by Nicole Yurcaba
Lanternfish Press has a keen eye for talent, stemming as far back as Vikram Piralkar’s nightmarish thriller The Afflictions. Thus, the press’s forthcoming novel, Melanie Moyer’s The Original Glitch, is definitely not a letdown in what Lanternfish Press offers the literary world. The novel follows the geekish Adler, whose mentor, Dr. Kent, at the university Adler attends commits suicide and leaves her AI experiments in Adler’s care. When the most dangerous and unpredictable of the two experiments, an AI known as Theo, escapes its confines, Theo wreaks havoc on the campus community, and Adler fears what could happen when–not if–Theo decides to terrorize the world.
The novel details the experiences of a wide cast of characters—Wilson, a black gay man who fears his family’s response to his homosexuality; Charlie, Adler’s librarian girlfriend-but-not-girlfriend; Adler, the geeky computer dude who is himself a walking computer; Theo, the evil, rogue “first-born” AI hellbent on acquiring everything he wants; and Laura, the second, secret AI whose meager existence mirrors that of more Millennials than societal studies care to admit. By far, of all the characters, it is Laura and her experiences that become the novel’s nucleus. Laura is a true feminist, an observer of the world, frustrated by her limited financial means and hindered upward mobility: “America was designed to keep you in one spot, especially the poor.” Her heroism and individuality, as well as her intellectual, emotional, and philosophical depth, contrast Charlie’s conformity and Adler’s lack of emotional awareness.
Laura is more than a character, however. At a superficial level, she is also a symbol, representative of the relationship a creator holds with their creation and how a creation, while representative of its creator, stands independently and distinctly separated from the creator. Nonetheless, when readers analyze Laura’s character further, what they find is an embodiment of an entire generation. Critical of capitalism and the way it bars those with infinite potential because they do not possess the means for upward mobility, Laura is a Millennial heroine, whose thought-provoking insights about economics and capitalism shed new light on the larger financial disparities plaguing modern-day America: “She’d come to terms with staying put many times over the years. She understood that everything about the way America functioned kept people in their place, unless they were beautiful or brilliant (or rich). The purgatory she now found herself in wasn’t so different from anyone’s life.” Laura’s individual experience is, sadly, a universal one, one with which Millennials and Gen-Zers will empathize.
As the novel’s characters play tug-of-war between the roles of creator and creation, the text offers a critical analysis of religion, specifically Christianity, and its influence not only on individuals but society as a whole: “As much as I would love to keep that book as far away from him as possible, it’s a non-excisable part of our culture, for better or for worse. And that made it the easiest to get my point across.” Theo is the paramount Lucifer-figure—the creation with too much ability, too much power, who outgrows the limited space his creator gives him: “I told him the box was like a garden for him. A paradise. I told him not to ask what was outside, which hurt me. Bruised my moral code. Scientists are the inheritors of Eve’s curiosity. But I, for the first time, understood a god who would say no.”
What the novel also offers is a stark warning, one readers receive when Theo outs Wilson and his boyfriend on Facebook, and Wilson’s family discovers Wilson’s true identity and dives into apoplectic fit of fundamentally religious spouting: that reclaiming our private lives in a world where everything is digitally stored and recoverable is more difficult than we realize, if not entirely impossible. Readers may trick themselves into thinking that the cure to Theo’s rampage is simply unplugging the system in which Theo lives, but the warning The Original Glitch sends is clear: tech, like any creation, needs and has limits, and it is how not only the creators, but also individuals within a society, use the creation and allow it to develop into means for good or evil.
The Original Glitch is gripping, the type of novel that will keep readers awake late into the night because they’re too unwilling to leave Adler and friends alone to combat Theo’s digitally dark forces. Though Truman Show-like at points, especially when Alder begins revealing himself and the truth regarding Laura’s world to Laura, readers will find the book a fresh take on the ethics and philosophies behind AI, technology, social media, and even personal happiness. At other points, because of its focus on the limitations placed on individuals not only by society, but also other individuals, the novel waxes close to Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron.” It’s a book sure to appeal to readers of any age, especially those with an interest in the sci-fi genre and those questioning the ever-increasing role of technology in our everyday existence.
Nicole Yurcaba (Ukrainian: Нікола Юрцаба) is a Ukrainian-American poet and essayist. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Lindenwood Review, Whiskey Island, Raven Chronicles, Appalachian Heritage, North of Oxford, and many other online and print journals. Nicole holds an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University, is the recipient of a July 2020 Writing Residency at Gullkistan, Creative Center for the Arts in Iceland, and is a Tupelo Press June 2020 30 for 30 featured poet. Her poetry collection Triskaidekaphobia is forthcoming Black Spring Group in 2022. She teaches poetry workshops for Southern New Hampshire University and works as a career counselor for Blue Ridge Community College.
