Never have sex with a robot.
The Easytown novels are a Cyberpunk Fantastic Noir Detective Literature series by Brian Parker.Easytown’s robotic pleasure clubs are a serial killer’s playground.
The futuristic slum in eastern New Orleans is a violent place where any vice can be satisfied—for a price. As long as the taxes are paid and tourists continue to flock to the city, businesses are allowed to operate as they see fit. Easytown has given rise to the robotic sex trade; where the robots are nearly human and always better than the real thing.
Homicide detective, Zach Forrest, has never trusted the machines. When a string of grisly murders rocks the city, he must hunt down the killer responsible. With no witnesses, and no evidence, Forrest embarks on an investigation that will challenge the very scope of reality. Will Forrest find the killer before he becomes the next victim?
The Easytown Novels are an example of how two very different genres combine to create a frighteningly real near future world where the advancement of technology has stalled for the average citizen, while the divide between the rich and the poor widens.
Classic noir stories of the past focus on the city with a thousand stories, investigated by the hard-nosed detective beset upon by the femme fatale, unfortunate victims, and who-done-it mysteries. Meanwhile, the hallmarks of the cyberpunk genre are the futuristic elements of climate change, social depravity, moral ambiguity, and corporate greed. The Easytown Novels combines the two genres in a way that will make this series a staple in the sci-fi noir genre.
Novels in the series:
- The Immorality Clause
- Tears of a Clone
- West End Droids and East End Dames
- House of the Rising Gun
The first three books were collected into The Easytown Novels: Books 1-3.
This series contains the following tropes:
- Accidental Murder: Zachary's backup murders Novah Harmony during her rescue. They claim it's an accident but its an Ambiguous Situation.
- The Alcoholic: Zachary Forrest is a functional version of one of these but only barely. His habit of drinking heavily grows worse as the novels progress and he soon drives away most of his friends while giving the police a reason to dismiss him.
- Benevolent A.I.: Andi is Zachary Forrest's Siri/Cortana-esque AI helper. She looks after his health, schedule, and gives him advice on how to try to avoid danger as well as keep his life in order. She's also apparently sentient despite the fact she's a common household appliance.
- Bodyguard Babes: The House of the Rising Gun ends with Tommy LaDeaux modifying several of his sex robots into assassination machines to assault the Chinese mafia's base of operations.
- City Noir: New Orleans has adapted to the 2060s by becoming a tourist destination for sex and violence. It remains a heavily Catholic city, though, and is actually hypocritical about it.
- City of Adventure: New Orleans is full of Cyberpunk crime involving cyborgs, androids, clones, and brainwashing devices.
- Cartwright Curse: Zach has no relationships that last more than a book due to a combination of his personality and dangerous lifestyle.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Torture Tourism is a thing in the future where rich benefactors arrive in town and proceed to torture to death cloned women. Its considered distasteful but not illegal. Until Zachary discovers the victims were "real" people.
- The Cowl: The Paladin is a man who dresses up like Batman and kills slavers operating in New Orleans.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: This is a general prejudice in the setting despite not being true. West End Droids and East End Dames has issues grow against them after several seemingly random cyborg rampages.
- Deep South: The entire series takes place in a futuristic version of New Orleans, Louisiana.
- Defective Detective: Zachary Forrest is a alcoholic, blundering, easily confused, and even more easily seduced detective who, nevertheless, is The Determinator. This combined with his passionate devotion for justice makes him solve impossible crimes.
- Fair Cop: Zachary is attractive in a rough and tumble way. Katheryn Townlain also qualifies.
- Famed In-Story: by House of the Rising Gun, Zach is well known as a true crime novel subject.
- Fantastic Noir: The novels take place in 2060s New Orleans where the city has embraced technological vice like sex bots, virtual reality porn, and designer drugs to appeal to the tourists while keeping it segregated in a specific crime-ridden part of the city. Zachary Forest is the one honest cop in the city who later becomes a private detective and treats it as his personal beat.
- Fantastic Racism: Robots and AI are treated as property despite large evidence that they can be sentient as well as free willed. Clones have absolutely no rights whatsoever despite the fact they're identical to human beings.
- Femme Fatale: Almost every book has one of these. Subverted with Katheryn Townlain who is an agent of Internal Affairs masquerading as a desk clerk.
- Friendly Enemy: Tommy LaDeaux is a crime boss of New Orleans and owner of most of Easytown. Zachary Forrest can't stand him and yet he keeps coming back to him for favors because there's something worse going on.
- Dirty Cop: Much of the NOPD is on the take and actually annoyed that Zach keeps kicking over rocks.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: Despite saving the life of the Pope and numerous other ridiculous accomplishments, the NOPD hates Zach and seeks ways to kick him off the force. They eventually succeed.
- Fantastic Drug: Euphoria is a drug that generates as close to true happiness as any narcotic possibly can. The New Zhongguo Corporation plans to use it to Take Over the World starting with the USA.
- Fantastic Noir: A cyberpunk detective series where the crimes are all science fiction concepts related but just as sleazy as something from Sam Spade.
- Girl Friday: Andi serves as this to Zach Forrest. She is actually a Siri-like household appliance who is, nevertheless, sentient enough to monitor his health as well as provide him emotional support. At one point she starts looking into a sexbot body to satisfy his, "ahem", other needs.
- Hardboiled Detective: Zachary may not be the smartest detective in the world.
- Hollywood Cyborg: West End Droids and East End Dames features several of these. Zachary becomes an aversion in that the majority of his cybernetics are purely prothstetics keeping him alive and mobile.
- Humans Are Bastards: Its difficult to imagine anyone having a high opinion of humanity with the horrible vices they get up to in Easytown ranging from torture tourism, use of sentient robots as slave labor, brainwashing, and more.
- Identical Stranger: Paxton is the model for Zach Forrest's girlfriend android and thus makes him deeply uncomfortable. Especially since she's married.
- It's Always Mardi Gras in New Orleans: Averted. Much of the series takes place during the regular parts of the year and it is treated as a perfectly normal, if deeply corrupt and vice-ridden, city.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: The Memory Maker creates your ideal fantasies and environments. It creeps Zachary Forrest out and he doesn't want anything to do with it, which perplexes the hostesses who assume everyone came because of it.
- Neon City: this is especially the case for the titular district of New Orleans. Being the Red Light District, it is full of holographic and neon signs advertising robot brothels, pornography dens, and specialized drug dens.
- Private Detective: What Zach is eventually forced into being after he loses his job with the NOPD.
- Red Light District: The basis of the novels is Easytown, the newly created 2060s New Orleans Red Light District that specializes in high-technology forbidden pleasures that are technically legal in the conservative Catholic city of the future. These include lifelike robotic prostitutes, virtual reality, and designer drugs.
- Red Baron: Thomas LaDeaux is known as "Tommy Voodoo" on the streets of New Orleans.
- Robosexual: Becoming one of this is grounds for termination for the police as it violates the Immorality Clause of their contracts. Zachary, of course, becomes one of these unwittingly in the first book. Many other people see nothing wrong with sex with robots.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: The latest models that are able to pass for human.
- Ruthless Foreign Gangsters: Easytown's mafia suffers a serious downturn in business when the Chinese construct their own red light district out of town. It is actually the Chinese government and they're testing Lotus-Eater Machine technology.
- Sex Bot: A very common creation of cyberneticists in the setting as they're incredibly lucrative since they became capable of mimicking the real thing. The majority of them, at least in Easytown, are nonsentient and merely capable of mimicking human behavior. Zach encounters a fully sentient one in the first book, though, and it causes him to wonder how many others might be alive.
- Turn in Your Badge: Pressure keeps mounting on Zachary Forrest to do this despite his numerous efforts to save the city. Eventually, he's forced to and he becomes a private detective instead.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: As typical in cyberpunk with clones, AI, and cybernetics being things.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: Andi serves as this to Zachary Forrest. She gives him advice and attempts to manage his wife.
