Released in October 2020, the fifth book by David Wong (Jason Pargin), and the second in his "Zoey Ashe" series, Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick is the sequel to the 2015 novel Futuristic Violence And Fancy Suits.
Less than a year after the events of the first book, Zoey finds herself still dealing with the fallout from her biological father's death and the will that left his billion dollar crime empire to her. While trying to balance using her immeasurable wealth for good, and her vast criminal empire for also good, Zoey finds herself targeted by an online group known as "The Blowback" who mail her a corpse right before Halloween. Said corpse then proceeds to animate, going on a rampage through her house and blaming Zoey for its death. With only a few days before a Halloween fundraiser she has scheduled and a massive bounty on her head for a confession to the alleged crime, Zoey and her team "The Suits" have to solve the murder and prove their innocence before an out and out war breaks out between them and a private security firm known as the "Vanguard of Peace" and turns the city into a smoking crater.
Provides examples of:
- Animal Motifs: As in the first book Zoey if heavily associated with cats, but her internet trolls have also taken to calling her a cow, both as a jab to her weight and as a reference to "lolcows", internet users who are fun to mock ("milk") for drama.
- Bait-and-Switch: Titus Chobb heavily implies that the meal he's having with Zoey is her mother, until Melinda walks in from the other room to join them, and then implies that it's actually his son Marti, at which point Marti walks in to ask what they want. When Titus tries to bait her a third time with the same implication, Zoey is more irritated than scared and refuses to take the bait.
- Cassandra Truth: Zoey repeatedly tells The Suits to try and infiltrate The Hub, as she suspects it might be key to figuring out The Blowback's plan, but none of them take it seriously enough to actually bother past a single half-hearted attempt by Andre, as they're more worried about what The Blowback has planned for the real world. It turns out both Zoey and Will were right. The Hub is in fact just a meaningless MMORPG, but The Blowback's revenge plan was based entirely inside The Hub, as in they were just going to kill a Zoey avatar they made to try and humiliate her. If they had just listened to her and investigated they would have realized that they didn't really pose a threat, and could have avoided a bunch of running around in the last quarter of the book.
- Dragon with an Agenda: Dirk Vikerness has his own set of goals, and is the actual leader and organizer of The Blowback. While the final confrontation is with Chobb, it could be argued that Dirk is the real Big Bad.
- Extremely Short Timespan: Aside from the prologue which takes place a month earlier and the epilogue which takes place on Halloween, the entire book happens over the course of the two days leading up to the 31st.
- For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: Zoey goes undercover at a Halloween party by dressing as "Torture Victim Zoey" from the final act of Futuristic Violence And Fancy Suits. The heavy wound make-up obscures her face and allows her to effortlessly blend in among several other "Zoeys".
- Giant Mecha: Zoey's Halloween costume, which while not actually dangerous is still functional enough to serve as a distraction.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Titus Chobb is revealed to be the Man Behind the Man for Molech from the previous book, having orchestrated Arthur Livingston's death. At this point, Zoey isn't terribly torn up about it.
- Guns Are Worthless: Justified, no one in Tabula Ra$a uses guns because there exist common Raiden tech that sends out a radio wave that cooks the cordite in bullets, causing them to explode, meaning walking around with bullets or magazines means you have a live bomb in your pocket.
- Handicapped Badass: Wu breaks his arm early in the story, and proceeds to be exactly as cool and awesome as always with one hand.
- Humans Are Good: After a solid 300 pages of Zoey being convinced that literally everyone outside of her immediate circle is part of the Troll movement against her, a group of random civilians save her from being murdered by Dirk Vikerness, revealing themselves to be huge fans of hers. This leads Zoey to inspect the footage from the Night Inn incident, revealing that what seemed to be an entire mob of people out for her blood was in reality less than 20 very loud trolls scattered through a crowd of people who had no idea what was happening. This helps restore Zoey's faith in humanity, even if just a little.
- I'm a Humanitarian: One of the many rumors spread about Zoey and The Suits is that they apparently devoured Dexter Tilley's organs after killing him, which in turn gets morphed into multiple rumors about organ trafficking and murderous cannibal sex cults. Budd counters by spreading rumors that Titus Chobb is the real cannibal, which eerily seems much more likely... until it turns out he's not, nobody is eating anybody.
- Intentionally Awkward Title: The book's title was actually a placeholder, until an internet poll convinced Wong to go with it because it's hilarious.
- Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game: "The Hub", a virtual reality MMO that The Blowback uses to organize.
- Non-Indicative Name: The Raiden-enhanced bounty hunter with a giant pair of jet wings is named "The Human Tank", which is apparently the name he chose before he got the wings.
- Older Than They Look: It turns out Wu is actually in his 40s with three teenage kids.
- Serious Business: The players of The Hub take it very seriously, and consider what happens in there more important than the real world.
- Took a Level in Badass: Compared to the first book, while definitely still out of her element Zoey is a much more shrewd negotiator and planner, able to improvise on the fly, talk her way out of situations, and come up with and pitch the deal that saves the day entirely on her own.
- Voice of the Legion: Parodied: The Blowback's Hub avatar is controlled by multiple users, but they're not coordinated and they all have push-to-talk on, so The Blowback is constantly contradicting itself.
