Reality Bytes

In Deni Ellis Béchard’s dystopian future, we learn of the United States of America’s downfall. It begins with the election of the authoritarian president Oswald “Oz” Stoll, a celebrity turned politician with swept-back blond hair, who stokes divisions between “ordinary Americans” and “the elite.” After gaining power, he inks economic deals with China and Russia, purges the armed forces of non-supporters, and suspends all future elections. What happens next is inevitable: his government attempts a military coup. Civilians across the political spectrum take up arms. Liberals make a mass exodus from Stoll’s burgeoning state on the East Coast, fleeing west and leaving behind the “Confederacy” for the “other America.”

In the fallout of this historic “Partition,” the nation becomes a fractured, semi-feudal wasteland. After sixty years of perpetual civil war, American citizens are further divided among the upper class of “mimics,” who live in privatized suburbs called...