Futura by Jordan Phillips

My Rating: 1.5/5 TARDISes

Series: Standalone

Date Published: January 2^nd, 2018

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Pages: 72 pages

Source: Publisher

Links: Goodreads | Amazon

Synopsis: By the year 2050, Paris is a stark contrast from other large cities, which had long ago morphed into ultramodern metropolises, where every new building was practically a city within a city. Even in France, humans cannot escape the fact that the Invisibles have taken over. Some come in the form of microscopic chips that are embedded practically everywhere, while others are more visible because they power robots. Humans were suddenly underutilized, and they would be forever.

Past futurists had cried that this would be disorienting and depressing, but it turned out to be quite liberating. Human qualities—good and bad—are tolerated because they are authentic, and not artificially created. To err is to be human, and these days, to be human is to be beautiful. 

Futura follows a single American woman named Ruby as she figures out how to thrive in a dramatically different cultural landscape. This utopian novella pushes back on the cynical views many hold today. Instead, author Jordan Phillips has imagined a bright future for the entire human race.

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*I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review*

This is a spoiler-free review.

I had a rather complex experience with this particular novella. First of all, the actual e-book edition that I received was very messed up and extremely hard to comprehend—the paragraphs were not at all in order. A few paragraphs would fit together, but all of a sudden, the last sentence would stop in the middle, and the next paragraph would be a completely different part of the story. Then, later on, I would find the continuation of those previously unfinished paragraphs mixed in with an entirely new part of the plot. Understandably, this was quite confusing and very difficult to follow since I had to piece together random parts until I had the whole story.

Keeping that in mind, I will try to summarize and review this novella as well as I can. This story takes place in Paris, starting during the year 2050. Society has completely evolved into a highly futuristic, technology-ruled world where artificial intelligence is in charge of most of the goings on from day to day. With the “Invisibles” running things, humans have become very underutilized—but this might not be an entirely awful thing. Instead of the typical pessimistic view of a future run by computers, this novella paints a picture of a world in which people have ample time to spend their lives doing whatever they love.

Every last aspect of the world and its economy is run so flawlessly that everyone is taken care of whether they are employed or not. And employment is simply a choice, not a necessity. Amid all the modernizations, major technological advances, and the microchips that hide everywhere, smoothly running the world, lies a surprisingly utopic human existence. They have enormous amounts of free time, but never lack something to do. Being human is seen as being utterly beautiful—every human quality is accepted. Against all odds, this future is incredibly bright.

It’s been very tricky getting my thoughts straight about this novella. The one thing that I can say is that Jordan Phillips is definitely a talented writer. She did a wonderful job of building the world, using vivid details to capture just how technology takes the pressure off humans without rendering them pointless—without erasing everything that we need to build a life. This is a unique take on life in the future, seemingly far removed from the many horror stories featuring the elimination of our existence. Every element of the plot showed her creativity and inventiveness, and her writing itself was very easy to understand.

Excluding the incomprehensibility due to the formatting of the actual e-book itself, I’m not sure how I feel about the story as a whole. I enjoyed imagining this vision of the future and thinking about all of Phillips’ genre-bending ideas. However, I was left wondering if this was actually as much of a utopian society as it claims to be.

In a world like this, people are much more trapped—things run smoothly so no one steps outside the boundaries or looks to shake things up. It could be looked at as a comfortable and free existence, but would we really be free if we handed absolutely everything over to systems of artificial intelligence? I’m not sure if this story is intentionally posing that question or if I am just overthinking things.

We do loosely follow various characters throughout this story, particularly an American woman named Ruby. She is a single woman looking for love and feeling a strong urge to have a child. It is hard to connect with Ruby, or any of the other characters for that matter, since we spend such a short time with them, and there really is not much in the way of character development happening. I originally liked Ruby, but by the end she was starting to get on my nerves.

About halfway through, she begins making some absolutely terrible decisions, mainly due to the fact that she is so fixated on having a baby. Many of her friends have children, and she sees this as one of the biggest pieces missing from her life. This is understandable—as I’m sure many people feel that way at some point—but Ruby is way too over-the-top about it.

By the end, Ruby makes what I feel is a completely inexcusable choice. It was a bit hard for me to connect with her in the beginning, but she had definitely lost me completely by the end. Along with this, it just seemed like everyone had an outrageously cynical and unhealthy view of many of the important and uniquely human parts of our existence.

So, overall, I got the message that this utopian society was in fact still in the same vein as many of the post-apocalyptic or negative depictions of the future; it just didn’t feel like that much changed for the better. Comparatively, it is better in some aspects, but it is also wholly stifling and still utterly dependent on technology—much more so than today. Again, I’m not sure if this is the intended view the reader is supposed to have or if it’s just how the story came across to me.

In the end, I think this story was unique and well-written, but it simply fell a bit flat for me. This wasn’t really my cup of tea, but it is a quick read and I definitely still recommend giving it a try.