NK3

November 14, 2016
Tolkin’s new novel takes place in L.A., but it’s a far cry from the city of his famous Hollywood satire, The Player. This L.A., like the rest of the world, has been exposed to a North Korean bio-agent, NK3, whose effect is to erase memory. Now, four years after the city’s collapse, those with restored memory live in the remains of a gated community in the hills, dubbed Center Camp, a giant fence protecting it from the memory-less Drifters and Shamblers who inhabit the city’s dead zones. Among the survivors are Eckmann, who lives at the airport and guards the last operable jet aircraft; June Moulton, a former movie executive who is in charge of creating new myths to control the Drifters; influential pop superstar Shannon Squier; and Hopper, a Drifter who follows an inner voice directing him to Center Camp to locate his missing wife. All these characters, and many others, meet their fate in a scene echoing the Hollywood riot that ends Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust. Studded with obscure pop culture references (Toby Tyler, Spig Wead), the novel is replete with dialogue that has the effect of the classic “Who’s on First?” routine, but with results more chilling than comic. In his novels and screenplays, Tolkin has always exhibited a downbeat view of humanity, which is reinforced here in his bleak vision of the apocalypse, surely the most idiosyncratic since Ben Marcus’s The Flame Alphabet. Agent: Kimberly Witherspoon, Inkwell Management.

October 15, 2016
In a fast-moving thriller that turns Los Angeles into a post-apocalyptic playground, Tolkin (The Return of the Player, 2006, etc.) weaves numerous storylines into a dark take on the aftermath of disaster.Tolkin's version of the near future hinges on an accidental epidemic caused by North Korea's release of a weaponized nanobacterium that destroys people's memories. As the human population swiftly loses the knowledge necessary to understand complex systems and technology, global civilization crumbles into scattered, isolated settlements. In Los Angeles, a small group of the self-proclaimed elite who have managed to partially regain or preserve their memories rule over a walled city that luxuriates in hedonistic excess. The novel's plot focuses on a relatively conventional power struggle tied together with a lonely man's search for the wife he is unable to remember. It reads with a swiftness and baldness that seem to invite adaptation for the screen more than pleasure in the imagination. Absurd scenes of extravagantly sexualized, tritely bohemian debauchery alternate with equally tired scenes of post-apocalyptic gloom from outside the city's walls: abandoned buildings and dry swimming pools, the gritty ghost towns of lost civilization, complete with zombielike figures shambling the streets. The book is even broken into sections that are each titled with a list of the characters who will appear. It's easy to imagine the world of the book because it feels like a patchwork of gestures snatched from stories that we already know--the disaster thriller, the lonely quest, the political whodunit, the zombie apocalypse--but despite being proficiently plotted, with well-timed cliffhangers and tantalizing shifts between different threads, it lacks the energy and spirit to make familiarity come to life. A competently constructed but often spiritless novel that doesn't fulfill the intriguing premise of a world brought down by the loss of memory.

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November 1, 2016
Award-winning writer, director, and producer Tolkin presents a postapocalyptic examination of near-future Los Angeles. A weaponized nanobacterium from North Korea, called NK3, has been released and is stealing people's memories. In the days and weeks following the release, those deemed to have valuable skillsdoctors, mechanics, airport staff, securityreceive a treatment that saves their abilities but not the memories of their former lives and loved ones. Led by Chief, and called the Verified, those saved by the treatment live as the new aristocracy above L.A. The rest, known as Unverified, Drifters, and Shamblers, live outside the protective walls of the Fence. With a large cast of characters, the story paints a world where L.A.'s new leaders are threatened by the intelligence and continuity of memory of those few not affected by NK3. Tolkin's use of language evokes in the reader the feelings of confusion and mistrust experienced by the survivors. Readers looking for something reminiscent of World War Z and Cory Doctorow's work should give this one a try.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2016

Literary sf from the Hollywood writer/director who gave us The Player, this novel is situated in a futuristic California laid waste by a virus called NK3 that obliterates memory. Those spared are presided over by the Chief, whose power will soon be challenged.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.