Free Auxiliary: London 2039 Penned By Jon Richter Provided As EPub

Too Predictable Crime Noir Thriller Meets Cyberpunk

This past year is one I will clearly forget, having been affected by COVID and reminding myself to finish reading this slim novel about criminal robots and Artificial Intelligence that I tried several times to read but could never get past the first twenty pages.
Finally late last month I summoned ample courage and will to begin reading this novel, but it remained a daunting challenge still due to the writer's all too predictable plotting and equally predictable characters.
The writer has sought to offer readers a near future London with as British pop rock soundtrack set in a city that remains familiar despite its futuristic depiction of Artificial Intelligence.
Less discerning readers may be entranced by the author's nightmarish dystopian near future London, but I found instead a distinct longing for the near future Japan present in William Gibson's legendary Cyberspace trilogy, especially his debut novel, "Neuromancer", and a near future South Africa similar to Gibson's vision, but one derived independently by Lauren Beukes in her memorable debut novel "Moxyland" i also felt myself longing for the near future Sunni Muslim world brilliantly conceived by George Alec Effinger in his late great work comprising the trilogy that began with "When Gravity Falls".
Gibson, Beukes and Effinger have created far more exciting versions of an A, I. augmented near future than what I encountered in "Auxiliary London" and I would encourage more discerning readers to consider their work first before attempting to read this novel, ”TIM stood for The Imagination Machine, ”

Doesnt that sound great Anything we could possibly desire, TIM can provide,

”With alarming, almost insidious speed, TIM had become ubiquitous the goto OS for almost everything, It flew the planes. It drove the cars. It answered the queries when you contacted customer services, It controlled the robotic surgeons that performed lifesaving operations, It filed your tax returns, It delivered your food. It selected your music. It read your children bedtime stories,

And it ran the AltWorld, Whatever you wanted to see, or be, or do, or feel, or fuck, Real life had been made obsolete, ”

Wait a minute, real life has become obsolete What life I do have is virtual I dont have to deal with real people Lets be honest, people leave a lot to be desired.
So even though my stomach is doing flip flops with concern, there is a part of me that is thinking, could the AltWorld download me into a massive library, served by a gorgeous, scantily clad, Asian woman with long legs and an asymmetrical haircut, who fetches me books and smokey scotch

I bet TIM could do that.


So seductive, right And Im a hard leaning Luddite,

And with Universal Basic Income, which most of you probably first heard about from Andrew Yang, no one really has to work, After all, most of our jobs are devolving into mindless timewasters that any basic robotic unit could do better because the machine wouldnt be watching the clock and daydreaming about being anywhere but there.
”Why are people so fucking obsessed with their work Surely our species can do better than just finding jobs for everybody to pass the time, Isnt our goal to have machines doing all the labour while we relax, create works of art, find ways to better ourselves, ” That is a fascinating question, Can we I know several of my friends and family who, during the extra time off from the recent quarantine, simply filled their time by sleeping more, . . twelve . fourteen hours a day. Not exactly applying themselves to creative works of art, When did we become so obsessed with sleep Would many people with access to an AltWorld simply go into the virtual world to sleep

Color me cynical.


Deckard wait, did I say Deckard, I meant Dremmler, is an oldfashioned style detective who still believes in human detecting, Ive read that in the future there will be very few police officers because there will be cameras in every nook and cranny, making it almost impossible for people to get away with committing crimes.
Well, TIM has that covered, but somehow the world still has uses for a meatsuited detective, and as things go wiggy with the plot, we will discover why we want Dremmler out there, digging, poking, prodding, and making a nuisance of himself.


Dremmler has SPEX glasses that allow him to identify any person on the planet, An arrow points down at the head of anyone he is looking at, displaying their name, It sort of takes all the hardboiled glamour out of slipping the bartender a twenty and muttering, whos the dame in red at the end of the bar

Who just stabbed that man in the alley Oh, thats Donald Sump.
Who is that running away from me Why, that is Ann Bolter, TIM, where is Donald Sump right now Okay, Ill go pick him up, TIM, where is Ann Bolter Getting jiggy with her boyfriend right now Okay, Ill give them a couple of minutes,

Dremmler has a partner named Petrovic, who is gender neutral, Petrovic uses ve and ver instead of he/she and him/her, Petrovics first name is an initial, eliminating all the gender speculation surrounding first names, Would it be that weird to be attracted to someone without being concerned about whether there is a oneeyed monster or a honey pot lurking beneath their clothes I find ve and ver aesthetically pleasing as they roll off my tongue.


This sounds like a Matrix world without all the men in black and the flying, Lovecraftian krakens,

A robotic arm commits a grisly murder, The understandably distraught man attached to the arm insists he had no intention of crushing his girlfriends skull, The chip in his skull that moves the arm is controlled by TIM, so how is that possible Malfunction Was it hacked TIMs system is supposed to be unhackable, in fact infallible.
For us to give over control of our entire lives to an OS system, we would need to be assured that there are fail safes for the fail safes.




Maybe the library and the asymmetrical haircut gal is really a chimera that is masquerading its terror, I guess I can fetch my own books from my library and pour my own scotch, sigh

Oh, and did I forget to mention there is some creature that is trying to eat Dremmlers fucking face off A wallscaling, scurrying, creepy crawly, How the fuck does that freakishly terrifying thing get into peoples apartments You know thatD printer you always wanted You might want to hold off on that for a while.


”Monsters reproducing,

Printers printing printers,

Each new horror that emerged, either from the window or from the belly of its cousin, had an increasingly outlandish design, ”

How is this happening with TIM controlling everything TIM needs Dremmler, Somehow this is happening outside the parameters of TIMs guiding hand,

Dremmler needs help, He turns to the bodacious Jennifer Colquitt with the kaleidoscope eyes, To say he has the hots for her is a statement several hundred degrees too cool, Mount Vesuvius ADlavahot might be a more apt description, She works for a rival company that is creating an alternative to TIM, Is she real or is she Memorex The real crappy part of all of this is he has to trust someone, He cant do this alone, and he worries that his techwary head might be getting in the way of his investigation, He is either the worst guy for the job or the only guy who can save the world,

Jon Richter has taken the basic concept of a Blade Runner world and added more layers of potential terror, He addresses some social issues, which add nuances to this dark noir world, that go beyond what BR tried to address,is just around the corner, but it feels like a more accepting world than what we live in today, A let live type society, The only problem is, will our obsession with efficiency, with machine over meat, and with a need for living a deep fantasy life make us irrelevant Do we really want to fuck toasters Do we really want our lives to be given over to some.
. . thing to manage Are we done with real life

This is an entertaining and fast paced book about a brilliant and frightening world, You wont regret putting this on your reading list, You might even reevaluate the direction of your life, The future still remains to be written, but maybe this book will prove to be prophetic,

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit sitelink jeffreykeeten. com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:sitelink facebook. com/JeffreyKeeten and an Instagram account sitelink instagram. com/jeffreykeeten/.