This Machine Kills Billionaires by T.R. Napper

Book Review

Robin CM Duncan

T.R. Napper has done it again. Lying behind this incendiary title is a novella (THE HIDDEN GOD) crackling with invention and insight. Do not think based on the blurb that this is a purely intellectual exercise; there is action and suspense, physical violence and psychological strife, and there are testing moral questions, laid out with the author’s quintessential thoughtful directness.

For me, Napper’s writing sits shoulder to shoulder with the greats of Cyberpunk while always having something fresh to say about the genre. He gets the danger that AI poses, not just the immediate existential impact on almost all aspects of human society, or AI’s inevitable acceleration of environmental collapse, but the threat that AI poses of deep, potentially irretrievable damage to the human psyche. He writes about these things in his stories, and in this one these themes are front and centre.

Another important aspect of his writing, particularly for a Western audience, is the author’s rooting of his stories in personal experience of living and working in the Southern and Eastern Hemispheres. That always comes through for me in Napper’s work, an authenticity of place that is so much more satisfying and enfolding than a Hollywood-ised neon megalopolis drenched in movie rain.

If you loved 36 STREETS, revelled in GHOST OF THE NEON GOD, were enthralled by THE ESCHER MAN, rest easy – you will be equally entertained and challenged by this superb novella, a story for our times. And if you don’t know Napper’s other works, and you like your SF, go find them, you will be delighted.

But that’s not all, the short stories that sit behind Hidden God are also equally worthy of your attention. Populated with the author’s signature brand of fascinatingly damaged characters, here are three short stories in the form of a triptych entitled “2040”. While the novella may be entirely as propulsive and powerful as you would expect from Napper, these pieces are (arguably) more ruminative, centred very much on personal stakes rather than planetary ones, considering how world-changing tech really impacts the lives of individuals.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Napper has things to say, and everyone should be listening.