Book Review: A Farewell to Humanity
The fifth of Eight Nightmares by Stuart Tudor. A solid post-apocalyptic/dystopian sci-fi horror story.
I received a free advance reader copy/uncorrected proof of A Farewell to Humanity from the author. I also had the privilege of reading an early draft of this story that was much shorter and much lighter on details. I had really enjoyed that, and so when the offer came to read an ARC ahead of its release, I jumped at the chance. It has been fascinating to see how this story has changed in the drafting process. So let’s get into the review.
Blurb
She is all you will be. She is all you will be. She is Athena.
The Great Silence saw the end of the global order, each country an island alone in the sea.
That is when she came: Athena, the state AI of Germany. Only eradication and transformation can save humankind from itself, becoming machines under her eternal love.
One man in Athena-occupied Poland is part of a shrinking group of humans desperately trying to survive. But a series of events will test his strength to withstand Athena’s love. But how long can one stay human in a dying world?
A Farewell to Humanity is for mature audiences and contains the following: Body horror, suicidal ideation, implied depression, uncanny valley elements, environmental destruction, animal cruelty and apocalyptic themes.
A Farewell to Humanity is the Fifth entry in the Eight Nightmares, a collection of horror stories about the dreamlike, the surreal, and encounters with the fantastical.
Review
This short story was a very enjoyable read and tickled my sci-fi loving tastebuds. The best way I can describe it is as a mix between the Doctor Who story Rise of the Cybermen, and Metro 2033. Our unnamed protagonist is in post-apocalyptic Poland, which is occupied by the forces of a supreme artificial intelligence named Athena. Athena seeks only the happiness of humankind, but she brings this about by turning any humans she captures into mindless cybernetic drones. Being a horror story in a series called the Eight Nightmares, the setting is suitably bleak, and the situation desperate. There’s no Doctor coming to save humanity here: Just a person struggling to survive, living with depression, isolated from the rest of humankind by the need to avoid detection by the borderline omnipresent AI. In order to guarantee his survival he has to take risks, going out concealed and under cover of darkness, running errands for his single, anonymous, human contact: The Fencer.
We get a deep dive into our protagonist’s mental state as he clings on miserably to a life that has long since gone, as he contemplates ending it all before Athena can turn him into one of her cyberhumans. When things get dicey, the sense of panic and terror is visceral. We learn a lot about his past, and about the state of the rest of the world through his eyes.
The worldbuilding is really good here. The Great Silence sets each country adrift on its own, so there really is no way for our protagonist to know if anybody’s left out there. We get a glimpse at the politics of the situation and how the former residents of the city blame the other countries for abandoning them to Athena.
I will say that, for me, there was more tension than outright horror but the tension was pretty intense. The main character’s interactions with the cyberhumans and the body-horror of Athena’s conversion process were handled really well. And I enjoyed how the ending turned out. Bureaucracy is its own nightmarish hell, and that’s all I’ll say about that. It also highlights the dangers of placing a true AI in charge of making the world a better place, which is a staple of science fiction, emphasising its strict analytical nature over considerations of human agency.
Overall, A Farewell to Humanity is a pretty solid short story and I really recommend picking it up if you’re a fan of bleak dystopian or post apocalyptic horror, or wish that Doctor Who wasn’t so optimistic all the time.
