A road trip with a robot
The Electric State is a Sci-Fi Alternate History graphic novel written and illustrated by Simon Stålenhag and published in 2018, the 6th of September. Taking place in an otherworldly 1990s it displays the journey of a young adult and her robotic companion across a fractured, VR addicted United States.
A film adaptation is in the works. The Russo Brothers will direct and Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt will star.
Free State Publishing successfully ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund the creation of a licensed tabletop RPG using the Year Zero Engine (same as another licensed game of Stålenhag's work, Tales from the Loop).
This book provides examples of:
- The '90s: The Electric State takes place in an alternate 1990s where the United States has fallen due to the trauma of war and the overuse of VR technology.
- Abusive Parents: Michelle's mother was a neglectful junkie who forced her daughter to help scavenge the chemicals she'd gotten hooked to in the military from the dangerous rusting hulks of old war machines. And her girlfriend Amanda's reverend father used to beat her until she bruised, and ultimately sent her off to live with relatives who brainwashed her into seeing their relationship as "just playing around."
- Alternate History: At some point in this world America had a second civil war. Between that and the advanced understanding of the brain this world has diverged significantly from our own. None of the current states are mentioned by name, with most of the story taking place in "Pacifica," which seems to be modern California, but one makeshift home does have the Bear Flag Republic flag hanging from it. The RPG Kickstarter clarifies a few things: first that Pacifica is a nation that used to be called California, and that the Point of Divergence from our time was the invention of neuronics in the 1960's.
- Ambiguous Ending: Once Michelle and Skip reach Point Linden, things get a bit less clear. They recover Skip's human body, but whether they're able to nurse it back to health such that removing the stimulus helmet won't kill him is hidden from the reader. Either shortly before or shortly after they arrive, Walter shows up, seemingly intent on killing Skip to prevent the growing Hive Mind from having a physical form, only to be intercepted by the huge looming figure of one of the rebuilt hive drones, seemingly meaning either to stop him from foiling its plans, to protect its offspring, or both. In the last few pages, Skip and Michelle's empty car is shown parked next to the ocean, the kayak gone and Skip's visor and robot body discarded next to the sea. And Walter's red car is shown parked somewhere green, with the door open and the lights on, discovered by a surprised woman, meaning his fate is also unclear, as is the fate of the rest of humanity.
- Ambiguously Evil: Although the ever-growing Hive Mind of neurocast humans and the machines they put together is very alien and looks incredibly ominous, they almost never seem to take aggressive action, and Michelle easily travels through their territory without being bothered. Michelle admits she's fascinated even as she is regularly creeped out by the ominous sights she witnesses there. Two cop cars are found empty and riddled with bullets, but there are other explanations readily availible. The two possible exceptions, potentially shooting up the cop cars and maybe killing Walter before he can kill Skip's human body, not only raise more than a few questions about the lethality of the experiences in question but have their own potential alternate explanation.
- Ambiguous Gender: It's implied the growing Hive Mind might have a female gender; it seems obsessed with producing some kind of offspring or protecting the one it might have had, and one of the men hooked up to it begins uncontrollably lactating.
- Bittersweet Ending: What's left of America is a dying Failed State riddled with stimulus-addicted humans losing themselves to a Hive Mind, Walter may have been killed trying to foil said hive-mind's plans, and while Michelle does seemingly kayak off into the Pacific ocean, one of the last pages make it clear just how gigantic the Pacific Ocean is. But Skip is implied to survive since only his neurocast helmet and robot body remain next to the car, not his actual body, so at least brother and sister are together, and Walter's car being discovered by a woman in a green place with the lights on suggest that both he and humanity might survive.
- Bizarre Baby Boom: Deconstructed; it's implied the mass stillbirths of the original military generation of drone pilots was the nascent Hive Mind's first attempt at either creating offspring or physical vessels for itself. Skip was the only one who lived, and he still needed thirty surgeries before he could walk just to survive.
- Brain Uploading: A form of this was used for everything from everyday arcade games to military drone control by letting humans control robots with their brains, but it seems that "true" mind uploading has been a relatively recent (and perhaps unintentional) development.
- Children Raise You: Despite being a juvenile delinquent earlier in her life, Michelle tries to set a good example for the childlike robot Skip, insisting on "buying" supplies even in seemingly abandoned shops and trying to loot or engage in other pragmatic behaviors out of eyeshot from him. This makes even more sense with the revelation that Skip is her neurocast little brother.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Normal stimulus use makes the neurocast visor glow green, but the Hive Mind and any helmets or machines connected to it glow red.
- Daddy's Girl: Michelle never knew her biological father, but she actually had a healthy relationship to her grandfather and seems to have bonded at least a little with Ted, her foster father, sharing a love of Nirvana and other kinds of music. Conversely, her Junkie Parent mother made her help with the dangerous process of salvaging industrial chemicals from old warships to feed her addiction and left Michelle badly traumatized, while her foster mother Brigitte was a self-righteous harpy; Michelle admits early on she doesn't care that Brigitte is dead.
- Dissonant Serenity: Ted is alarmingly chill about his body undergoing uncontrollable lactation and later the death of his wife as he lapses into stimulus addiction. It turns out this is true of America in general. Also, being built out of old advertising automatons, lots of the hive mind drones have creepy, fixed smiles. One of them even leans out of a barn and waves at Skip and Michelle as they pass by.
- Emo Teen: Justified. While Michelle is a juvenile delinquent with morbid fascinations who dyes her hair black because she hates the thought of being mistaken for a "generic" happy blonde, resents the very idea of being a productive member of society, makes and sells drugs as much out of resentment and rebellion as any actual need for money, and lashes out at many of the people around her whether they deserve it or not, she also had a really traumatic, crappy childhood and her life does indeed have many problems, up to and including societal and potentially civilizational collapse.
- Fantastic Drug:
- Street names for it never come up, but the chemical neurite is somehow involved in the neurocasting process, and Michelle knows how to make street drugs out of it thanks to her mother forcing her to help feed the woman's various addictions.
- Neurocasting through the use of Mode Six stimulus helmets is vaguely treated this way, but it's implied that people get addicted to the euphoric feeling of being part of a superintelligent whole and disappointed with returning to being singular as much or more than just becoming physically dependent on it.
- Gay Romantic Phase: Deconstructed; Michelle is devastated in a flashback when her lover Amanda is shipped off to relatives to Cure Your Gays, who successfully convince her that their relationship is this.
- The Ghost: The Convergence, a religious cult that worships the growing hive mind as some kind of nascent god, is mentioned many times by whoever's talking to Walter (or by Walter if he's talking to himself), but although their power and money drive him to act to foil their plans, they and their agents either never appear on-page or are so removed from the action as to be indistinguishable to the rest of the Scenery Gorn in a dying America.
- Hive Mind: The Neurocasters are implied to have created one.
- The Immune: Michelle has a congenital eye defect that makes it impossible for her to use stimulus helmets.
- Incurable Cough of Death: Michelle's grandfather suffered one from exposure to industrial chemicals while building combat drones for the war. It killed him after a few years living together.
- Irony: Brigitte, who dismissively sniffed that drug addicts just don't have any fortitude and discipline, dies as a direct result of her own inability to control her stimulus use.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Deconstructed; it's made clear that even when such people have or make good points, it's through the lens of their own biased perspectives and they're probably Right for the Wrong Reasons.
- Michelle's foster mother Brigitte isn't wrong about Michelle's birth mother being a neglectful junkie who messed up Michelle's life and emotional development, but she wrongly attributes it to lacking discipline rather than becoming physically and psychologically dependent in military service, and is seemingly just as concerned with Michelle's nonconformism as her juvenile delinquency (at least, before Michelle bloodily smashes her nose into paste against a table). Even setting that aside, grinding Michelle's nose in it like that was obviously an awful way to try to get through to her.
- Amanda's abusive reverend father is right about neurocaster helmets being the doom of humanity, but his arguments are based on religious fanaticism rather than their obvious issues, and his opinions tend towards trying to treat them as a means to winnow out the unworthy from the human race rather than a problem to save humanity from.
- Junkie Parent: Michelle's birth mother lived a nomadic existence, travelling to the resting sites of old war machines to scavenge neurite out of their guts and cook it into drugs. It's mentioned she was a veteran, discharged after surviving the first Hive Mind emergence and giving birth to a son with no father, and was rendered physically and psychologically dependent as a result of exposure to what was probably the original version of Mode Six.
- Just Before the End: Almost everyone in the rusting ruins of America has either completely lost their humanity to a stimulus device or is on the way there, and in the few places where law and order still hold sway the population seems too apathetic and worn down to resist giving in.
- Knight Templar: Agent Walter decides to try to kill Skip to foil whatever plans the Hive Mind and Convergence have for him, but whatever happens to him he fails.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: Whatever "Mode Six" neurocasters are like, most people who go in seemingly never want to come back out.
- The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Creepily inverted. Using the first iteration of the Mode Six technology somehow had catastrophic effects on the reproductive systems of military pilots, leaving them unable to have viable offspring. The civilian version of that technology can not only seemingly keep the human body alive under conditions like totally lacking nourishment or being completely submerged in water that should kill it so long as it has power, but causes both men and women to start uncontrollably lactating with extended use.
- The Needless: Downplayed in that the stimulus visors hooked up to their brains do still require power, but so long as they're getting it neurocasting human beings are basically science fiction undead; their warping bodies might wither away but they don't require food, sleep, or even oxygen as the helmets keep their brains technically alive and their decaying muscles twitching.
- Non-Malicious Monster: While the zombie-like hordes of stimulus-helmeted humans and gigantic wired-up behemoths they build are creepy and alien as all get-out, they don't seem to be actively harming anyone or forcing anyone into anything. Even while one is shown seemingly having tentacle-sex with a woman, it's repeatedly confirmed that the act was consensual. The one potential exception, attacking Walter, might be the least-alien thing the Hive Mind does; what parent wouldn't protect its child?
- Ridiculously Human Robots: Skip is a cute little toy-like robot who nonetheless sleeps, enjoys children's media like drama tapes and action figures, and seems very aware and emotionally advanced. This turns out to be Foreshadowing to the fact that Skip is a human mind neurocast into a robotic body.
- Scenery Gorn: The initial draw of the book is roadtripping through and rubbernecking at the broken ruins of an America destroyed by its own worst impulses. Giant husk-like automatons litter the landscape, surrounded by rotting advertising and the few surviving settlements whose inhabitants seem to care more about keeping power flowing than survival. And that's before getting to the parts where humanity isn't still running the show. Michelle admits to being fascinated even as she's repulsed by some of the things she sees.
- Sequel Goes Foreign: Downplayed. Although it's more of a
Spiritual Successor than a sequel, the creator's previous two books were set in Sweden while this installment is set in the United States.
