The year is 4050, and there is a serial killer on the loose. The Family Guy\u2014so called because he murders entire families\u2014is such an elusive and dangerous criminal that the authorities decide the only way to capture him is to build a real-life synthetic investigator designed with the mind and memories of fictional Scotland Yard super-sleuth Miranda \u201cSerial Killer\u201d Miller. \u201cI was a work of fiction, an alloy of various detective tropes,\u201d the synthetic Miller quips about her early 21st-century namesake. \u201cOr a shameless rip-off, depending on who you listened to.\u201d Miranda is dispatched to Las Vegas, England (a facsimile of the American original that now serves as Europe\u2019s party capital) to investigate the latest crime scene. To fit in better with the locals, she has been programed to speak exclusively in IngoLingo, a Clockwork Orange-like \u201cgobspew street-English, spawned by the fads and whims of smin knowed as the Vox Popeye.\u201d In Las Vegas, she teams up with Bogart Wham, the \u201cNumero Uno Celeb Influsser in PopRep\u201d (that\u2019s the Popular Republic, the populist-capitalist federation that now occupies Europe and North America). Together, they will prove whether a detective assembled from middling novels can catch a very real serial killer. According to Chadwick\u2019s inventive lore, Earth was plunged into a 1500-year Dark Age in the middle of the 21st century, and the newly revived civilization of 4050 therefore reveres American culture\u2014and Donald Trump in particular\u2014in the way that Renaissance thinkers revered the Romans; this is the reason \u201cfreddykrueger\u201d and Family Guy remain coherent references. (Some still manage to feel dated, however: Common profanities include \u201czuck\u201d\u2014for Mark Zuckerberg\u2014and \u201cTrump in Stormy!\u201d) Numerous Trump jokes aside\u2014two countries in 4050 are modeled on his teachings, including one called Trumpia\u2014the novel\u2019s premise and its execution are quite brilliant. Readers will end the book hoping more Serial Killer Miller cases are in the works.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The year is 4050, and there is a serial killer on the loose. The Family Guy\u2014so called because he murders entire families\u2014is such an elusive and dangerous criminal that the authorities decide the only way to capture him is to build a real-life synthetic investigator designed with the mind and memories of fictional Scotland Yard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3940"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}