But just when Jamie is about to bring it to Simon one morning, he finds Simon dead in his office, in what seems like a suicide....but Jamie can't quite believe it isn't foul play.  

Indeed motives for Simon's death abound - the story on the politician is suddenly spiked, a buyout of the journalism corporation that Simon wanted to stop suddenly seems possible to go forward, and Simon seemed to be working on something mysterious with an ex-colleague of his, among other things.  But as Jamie digs into the mystery, he begins to realize that there is some connection between Simon's death and the Sleepless....and that Jamie himself is the last person to have spoken to Simon, in a conversation he absolutely does not remember having.  

Suddenly Jamie is confronting mysterious memory lapses and conspiracies that suggest that something untoward is happening among Sleepless groups, and that Simon's death was only the tip of the iceberg.  And Jamie doesn't know who he can trust, with one wrong move possibly dooming the entire world to disaster....

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In many ways, the Sleepless is a pretty standard noir, for better or for worse.  The story takes place entirely from Jamie's first person point of view, with him narrating events both in the present and in flashbacks and infodumps about the history of this world.  There's a death that Jamie winds up investigating that is more than it seems, with Jamie discovering conspiracies involving corporations with mysterious shell corporations, researchers who disappear, and violent extremists with their own secret backing.  There's also a bunch of cyberpunk elements thrown in such as VR, questionable designer drugs, and typical anti-capitalist themes.  It's done decently well as a noir, although Jamie's flashbacks and info dumping about this world often feels a bit much, especially as the book goes on.  

Still that basic noir setup works to fit in themes and ideas that challenge today's capitalist theme of society.  What would society do with a condition that gives people 6-8 more hours of the day to spend awake? Well, for many people that would be extra work to get extra money, which would certainly benefit many greedy corporate types who could then exploit the additional labor.  What would that do to those who still have to sleep and have to compete with those who don't - and if thus given the option wouldn't they then also take the chance to become Sleepless?  What would be the effects on the environment of everyone suddenly being productive for an additional 6-8 hours? And if being sleepless had some side effects, how would those dependent upon a new Sleepless work force react to them?  

The Sleepless doesn't delve into all these questions deeply necessarily, but it brings them up in interesting ways, and Jamie works as an excellent character to dive into them - a man who became Sleepless largely for personal innocuous reasons in trying to escape trauma while dreaming...but who finds that trauma still in front of him nevertheless.  Jamie also is dealing with the remains of what Simon did to him - in another anti-capitalist theme - in how Simon drove him to work harder and harder to get the story while also refusing to let him throw things away by publishing such work prematurely and causing problems for him as a result.  This drive instilled in him by Simon drives Jamie throughout the story (as well as Jamie's idealism about the world and refusal to accept things he can't understand), and makes the otherwise standard noir elements and the themes discussed above, and a few I'm sure I missed, really work well.  

The result in The Sleepless is an excellent debut genre novel from Manibo, and one that is at times really really interesting, even as the story's form is pretty standard.  Well well worth your time.  



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