Publisher – Solaris

Published – Out Now

Price – £3.99 Kindle eBook

The internet is a lonesome god.

Liverloin is a fractured man, a collection of personas—artificial constructs of wants, fears and needs—created by underground science-artists to help him hide in a hyper-connected world. But he can’t hide from Big Momma.

She is the living internet, a benevolent AI who knows everything and everyone… and somehow is in love with Liverloin.

Agent Stevly works for DAIS, an AI on the other side of the internet: the darkness to Big Momma’s light. DAIS’s agents manipulate news, information and media and pull the strings behind world events, but DAIS cannot control Big Momma or understand why she loves Liverloin. Agent Stevly, bound body and soul to DAIS, will stop at nothing to find the answer.

The concept of artificial intelligence has a long history in Science Fiction. There is an aspect of humans creating life itself a concept that Frankenstein touches upon; but we also have a long history since of robots helping or hindering humans for many years. I do wonder though as well as the idea that we become creators that there is another aspect that through this experiment we also can start to understand how our own minds work? In Mario Coelho’s impressive and dazzling science fiction novella Unto The Godless What Little Remains we have a fast packed cyberpunk thriller that plays with time, memory, and science fiction itself that is very worthy of your attention.

The internet is now alive, sentient, and known as Big Momma. She sees all and loves humanity but most of all a strange lost man known as Liverloin who appears to have no past and is these days a bundle of artificial personas all hiding his inner secrets. A man Big Momma can never predict is someone she loves. But Liverloin is being pursued because how can he exist?  Another AI known as DAIS that works for governments or itself to edge the world to its own design is ot happy with the idea of slightly uncontrollable chaos. DAIS has taken control of an Agent known as Stevly to locate Liverloin and his friends and find out what exactly makes them tick.

Reading this is an experience you’re going to lock yourself in for a rollercoaster that will take you many places both forwards and backwards in the main characters’ lives. It’s a tale of the dawning of AI; the fall of social media as we know it; a man’s tortured path and the darker side of the internet. Each chapter focuses on a particular character as they used to be and as they are now with reference to something known as the Storm. Tonally Coelho excels making each chapter different but as you read them the plot points cross, explain themselves and taking a step back we see a elegantly created mosaic of how all these characters have impacted the other. We get CCTV footage, message board arguments, team slacks and throughout lots of tips to science fiction and fantasy done with affection and importantly building o ideas. Its gloriously ambitious and unpredictable which made it a satisfying experience.

In terms of characters, we have the mysterious Liverloin who lives ever now in the moment crossing the world and in counterbalance Agent Stevly who we see as she was a office agent who once just manipulated people on social media to aid her clients be they business or government and then we now see her more as a body just eternally controlled by DAIS but able to think back at the AI though with little impact. Although they don’t meet until later in the tale we start to realise that they’ve had connections between each other for years. Crucially Coelho makes you care and understand these two leads and you ma have unexpected sympathy too for them. Their tales are set against a background of corporations and clubs and mixed with a fantastic depiction of future Portugal that mixes old and new ways of life to creative effect. The side characters are equally fascinating as well including as our not-very-human AIs we get an internet priest and someone who pays tribute to Hellraiser in the form of their body modifications! Again, you’ll slowly start to see the person underneath the glamour and actually care about them which in cyberpunk proves you can have both glamour and heart.

I am hugely impressed by Unto The Godless What Little Remains. It nimbly moves from huge tales of the collapse of social media; fights on trains to personal tales of love and loss making this frenetic, colourful tale have crucial moments of shade and thoughtfulness. The use of language to make each chapter unique and explain who a character is delivered very effectively. I shall be watching out for more from Mario Coelho and strongly recommend you give this story a try if you enjoy refreshing science fiction.