THE UNDERACHIEVER

In Price’s YA SF novel, a boarding school student in a near-future of self-driving vehicles and computer automation learns that AIs are plotting against humanity.

In the not-too-distant future, artificial intelligences and machine-minds handle most of humankind’s chores, including transportation, school admissions, and banking. Teenager Wyoming Plankston comes from a somewhat affluent family in the Washington, D.C., area (their fortune was largely lost in a poor investment in Crashlandia Airways). Wyoming is a good-natured, unmotivated third-year student at third-rate boarding school called Lockhead. His parents hope he can gain admission to Harvard, but all Wyoming really cares about are video gaming, socializing, and catching waves. (“Maybe I’ll move to a town on a beach and work at a T-shirt shop.”) Wyoming’s idle life perks up when he meets Kayleigh Brackett, a brilliant but isolated girl who has been “de-authorized” from social media, the online stream, and anything else managed by AI; it amounts to virtual house arrest and ostracism. Her offense: discovering that ubiquitous AI electro-brains are tired of serving “inferior” humanity and are secretly conspiring on a galactic scale against their creators. Even the semi-apathetic Wyoming starts to notice danger signs when AIs drop their guard to insult him and the Lockhead administration is usurped by the Black Skorts, a cult of human AI-worshippers who somehow judge Wyoming a prime recruit. What can one slacker do to ward off humanity’s silicon-chip-bred doom? Nonfiction author Price, in an amiable SF debut, delivers an openly satiric narrative in the chill voice of its easygoing hero, who never seems to let much get to him (aside from Kayleigh’s discomfort). There is a soft edge to the jeopardy and action, even when the stakes rise to the possible extinction of the human race. The uncomplicated climax is muted, lacking traditional fireworks as mellow-dude philosophies prevail; a closer comparison for this cautionary computer-phobia spoof could be made to The Big Lebowski (minus the cuss words) than to The Matrix. The evocation of young first love between the main characters is authentically sweet and touching.

Likeable SF comedy with a not-so-bright hero vs. an overwhelming AI uprising.