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How I Killed the Universal Man
John Lakerman, alternative current affairs journalist for donkeyWolf media, is sent to participate and report on a clinical trial for a newly developed, biopharmaceutical, antidepressant. While researching the article, and the disappearance of its lead researcher, Lakerman is drawn into a complex world of body augmentations, migrant labour, billionaires, a Virtual Reality Game and a series of fatally seductive mutations.
How I Killed The Universal Man is a transhumanist noir taking place in a near future where environmental disaster and the advent of biological A.I is leading to the radical reorganisation of consciousness. A narrative about the unknown forces structuring narrative’s necessity, How I Killed The Universal Man begins from the premise that reality is always virtual.
Thomas Kendall’s sentences form beautiful crystals that render the soul transparent. In How I Killed the Universal Man, (somewhat science fiction, somewhat philosophical thought experiment) Kendall imbues the rational anticipation of the near future with searing insight into what it means to be human. Mind-altering drugs, technological human enhancement, and a really cool video game lay the groundwork for explorations into consciousness that expand our empathy toward our future selves.
– Charlene Elsby, author of Bedlam and The Devil Thinks I'm Pretty
A moving, penetrating, dystopic meditation on autonomy, identity, and meaning. A warning from the future, but also from now. Daring and prescient.
– Lindsay Lerman, author of I'm From Nowhere and What Are You
Febrile, menacing, and alive with portent, with a grotesque and hyper-dense image repertoire that fuses Bosch and Cronenberg, How I Killed the Universal Man takes us deep into a near future where mind, body, and environment have merged in ways we can, from today's vantage, just barely comprehend. Kendall's nuanced and humane prose never abandons us on this journey to the end of consciousness, though neither does it offer any false consolation. Picking up where A Scanner Darkly, Strange Days, and Children of Men left off, this epic new masterwork immediately assumes its place in the cyberpunk canon.
– David Leo Rice, author of The New House and The Pornme Trilogy
How I Killed The Universal Man is a transhumanist noir taking place in a near future where environmental disaster and the advent of biological A.I is leading to the radical reorganisation of consciousness. A narrative about the unknown forces structuring narrative’s necessity, How I Killed The Universal Man begins from the premise that reality is always virtual.
Thomas Kendall’s sentences form beautiful crystals that render the soul transparent. In How I Killed the Universal Man, (somewhat science fiction, somewhat philosophical thought experiment) Kendall imbues the rational anticipation of the near future with searing insight into what it means to be human. Mind-altering drugs, technological human enhancement, and a really cool video game lay the groundwork for explorations into consciousness that expand our empathy toward our future selves.
– Charlene Elsby, author of Bedlam and The Devil Thinks I'm Pretty
A moving, penetrating, dystopic meditation on autonomy, identity, and meaning. A warning from the future, but also from now. Daring and prescient.
– Lindsay Lerman, author of I'm From Nowhere and What Are You
Febrile, menacing, and alive with portent, with a grotesque and hyper-dense image repertoire that fuses Bosch and Cronenberg, How I Killed the Universal Man takes us deep into a near future where mind, body, and environment have merged in ways we can, from today's vantage, just barely comprehend. Kendall's nuanced and humane prose never abandons us on this journey to the end of consciousness, though neither does it offer any false consolation. Picking up where A Scanner Darkly, Strange Days, and Children of Men left off, this epic new masterwork immediately assumes its place in the cyberpunk canon.
– David Leo Rice, author of The New House and The Pornme Trilogy
- GenresScience Fiction
243 pages, Paperback
Published December 2, 2023
235 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Kendall
2 books76 followersThomas Kendall’s THE AUTODIDACTS is a brilliant novel — inviting like a secret passage, infallible in its somehow orderly but whirligig construction, spine-tingling to unpack, and as haunted as any fiction in recent memory.
– Dennis Cooper
Like skateboard tricks the most nimble minds struggle to unwind, Kendall's sentences are intricate mechanisms that merge action and abstraction into something so compelling to observe.
– Meg Gluth, author of NO OTHER and COME DOWN TO US
“The Autodidacts is a novel of impressive scope and detail. It’s an absorbing history of how several families have been haunted by a series of deaths and disappearances involving a mysterious lighthouse. It’s also an epic of the everyday, where small gestures and fleeting thoughts are given center stage, transformed into startling insights and astonishing sentences. Each moment of the characters’ intricately inter-stitched lives is illuminated by Kendall’s megawatt prose.”
—Jeff Jackson, author of Destroy All Monsters and Mira Corpora
“ ‘The Autodidacts reminds me of Chantal Ackerman's films, the slow analysis of scenes and characters, ambiguous motivations that are revealed through a jump in time. I was also intrigued by the liminal coastal setting - the island and lighthouse threatened by commercial enterprise, whispers of Poe - the man who disappears from the locked lighthouse, and the drawings, "The Death of the Jubilant Child" that tied the pontoons of past and present together, a physical artifact that linked the sections.”
— Susan Daitch, author of ‘Siege of Comedians’
The Autodidacts listed as one one LitReactor’s staff picks best of 2022: https://litreactor.com/columns/litrea...
Heavy Feather review: https://heavyfeatherreview.org/2022/0...
‘The Autodidacts’ now available to buy from Whiskey Tit press:
https://whiskeytit.com/product/the-au...
and all other bookshops online etc
– Dennis Cooper
Like skateboard tricks the most nimble minds struggle to unwind, Kendall's sentences are intricate mechanisms that merge action and abstraction into something so compelling to observe.
– Meg Gluth, author of NO OTHER and COME DOWN TO US
“The Autodidacts is a novel of impressive scope and detail. It’s an absorbing history of how several families have been haunted by a series of deaths and disappearances involving a mysterious lighthouse. It’s also an epic of the everyday, where small gestures and fleeting thoughts are given center stage, transformed into startling insights and astonishing sentences. Each moment of the characters’ intricately inter-stitched lives is illuminated by Kendall’s megawatt prose.”
—Jeff Jackson, author of Destroy All Monsters and Mira Corpora
“ ‘The Autodidacts reminds me of Chantal Ackerman's films, the slow analysis of scenes and characters, ambiguous motivations that are revealed through a jump in time. I was also intrigued by the liminal coastal setting - the island and lighthouse threatened by commercial enterprise, whispers of Poe - the man who disappears from the locked lighthouse, and the drawings, "The Death of the Jubilant Child" that tied the pontoons of past and present together, a physical artifact that linked the sections.”
— Susan Daitch, author of ‘Siege of Comedians’
The Autodidacts listed as one one LitReactor’s staff picks best of 2022: https://litreactor.com/columns/litrea...
Heavy Feather review: https://heavyfeatherreview.org/2022/0...
‘The Autodidacts’ now available to buy from Whiskey Tit press:
https://whiskeytit.com/product/the-au...
and all other bookshops online etc
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
May 18, 2024
Sun, concrete, technology and waste on fire. This was the first world now, its waxed edges.
In a world close enough to ours but even more derelict with environmental decay, John Lakerman, a journalist for donkeyWolf media, is tasked to investigate and report on a new smart drug which already has gained legendary status for its emotional and philosophical potency. His research will lead him through body augmentations and grotesquely hilarious side effects, explorations of various concepts such as identity, consciousness, and labor and life in an ultra-capitalist system, to HIKTUM (How I Killed the Universal Man), a game that has the ability to create telepathy.
Loosely following the style and structure of a roman noir, Kendall fascinates in his second novel with outstanding world-building and world-building through investigation. I initially had the impression that the plot follows a sort of Odyssey-like pattern with Lakerman jumping from one adventure to another, until I've read the author's interview in X-Ray magazine where he indicates his intention of building a “game-like” flow, which I realized, worked well; a mission, a mystery to solve and unlocking one level after another to get there.
I personally was especially impressed by the complex world-building, the health and ethic-related dystopic elements, which are partly hilariously sarcastic and morbid, and finally the overall ironic authorial tone and style. The meshing of real and speculative elements is so confident that it's sort of incredible that this is the first SF novel Kendall wrote, taking and absorbing me into a completely new, crazy world that I thoroughly enjoyed being in. As it is usually the case with complex worlds, it took me some time to completely get into but I was eventually immersed.
Wow. I'm gonna go join Lakerman and have a Negroni now.
My wholehearted thanks to the author Thomas Kendall for reaching out and sending me a review copy of How I Killed the Universal Man! My thoughts and opinions are mine and honest.
In a world close enough to ours but even more derelict with environmental decay, John Lakerman, a journalist for donkeyWolf media, is tasked to investigate and report on a new smart drug which already has gained legendary status for its emotional and philosophical potency. His research will lead him through body augmentations and grotesquely hilarious side effects, explorations of various concepts such as identity, consciousness, and labor and life in an ultra-capitalist system, to HIKTUM (How I Killed the Universal Man), a game that has the ability to create telepathy.
Loosely following the style and structure of a roman noir, Kendall fascinates in his second novel with outstanding world-building and world-building through investigation. I initially had the impression that the plot follows a sort of Odyssey-like pattern with Lakerman jumping from one adventure to another, until I've read the author's interview in X-Ray magazine where he indicates his intention of building a “game-like” flow, which I realized, worked well; a mission, a mystery to solve and unlocking one level after another to get there.
I personally was especially impressed by the complex world-building, the health and ethic-related dystopic elements, which are partly hilariously sarcastic and morbid, and finally the overall ironic authorial tone and style. The meshing of real and speculative elements is so confident that it's sort of incredible that this is the first SF novel Kendall wrote, taking and absorbing me into a completely new, crazy world that I thoroughly enjoyed being in. As it is usually the case with complex worlds, it took me some time to completely get into but I was eventually immersed.
Wow. I'm gonna go join Lakerman and have a Negroni now.
My wholehearted thanks to the author Thomas Kendall for reaching out and sending me a review copy of How I Killed the Universal Man! My thoughts and opinions are mine and honest.
September 23, 2024
Set in a plausibly near future, where the technological advancements at play are not outside the realm of any tuned-in contemporary reader’s imagination, the noirish environment of HIKTUM juxtaposes the dire reality of climate change with the disastrous system of capitalism. Threaded through the corroded eye of this needle runs the narrative of journalist John Lakerman’s quest, which is murky at best. Is he just looking to advance his career as a ‘content producer’ or is it something more? Is he on a search, maybe for himself? Because who is John Lakerman, after all. A migrant camp orphan later adopted by a family of academics, Lakerman carries severe traumatic weight from his childhood, but he is numbing it. At times he feels like a cipher to be filled, perhaps, by the readers themselves. At other times, he slips into the minds of other characters, seeing what they see, feeling what they feel. His identity is malleable and adaptive to the situations he finds himself in, both outside and inside of the game portrayed in the book. He is reflective of many, typically urban, individuals within modern capitalist society—divorced from any sense of community and of tangible value to society only in terms of their flexible productive capacity.
Lakerman has biotech implants—his body is connected to the net through a series of monitoring and sensory-enhancing apps. This, in addition to his emotional numbness, renders him at a remove from his surroundings. When Lakerman goes offline for a new assignment, the tenor of his inner life changes. For a short while, at least. We see a glimpse of non-augmented reality through his eyes and it feels authentic. Pathos bleeds into the frame. But every time the footing in this book felt solid, the ground refractured, as with aftershocks following an earthquake. Reality here is slippery from the start, disorienting like an acid trip. And there are indeed mind-altering drugs at play, as well as advanced forms of virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Their persistent convergence can make parsing the book’s themes tricky, to say the least.
This is an unsettling novel. There is no room to rest. No comfort to be found. There is scarce evidence of the clear emotional resonance that Kendall’s first novel The Autodidacts brims with. When you start to sense its subtle growth, it’s yanked away. Emblematic, perhaps, of the often isolated lives lived in a contemporary digital-based society—where ‘likes’ on a social media post offer a fleeting dopamine rush that just as quickly dissolves back into the garbled torrent of info-garbage feeding into our ravenous eye-holes.
Where Kendall’s two books converge is on the question of identity and its relative significance to our everyday lives. Why do we spend time trying to figure out ‘who we are’ when we are changing from one moment to the next. Claiming and fixating on identities for ourselves can build walls around us, severing open communication with the world. Growth becomes stunted at all levels. Instead of siloing ourselves, however, when we consider our actual ever-changing natures, we can see that potential lies in each future moment. Our lives are not fixed, though we may consider them to be so. As a character, Lakerman does seem to have grown by the end of the novel. Through the use of augmented reality, he manages to see other points of view. He has learned about his capacity as a person.
Humanity’s future is unknown, but it harbors potential as long as life exists. Potential is neutral, though as a term it is often used in the vernacular to indicate the positive. Technology itself is also neutral, though it can be used to improve processes for both killing and for life-giving. The potential inherent in technology can be a source for hope. There is a faint semblance of hope that arises out of this novel where so much goes wrong in so many ways. What Kendall is attempting to describe is so difficult, if not impossible, to convey through language. But his speculative approach is uniquely designed to meet this challenge.
Lakerman has biotech implants—his body is connected to the net through a series of monitoring and sensory-enhancing apps. This, in addition to his emotional numbness, renders him at a remove from his surroundings. When Lakerman goes offline for a new assignment, the tenor of his inner life changes. For a short while, at least. We see a glimpse of non-augmented reality through his eyes and it feels authentic. Pathos bleeds into the frame. But every time the footing in this book felt solid, the ground refractured, as with aftershocks following an earthquake. Reality here is slippery from the start, disorienting like an acid trip. And there are indeed mind-altering drugs at play, as well as advanced forms of virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Their persistent convergence can make parsing the book’s themes tricky, to say the least.
This is an unsettling novel. There is no room to rest. No comfort to be found. There is scarce evidence of the clear emotional resonance that Kendall’s first novel The Autodidacts brims with. When you start to sense its subtle growth, it’s yanked away. Emblematic, perhaps, of the often isolated lives lived in a contemporary digital-based society—where ‘likes’ on a social media post offer a fleeting dopamine rush that just as quickly dissolves back into the garbled torrent of info-garbage feeding into our ravenous eye-holes.
Where Kendall’s two books converge is on the question of identity and its relative significance to our everyday lives. Why do we spend time trying to figure out ‘who we are’ when we are changing from one moment to the next. Claiming and fixating on identities for ourselves can build walls around us, severing open communication with the world. Growth becomes stunted at all levels. Instead of siloing ourselves, however, when we consider our actual ever-changing natures, we can see that potential lies in each future moment. Our lives are not fixed, though we may consider them to be so. As a character, Lakerman does seem to have grown by the end of the novel. Through the use of augmented reality, he manages to see other points of view. He has learned about his capacity as a person.
Humanity’s future is unknown, but it harbors potential as long as life exists. Potential is neutral, though as a term it is often used in the vernacular to indicate the positive. Technology itself is also neutral, though it can be used to improve processes for both killing and for life-giving. The potential inherent in technology can be a source for hope. There is a faint semblance of hope that arises out of this novel where so much goes wrong in so many ways. What Kendall is attempting to describe is so difficult, if not impossible, to convey through language. But his speculative approach is uniquely designed to meet this challenge.
December 27, 2025
"The air is just the sea you live in."
If PKD had lived to see the Alt Lit scene, this feels like the kind of thing he probably would have written. Hard boiled noir meets Blake Butler-style insanity riffs. There's drugs, there's clones, there's drugged out clones, there's clones on too many drugs to know they're clones, and clones of clones who sell them those drugs, and they're also overcharging because the drugs are clones of clones of clones.
If PKD had lived to see the Alt Lit scene, this feels like the kind of thing he probably would have written. Hard boiled noir meets Blake Butler-style insanity riffs. There's drugs, there's clones, there's drugged out clones, there's clones on too many drugs to know they're clones, and clones of clones who sell them those drugs, and they're also overcharging because the drugs are clones of clones of clones.
Read
March 8, 2024Surfaces. With How I Killed the Universal Man Thomas Kendall probes a foreshadowed future, where the chemical world becomes virtual. Environmental collapse backdrops a society dependent on its own breakdown, where, by a process of osmosis, the surfaces we need in order to touch each other dissolve. Wielding genre as an extension of his will, Kendall has delivered a novel equal parts neon drenched neo-noir and philosophical inquiry.
Read my interview with the author at XRAY Literary Magazine: POSSESSION IN THE GAME: An Interview with Thomas Kendall
Read my interview with the author at XRAY Literary Magazine: POSSESSION IN THE GAME: An Interview with Thomas Kendall
March 2, 2024
I'm writing a review because I thought this book was stellar, but I'll keep it brief because I don't feel smart enough to do it justice. It's quite complex in exploring identity, technology, and, well, reality as we are beginning to know it in this century. Or unreality, which may be more significant given the state of tech and its entanglement with our daily lives. Are we even alive?
The plot starts off with a simple detective noir situation that's engaging after just a few pages, and spirals further and further outward, shuffling multiple realities and identities in a masterful way that gets your neurons firing without feeling muddled or confusing. If I knew more about physics I would say something about superpositions to describe Kendall's wizardry, but I don't. Really great book.
The plot starts off with a simple detective noir situation that's engaging after just a few pages, and spirals further and further outward, shuffling multiple realities and identities in a masterful way that gets your neurons firing without feeling muddled or confusing. If I knew more about physics I would say something about superpositions to describe Kendall's wizardry, but I don't. Really great book.
September 16, 2024
A hallucinatory ride into the (not too distant and likely) future, where the ultra rich have the ability to buy reality and the human body has become its own iphone. HIKTUM explores the limits of identity and the body when technology has the won evolutionary race. It’s a haunting, beautifully-crafted prophecy of the future.
May 28, 2024
I found another favourite author with this book! There is so much to tell about this amazing journey that I know already I won't do it justice!
In a dystopic future where climate change has destroyed almost everything and actually the world is starting to recover in places, John Lakerman is called to investigate a new antidepressant called Noumenon, to participate in its trial. With that first injection and the high, literally a new world opens up to him and what he thought he knew about reality, his consciousness, identity, and everything else around changes and expands into spaces and levels he'd never thought possible! A simple assignment leads him to a game called HIKTUM (How I Killed The Universal Man) and that's where he understands everything.
This is a real trip, and a really good one! I can't describe how much I loved this book for so many reasons. First, the writing is great, an in between stream of consciousness, minimalism, philosophical prose, synaesthesia and so much more. This is cyberpunk at its best! Thoughts that can be translated into language, the unlocking of telepathy, body alterations and augmentations that can change your neural pathways and let you decide how you want to feel or react to a situation!
It reminded me at times of Kafka and the 1997 film Nirvana. I loved how AI is explored in a whole new different way from the books I've read so far on the subject. It is an opportunity to explore our identities, our limitations and with them also our possibilities. Our individualistic sense of self is what limits us the most and what hinders our true development. Everything in this book is so revelatory and I tried to drink it all as wholly as my brain allowed me.
In a way, this is a coming-of-age and internal odyssey where every chapter is a level in the game that gets you closer to the big monster. If all of this sounds appealing, then read the book! I'm sure your brain will thank you, although it might take some time to recover!
Thanks to the author for a copy and this is my honest opinion.
In a dystopic future where climate change has destroyed almost everything and actually the world is starting to recover in places, John Lakerman is called to investigate a new antidepressant called Noumenon, to participate in its trial. With that first injection and the high, literally a new world opens up to him and what he thought he knew about reality, his consciousness, identity, and everything else around changes and expands into spaces and levels he'd never thought possible! A simple assignment leads him to a game called HIKTUM (How I Killed The Universal Man) and that's where he understands everything.
This is a real trip, and a really good one! I can't describe how much I loved this book for so many reasons. First, the writing is great, an in between stream of consciousness, minimalism, philosophical prose, synaesthesia and so much more. This is cyberpunk at its best! Thoughts that can be translated into language, the unlocking of telepathy, body alterations and augmentations that can change your neural pathways and let you decide how you want to feel or react to a situation!
It reminded me at times of Kafka and the 1997 film Nirvana. I loved how AI is explored in a whole new different way from the books I've read so far on the subject. It is an opportunity to explore our identities, our limitations and with them also our possibilities. Our individualistic sense of self is what limits us the most and what hinders our true development. Everything in this book is so revelatory and I tried to drink it all as wholly as my brain allowed me.
In a way, this is a coming-of-age and internal odyssey where every chapter is a level in the game that gets you closer to the big monster. If all of this sounds appealing, then read the book! I'm sure your brain will thank you, although it might take some time to recover!
Thanks to the author for a copy and this is my honest opinion.
March 29, 2025
My thoughts on How I Killed The Universal Man by Thomas Kendall::::::::
John Lakerman is a journalist in the nearish future. He's investigating a new unregulated drug that enhances and alters reality for the user.
Those that can afford new tech have all become hardwired to the internet. The alternet, as it's called here, is the new reality most people exist in. No need for pesky outer body devices, you are the device. Updates come in the form of body mods. Text, video, and augmented reality are all in your eyes and mind now.
The search for the maker of this new substance leads Lakerman down the most complex, jarring, perception bending paths.
This is Cronenberg, Gibson, Kant, PKD (and so much more) siphoned through the mind of Thomas Kendall onto the page.
I was lost at times in the density of the prose but rereading paragraphs and letting myself get used to the world opened the book up to me. This is one of the most contemporary novels I've ever read. It is now and a bit further down the road in sharp detail.
I look forward to reading Kendall's first book, The Autodidacts. It seems that they are very different but the intelligence and creativity within How I Killed the Universal Man is so impressive, I'm sure it will be amazing.
John Lakerman is a journalist in the nearish future. He's investigating a new unregulated drug that enhances and alters reality for the user.
Those that can afford new tech have all become hardwired to the internet. The alternet, as it's called here, is the new reality most people exist in. No need for pesky outer body devices, you are the device. Updates come in the form of body mods. Text, video, and augmented reality are all in your eyes and mind now.
The search for the maker of this new substance leads Lakerman down the most complex, jarring, perception bending paths.
This is Cronenberg, Gibson, Kant, PKD (and so much more) siphoned through the mind of Thomas Kendall onto the page.
I was lost at times in the density of the prose but rereading paragraphs and letting myself get used to the world opened the book up to me. This is one of the most contemporary novels I've ever read. It is now and a bit further down the road in sharp detail.
I look forward to reading Kendall's first book, The Autodidacts. It seems that they are very different but the intelligence and creativity within How I Killed the Universal Man is so impressive, I'm sure it will be amazing.
April 10, 2024
How I Killed the Universal man gets 4.5 stars and a bonus ?????/infinity for delivering a huge dose of solipsistic dread as I look untrustingly at my surroundings and wonder whether they might be a simulation, or a hallucination, or a simulation of a hallucination or vice versa.
This unusual, dark sci-fi mystery is set in a near-future dystopia in which the climate is fucked and corporate oligarchy is just as powerful as ever.
The protagonist John Lakerman writes for a vice-esque gonzo media outfit, and that vibe echoes through the book's stream of consciousness tone. In that sense, it has shades of American Psycho, but while Bateman is launching himself on a cocaine rocket straight into the heart of the American Capitalist Enterprise, Lakerman is a more cynical (and less murderous) cog in the corporate apparatus.
Lakerman's latest assignment is to report on a new soon-to-be-illegal psychoactive drug by, like any good gonzo journalist, cutting the line for its clinical trials and stuffing his brain full of the stuff. The drug is named Noumenon, a term used by Kant to describe things that exist in their own right, independent of whether or not we perceive them. Without going too deep down the Kantian rabbit hole, Kant meant for "noumenon" to be a sort of opposite of "phenomenon" i.e. something that we observe with our senses. You don't need to be a philosopher to pick up on the themes and understand them for what they are, though the references are a fun touch
I bring this up only because the distinction between objective reality and perception/unreality is a throughline in the book, which uses both drug use and simulation as a way of muddying that line
In the future that Kendall paints, a technologically-dependent society exists so deep within its own drug-and-AI augmented reality that what's really real, in the noumenon sense, is almost irrelevant
From the moment Lakerman takes Noumenon, an already weird story becomes even weirder. He is pulled, by outside forces as much as his own curiosity, into a complex, spiraling investigation that brings him into the orbit of eccentric tech billionaires, death-obsessed doctors, and strangers who happen to wear the same face. The drug is bought out by a tech company that owns a game dev called Phenom Games (get it?), including an immersive Victorian-era VR/AR game called How I Killed the Universal Man that seems to be at the heart of all the strangeness
I'm not sure I can say more about the plot without sounding like I'm losing it, so instead I'll say this:
This book made me think about what it means to be human, to die, to exist in a society where the people around me don't always feel "real", to interact with technology that knows everything about me (except what it's like to actually BE me, feelings/ethics/values and all)
I think you'll like this book if you liked:
Disco Elysium, because this book is pure electrochemistry. It even feels like an RPG at times
Doki Doki Literature Club, because like this cult classic video game, this book very much gets into the room with you and makes you question what's real
[NSFW] by David Scott Hay is another near-future dystopia from WhiskeyTit publishing, and if you liked the dark view of corporate America in that one, you'll like it here too
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the grandpappy of gonzo journalism and unreliable narration definitely has reverberations in novels like this one
I also think that you'd like this book if you really liked the Matrix but, like, not in a normal way. In an OTT, let's get really invested in the metaphors kind of way
Anyway: read this book. I kind of want to (am afraid to do) drugs now
This unusual, dark sci-fi mystery is set in a near-future dystopia in which the climate is fucked and corporate oligarchy is just as powerful as ever.
The protagonist John Lakerman writes for a vice-esque gonzo media outfit, and that vibe echoes through the book's stream of consciousness tone. In that sense, it has shades of American Psycho, but while Bateman is launching himself on a cocaine rocket straight into the heart of the American Capitalist Enterprise, Lakerman is a more cynical (and less murderous) cog in the corporate apparatus.
Lakerman's latest assignment is to report on a new soon-to-be-illegal psychoactive drug by, like any good gonzo journalist, cutting the line for its clinical trials and stuffing his brain full of the stuff. The drug is named Noumenon, a term used by Kant to describe things that exist in their own right, independent of whether or not we perceive them. Without going too deep down the Kantian rabbit hole, Kant meant for "noumenon" to be a sort of opposite of "phenomenon" i.e. something that we observe with our senses. You don't need to be a philosopher to pick up on the themes and understand them for what they are, though the references are a fun touch
I bring this up only because the distinction between objective reality and perception/unreality is a throughline in the book, which uses both drug use and simulation as a way of muddying that line
In the future that Kendall paints, a technologically-dependent society exists so deep within its own drug-and-AI augmented reality that what's really real, in the noumenon sense, is almost irrelevant
From the moment Lakerman takes Noumenon, an already weird story becomes even weirder. He is pulled, by outside forces as much as his own curiosity, into a complex, spiraling investigation that brings him into the orbit of eccentric tech billionaires, death-obsessed doctors, and strangers who happen to wear the same face. The drug is bought out by a tech company that owns a game dev called Phenom Games (get it?), including an immersive Victorian-era VR/AR game called How I Killed the Universal Man that seems to be at the heart of all the strangeness
I'm not sure I can say more about the plot without sounding like I'm losing it, so instead I'll say this:
This book made me think about what it means to be human, to die, to exist in a society where the people around me don't always feel "real", to interact with technology that knows everything about me (except what it's like to actually BE me, feelings/ethics/values and all)
I think you'll like this book if you liked:
Disco Elysium, because this book is pure electrochemistry. It even feels like an RPG at times
Doki Doki Literature Club, because like this cult classic video game, this book very much gets into the room with you and makes you question what's real
[NSFW] by David Scott Hay is another near-future dystopia from WhiskeyTit publishing, and if you liked the dark view of corporate America in that one, you'll like it here too
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the grandpappy of gonzo journalism and unreliable narration definitely has reverberations in novels like this one
I also think that you'd like this book if you really liked the Matrix but, like, not in a normal way. In an OTT, let's get really invested in the metaphors kind of way
Anyway: read this book. I kind of want to (am afraid to do) drugs now
August 14, 2025
Top rate experimental sci-fi novel that taps into the concerns, fears, and absurdities of the 21st century. If sci-fi is going to feel fresh, its logic should feel unfamiliar--even disconcerting--and Kendall clearly grasps this, as a dream atmosphere is both at the heart of the novel's plot and is themes. HIKTUM is often suspenseful (the structure is that of a hard-boiled noir mystery), disturbing (Cronenberg and Lynch types of horror), and funny, as the prose leans into satire in a variety of ways. Loved this book and will read everything TK publishes.
February 12, 2024
Review to come! This was fantastic, it has Hollywood blockbuster potential 👀
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Another author that makes me feel kinda dumb when reading, in a good way the prose is 🤌🤌, incredibly imaginative but also realistic, the future depicted in this book is not that far fetched, which adds a terrifying layer, this felt like a mesh of Black Mirror and the movie Limitless, I really enjoyed this, the writing was immersive and vivid, an exploration of humanity in an evocative way, highly recommend!
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Another author that makes me feel kinda dumb when reading, in a good way the prose is 🤌🤌, incredibly imaginative but also realistic, the future depicted in this book is not that far fetched, which adds a terrifying layer, this felt like a mesh of Black Mirror and the movie Limitless, I really enjoyed this, the writing was immersive and vivid, an exploration of humanity in an evocative way, highly recommend!
May 7, 2024
I have been doing a bit of research on Mr Kendall and I have it on good authority that he 1: Keeps a sleep journal next to his bed and 2: He eats more cheese than is humanly possible…don’t believe me? Then give this book a go and you’ll see what I mean. In this sci-fi-noir-horror-philosophical-prophetic novel, that at the beginning felt like Hunter S. Thompson writing a Blade Runner spin-off and ends up like “David Lynch: The video game” (created by David Cronenberg) you get pulled in, almost against your will and have to face fears you didn’t know you had.
Life at the moment in 2024 feels like its on a knife-edged apocalypse, A.I. taking over everything leaving you wondering if anything is real, is any interaction online with an actual person these days? there are adverts everywhere (always about something you had just been talking about) and technology is improving at a rate where lots of us will be left behind. I don’t know if this book was supposed to be terrifying but Kendall effectively takes these modern fears and weaves a narrative that puts all this together and shows the reader one possible future we face. 100% does this feel like a warning from the future.
Kendall’s writing is visually stunning, so often I forgot I was reading, there are some truly shocking scenes where I had to put the book down and take 5min to come down a bit. Our main character is John Lakerman, you can’t quite get a grip on what he is like because I’m not sure he knows, he is immersed in this technological world and is trying to look past what his implants tell him is real to try and find the true reality by doing things like interviewing in person and not online. Weirdo! As the implants start to exert more control the style of writing changes, the point of view moves into 2nd person and it was rather unsettling as I had to flick back quite a few pages to see when that happened. All dialogue stops now and then whilst the implants give you numbered options on how to proceed…again it was worrying how easily I adapted to this style and the flow was barely interrupted. The ending felt out of control, jumping forward in time, almost like the book had a life of it’s own, which makes for an effective ending.
I have never read anything quite like this before and it is so difficult to review without ruining future readers experience, that’s probably why this review looks like it was written by a corrupt A.I. app. It is also such a complex book that I am worried that what I got from the book is miles away from what the creator intended. The best thing I can say about this book is that “some authors can take our fears and write a good book, Kendall can take what is accepted and shows us why we should be afraid.”
Give this amazing book a go and then come join my support group.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2024...
Life at the moment in 2024 feels like its on a knife-edged apocalypse, A.I. taking over everything leaving you wondering if anything is real, is any interaction online with an actual person these days? there are adverts everywhere (always about something you had just been talking about) and technology is improving at a rate where lots of us will be left behind. I don’t know if this book was supposed to be terrifying but Kendall effectively takes these modern fears and weaves a narrative that puts all this together and shows the reader one possible future we face. 100% does this feel like a warning from the future.
Kendall’s writing is visually stunning, so often I forgot I was reading, there are some truly shocking scenes where I had to put the book down and take 5min to come down a bit. Our main character is John Lakerman, you can’t quite get a grip on what he is like because I’m not sure he knows, he is immersed in this technological world and is trying to look past what his implants tell him is real to try and find the true reality by doing things like interviewing in person and not online. Weirdo! As the implants start to exert more control the style of writing changes, the point of view moves into 2nd person and it was rather unsettling as I had to flick back quite a few pages to see when that happened. All dialogue stops now and then whilst the implants give you numbered options on how to proceed…again it was worrying how easily I adapted to this style and the flow was barely interrupted. The ending felt out of control, jumping forward in time, almost like the book had a life of it’s own, which makes for an effective ending.
I have never read anything quite like this before and it is so difficult to review without ruining future readers experience, that’s probably why this review looks like it was written by a corrupt A.I. app. It is also such a complex book that I am worried that what I got from the book is miles away from what the creator intended. The best thing I can say about this book is that “some authors can take our fears and write a good book, Kendall can take what is accepted and shows us why we should be afraid.”
Give this amazing book a go and then come join my support group.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2024...
October 7, 2025
"Lakerman deep fakes his own imagination, begins to put together what he imagines is shareable content."
Thomas Kendall's How I Killed the Universal Man projects us five minutes into our alienated future/past. A young journalist John Lakerman is on assignment from his edgelord media corp to record his experiences in a controlled trial of an experimental biotech antidepressant (GRD: guided response drug) turned street psychedelic. Lakerman runs into clues that something is off about this entire setup and events quickly devolve into paranoid cyberdelic insanity. Most handheld tech to interface with the world has been internalized via expensive legitimate and/or black market upgrade surgeries. It's easy to see the actions of the dominant corporations in HIKTUM's scenario perfectly transpose with the very real total information awareness infrastructure being built by Palantir and others. As a vintage SF devotee, I'm usually skeptical about contemporary stuff. This book has proven I should probably change that. Kendall's vision carries on in the tech-dystopian near future myth tradition of Philip K. Dick, Barry Malzberg, Thomas M. Disch, J.G. Ballard, D.G. Compton, Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix, Linda Nagata's Nanotech Succession, but updates it for our current continuum with all of the insidious features they hadn't imagined yet. Certainly not going to be everyone's cup of tea in our already extremely negativity saturated enviroment, but there is some hope hidden in the conclusion.
July 16, 2025
A sun drenched Miami, clones, a new drug, alligators chilling next to pools. Pure fuckery at its finest. A fascinating futuristic AI noir story from one of the genre fastest rising stars Thomas Kendall. The author uses mind bending descriptive prose to take you on unforgettable mind melting sophisticated plot that wouldn’t look out of place in a high budget Christopher Nolan movie.
I can’t wait to see what he releases in the future.
@TruckingThroughTheGalaxy
I can’t wait to see what he releases in the future.
@TruckingThroughTheGalaxy
June 9, 2025
Who was asking for some Ballardian, Baudrillardian, Bergsonian, Burroughsian, Deleuzean, Cronenbergian, Heideggerian, transhumanist noir? (Oh, it was me)
The main character is basically a Vice journalist in an accelerated near-future. Things get weird fast after he trials a new smart drug and gets a new implant, but I knew this was my kind of book before all that, when we’re introduced to Lakerman getting drunk in a bleak Miami apartment. He prefers swimming pools to the ocean; compares an Adam’s apple to a test-your-strength machine (then admits he’s only ever seen one in a cartoon)—everything is already swallowed up by simulacra and the hyperreal.
A lot of cyberpunk claims to explore the merging of human and tech, real and virtual, but usually does so in fairly simplistic terms. Biology is often reduced to mechanics (a limited metaphor); VR is another world you “enter”, like Narnia, not something folded up within the actual, bleeding through.
I get it. It's difficult to create fiction depicting shifting realities or processes that escape the categories applied to them.
Kendall pulls this off exceptionally well however—anchoring the story in noir narration to keep things readable despite the blurring boundaries. Except in the last chapter, when Lakerman finally plays the game and we temporarily lose that anchor. It’s disorienting and will probably be divisive (I didn’t ‘enjoy’ reading that chapter, but coming out the other side, it felt worth it).
The best SF should leave you feeling changed, not just rehash a stale ideology amid a backdrop of holograms and surgically implanted specs. There’s nothing wrong with that stuff, but at the end of the day it's just clothing.
HIKTUM proves you can have your cake and eat it. Forcing the reader to vicariously experience weird philosophy while pumping the sensational cyber/bio/whatever-punk aesthetics and action. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.
Also, the book is really funny. Almost every page has some brilliant throwaway SF idea and I loved the depiction of the cooption of sustainability, the gamification of everything...
Very impressed. Small presses must be where the mad stuff is at nowadays.
The main character is basically a Vice journalist in an accelerated near-future. Things get weird fast after he trials a new smart drug and gets a new implant, but I knew this was my kind of book before all that, when we’re introduced to Lakerman getting drunk in a bleak Miami apartment. He prefers swimming pools to the ocean; compares an Adam’s apple to a test-your-strength machine (then admits he’s only ever seen one in a cartoon)—everything is already swallowed up by simulacra and the hyperreal.
A lot of cyberpunk claims to explore the merging of human and tech, real and virtual, but usually does so in fairly simplistic terms. Biology is often reduced to mechanics (a limited metaphor); VR is another world you “enter”, like Narnia, not something folded up within the actual, bleeding through.
I get it. It's difficult to create fiction depicting shifting realities or processes that escape the categories applied to them.
Kendall pulls this off exceptionally well however—anchoring the story in noir narration to keep things readable despite the blurring boundaries. Except in the last chapter, when Lakerman finally plays the game and we temporarily lose that anchor. It’s disorienting and will probably be divisive (I didn’t ‘enjoy’ reading that chapter, but coming out the other side, it felt worth it).
The best SF should leave you feeling changed, not just rehash a stale ideology amid a backdrop of holograms and surgically implanted specs. There’s nothing wrong with that stuff, but at the end of the day it's just clothing.
HIKTUM proves you can have your cake and eat it. Forcing the reader to vicariously experience weird philosophy while pumping the sensational cyber/bio/whatever-punk aesthetics and action. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.
Also, the book is really funny. Almost every page has some brilliant throwaway SF idea and I loved the depiction of the cooption of sustainability, the gamification of everything...
Very impressed. Small presses must be where the mad stuff is at nowadays.
February 11, 2024
I feel honored and utterly unqualified to review such a masterpiece, yet here I am.
How I Killed The Universal Man explores humanity and artificial intelligence, embodying present fears and possibilities in a way that darkens the deepest hues of my understanding.
Beautifully complex and maddeningly inspiring, I highly recommend this book to readers who enjoy a challenge wrapped in spectacular prose.
I envision my thoughts drifting to this narrative time and again as its message takes root in my mind.
Brilliant!
How I Killed The Universal Man explores humanity and artificial intelligence, embodying present fears and possibilities in a way that darkens the deepest hues of my understanding.
Beautifully complex and maddeningly inspiring, I highly recommend this book to readers who enjoy a challenge wrapped in spectacular prose.
I envision my thoughts drifting to this narrative time and again as its message takes root in my mind.
Brilliant!
Read
January 15, 2026You don’t take the drug. The drug takes you.
May 3, 2024
s/o SF ULTRA podcast
June 24, 2025
Lakerman, a gonzo journalist, is covering a new drug that has hit the streets and the disappearance of its creator. What he uncovers is a grim world of biotechnology, virtual reality, and genetic mutation, drawing him ever deeper into his quest for truth.
This is near-future noir where technology is out of control and remaking the world. It reminded me of the fantastic Nexus series by Ramez Naam or Kathleen Ann Goonan's Nanotech cycle, both of which explore the other side of the singularity, where society is fracturing and re-healing around accelerating tech advances. I love this theme, and Kendall shows he has the imagination to really surprise and shock with his worldbuilding.
The narrative moves between set pieces, layering on a sensory barrage that builds a picture of a protean world where reality is broken, body horror is around every corner, and the physical is fluid. This is intentionally disorienting - a book that prioritises feeling over comprehension, where your understanding will be riddled by lacunae. Stoicism is a prerequisite; if you're going to feel uncomfortable with that, this isn't a book for you.
Where I hit a wall was with the prose. Kendall is a literary writer - his pages drip with dense, abstract symbolism, which puts the words front and centre. But I'm not a literary reader. I want the words to fade from consciousness, to exist visually in the world. Kendall clearly loves the writing; his prose forces you to slow down, be conscious of the words, analyse the sentences to extract his meaning, or risk skimming and missing the nuance. For me, this often verged on being overwritten.
I raced through the conclusion, which doubles down on abstraction as Lakerman enters the game, which we experience as a stream-of-consciousness second-person narration. I was left with an attachment to a world and characters that gripped me, but a plot and narrative I didn't comprehend enough to be satisfying. Unfortunately, I know that in a month I'll have a hard time explaining this book.
This is near-future noir where technology is out of control and remaking the world. It reminded me of the fantastic Nexus series by Ramez Naam or Kathleen Ann Goonan's Nanotech cycle, both of which explore the other side of the singularity, where society is fracturing and re-healing around accelerating tech advances. I love this theme, and Kendall shows he has the imagination to really surprise and shock with his worldbuilding.
The narrative moves between set pieces, layering on a sensory barrage that builds a picture of a protean world where reality is broken, body horror is around every corner, and the physical is fluid. This is intentionally disorienting - a book that prioritises feeling over comprehension, where your understanding will be riddled by lacunae. Stoicism is a prerequisite; if you're going to feel uncomfortable with that, this isn't a book for you.
Where I hit a wall was with the prose. Kendall is a literary writer - his pages drip with dense, abstract symbolism, which puts the words front and centre. But I'm not a literary reader. I want the words to fade from consciousness, to exist visually in the world. Kendall clearly loves the writing; his prose forces you to slow down, be conscious of the words, analyse the sentences to extract his meaning, or risk skimming and missing the nuance. For me, this often verged on being overwritten.
I raced through the conclusion, which doubles down on abstraction as Lakerman enters the game, which we experience as a stream-of-consciousness second-person narration. I was left with an attachment to a world and characters that gripped me, but a plot and narrative I didn't comprehend enough to be satisfying. Unfortunately, I know that in a month I'll have a hard time explaining this book.
August 29, 2024
In 1965, Jean-Luc Godard managed the high-wire balancing act between noir and science fiction in his dystopian Alphaville. Thomas Kendall performs a similar literary sleight of hand with How I Killed the Universal Man: an accelerated cyber-noir about journalist John Lakerman investigating a new antidepressant. Traversing the mad speeds of noir: its double-crossings and red herrings; and stitching these to the human nervous system gives Kendall an infinite-seeming scope for his trippy and psychedelic text. Reality becomes as plastic as his bloodstream, or as one character explains: “The outside is the new inside.” Neuromancer for the metadata age, The Long Goodbye riddled with AI bots. Throughout the novel, Lakerman is offered multiple-choice options. Reach for your gun? Sip another negroni? Paradoxically, as technology offers us more and more choice, we feel more hemmed in. Our freedom is claustrophobic. We slip into a deep sleep with perimeters allocated by a kind algorithm. You run through a corridor and reload your gun. Where to turn? You close your eyes. Your most private thoughts are plagiarism.
July 26, 2024
In his staggering transhumanist noir How I Killed the Universal Man, author Thomas Kendall offers us a visionary work of near-future dystopia that left me feeling nothing quite so strongly as "someone better hurry up and publish this, before it all comes true." He synthesizes any number of long-posited sci-fi ideas here—from the commercial body-modded nightmares of Mark Leyner and David Cronenberg to the corrupt virtual dreamscapes of William Gibson and The Matrix to the cyberspiritual apotheosis of Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island—and makes them feel not just believable, but imminent. But if there is a through-line connecting his beloved debut The Autodidacts and this new work, it’s a profound desire for people to communicate in ways beyond the limits of speech, expression, and language; to truly understand one another’s hearts and minds; to know things about each other, and by extension ourselves, that at present we simply cannot know.
Full review on strangehorizons.com
Full review on strangehorizons.com
August 13, 2025
This book is one wild ride. John Lakerman, a journalist, signs up to cover a drug trial and ends up in a total mess, missing researchers, weird mutations, virtual reality games, and billionaires doing shady stuff. What starts off as a simple assignment turns into something way deeper (and way stranger).
The story is set in a future where the environment’s collapsing and AI is messing with biology and people. Lakerman ends up questioning what’s real, what’s virtual, and who’s actually in control. Spoiler: it’s no one.
It’s definitely not a straightforward read. The writing is sharp, a bit chaotic, and full of twists that’ll keep you guessing. One minute you're in a lab, next you're in a VR world, and suddenly, you're wondering if anything even makes sense. But that's exactly the fun of it.
This one’s perfect if you enjoy offbeat, deep, and slightly confusing stories that make you think. It's not your typical sci-fi, it’s darker, messier, and totally unique.
If you're into strange realities and don’t mind a little confusion along the way, give this one a shot.
The story is set in a future where the environment’s collapsing and AI is messing with biology and people. Lakerman ends up questioning what’s real, what’s virtual, and who’s actually in control. Spoiler: it’s no one.
It’s definitely not a straightforward read. The writing is sharp, a bit chaotic, and full of twists that’ll keep you guessing. One minute you're in a lab, next you're in a VR world, and suddenly, you're wondering if anything even makes sense. But that's exactly the fun of it.
This one’s perfect if you enjoy offbeat, deep, and slightly confusing stories that make you think. It's not your typical sci-fi, it’s darker, messier, and totally unique.
If you're into strange realities and don’t mind a little confusion along the way, give this one a shot.
October 15, 2025
Kendall has dreamed up a world here both disorienting and hallucinatory. The story is set in the not-so-distant future, maybe a generation or two ahead, and man that future is bleak. A future that reads as so plausible as to be almost inevitable. Smart drugs and biotech implants and artificial intelligence drive a cloak and dagger mystery through a landscape of environmental and societal collapse. Follow along as a jaded and disenchanted hack journalist chases his story so deep down a rabbit hole that he eventually comes back around to himself.
December 27, 2024
Goes from "near-future thriller" to "has reality itself broken down" very quickly. Fitting, since there's a sinister corporate entity called UbIQ in here, which both nods in the phildickian influence here and riffs on tech bros' habit of referencing their favorite SFF novels when naming companies despite when it's inappropriate to do so.
June 4, 2025
Imagine you're riding shotgun with James Woods in a Black Mirror remake of Cronenberg's VIDEODROME, but make it literary, in a strong voice with stunning and propulsive prose. Can't remember the last time a novelist surprised me this much & to such gleeful results. Genius.
This was my introduction to Thomas Kendall and I will now forever seek out his work.
This was my introduction to Thomas Kendall and I will now forever seek out his work.
July 29, 2025
known a few universal men in my day
deeply appreciated how every bit of future tech felt like a referendum on the now rather than a hollow act of soothsaying. captured the idea of spiraling ironic detachment and ironically being ironically detached and on and on. i don't know if it's a strictly modern? experience but it is an exhausting one
deeply appreciated how every bit of future tech felt like a referendum on the now rather than a hollow act of soothsaying. captured the idea of spiraling ironic detachment and ironically being ironically detached and on and on. i don't know if it's a strictly modern? experience but it is an exhausting one
January 21, 2024
Thomas Kendall's latest novel, How I Killed The Universal Man, is a fantastic dark scifi read in the vein of Philip K Dick and Ursula LeGuin. The physical world is trash and desperation, people who can afford distraction live for it. Told from the point of view of John Lackerman, a journalist for the large, evil Media company, donkeyWolf, the novel starts with him on assignment to test the drug Neomenon which promises "spiritual fulfillment". Kendall weaves Lackerman's virtual reality and the more extreme, better, future-drug experiences, with "reality" -like a Miami, where coke is now Smart Coke, and sexually extreme games via implants (think Black Mirror, but nastier) are a business where despite the "virtual" aspect, there is a human cost. Kendall's imaged future is terrifying and not out of the question. It's a fully realized, recognizable future, where the past can be relived, albeit virtually, and the human desire for pleasure, distraction, and power knows no end. It's a brilliantly paced novel, in an imagined world that strikes so many cords of reality. People talk about post-capitalism, and the death of our planet regularly, but to read about Lackerman's journey takes us to, in video game speak, to the next level.
January 17, 2024
A book that brims with Kendall’s sensitivity, curiosity and honesty, his interest in where clarity and complexity meet. Can doom – can our end itself – be prepossessingly beautiful? Can synthesis and amalgam, can optima, feel like stasis and death? You can feel Kendall’s care and bravery, his patient pen piercing and shoveling into the page even as he knows the only way to fully see and know will be, inevitably, to keep living, to keep converging.
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