Welcome to 2084 where Margaret Thatcher’s quote ‘There really is no such thing as society’ is a living reality.
So how does it look like? People are raised by robots and are so self-absorbed that society had ceased to exist.
Technology had taken over and individuals spend all their time online creating avatars that look and think like them (and keep repeating positive affirmation to keep them going).
They live in tiny pods, eat ultra-processed food that doesn’t fill them up and spend hours daily online doing the following activities: spending money they don’t have shopping, sharing selfies and waiting desperately for others’ validation, doing courses that they neither need nor understand and pretend to be experts on certain topics to discuss them for hours on different podcasts.
Moreover, looks matter and plastic surgeries are a must even when it’s unaffordable. Yet people live on a daily supply of anti-depressants pumped through a tube that’s always worn.
It’s neoliberal times so everything costs money from the air they breathe to the words they speak. The air is so polluted that masks should be worn when outside. The reader experience all these details through a main character called Renee Ann Blanca, a 26-year-old woman with a deformed cheek because of a self-injected filler.
Renee lives with her self-created avatars that she spends her day talking to as she has no human contacts. She also has a ridiculous amount of debt that might take decades to pay.
Consequently, she must look constantly for menial jobs as full-time employment is something from the past that doesn’t exist anymore. She’s competing with others and there is a ranking system that hiring depends on and is constantly updated, depending on her performance at each odd job she takes.
The interviews could be re-taken within a short time, just to make sure that everyone is busy doing something no matter how trivial it is.
After a failed suicide attempt, Renee decides to break free from this meaningless existence and look for other humans like her. This means leaving her technology-oriented existence and venturing into a new world that involves nature and other beings she always heard of but never seen (animals and humans alike).
Would she like her new freedom or feel nostalgic to her old dependent life?
‘Individutopia’ (2018) is a novel where author Joss Sheldon not only painstakingly describes the downside of life in a neoliberal society but also how life is without human connection.
What makes this book brilliant is how familiar everything is even though it’s set almost sixty years from now. The narrative is unique when it comes to Renee’s first human contact. She seems to struggle with self-expression, trust and keep questioning morals and motives of others.
It takes her a long time to understand and adjust to the idea of being part of a community that shares common goals.
After leaving smoggy London city with its demolished historical sites reconstructed by multimillion corporations and given new names such as Nestlé tower, Sheldon invites readers to observe nature surrounding them and learn the lessons that come with it from equilibrium to living in harmony with other beings.
The novel ends with hope possible only with people’s willpower to remain humane.
Joss Sheldon (1982) is an English writer who considers himself an ‘unchained freethinker and a post-modernist radical’ with novels focusing on current political themes.
His first book ‘Involution and Evolution’ (2013) discusses the refugee crisis while ‘Occupied’ (2015) is inspired by the occupation of Kurdistan and Palestine. ‘Individutopia’ is considered by far his best work that’s reflective and highly recommended for dystopian novel fans.
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