Safe State

by Jay Klements

It's 2058. Six years ago, the Winter of Disconnect shattered Britain and stole Jas McDonnell’s childhood. She survived. Millions didn’t.

Now Jas manages survivor’s guilt with electromagnetic emotional correction, artificially induced reality, and good old chemical escape. She scrapes a living under the unblinking lenses of the storybirds, hoping to trigger their interest algorithms and stream a few moments of her life to poverty-voyeurs in the transhumanist playground of Grand London.

But when a truckload of illegal bio-fabricators arrives in her backwater town, life turns upside-down for Jas. The posthuman demigods in the capital are definitely watching now. And her real-time soap opera is about to become a horror movie.

Safe State is grimy post-cyberpunk for readers who love the deep immersion of William Gibson’s The Peripheral, the bleakly real tech extrapolations of Daniel Suarez’s Change Agent, and the dark British cynicism of Charles Stross’s classic Accelerando. In an age where we fear what our machines and AI will become, Safe State shouldn't we be more afraid of what we’ll become ourselves?

Praise for Jay “I haven't been this blown away by an author's achievement since House of Leaves. I'm on my second read, revelling in the prose, characters, and world. Buy this book. It's one of the best you'll read.” ★★★★★ (Amazon Review of Safe State)"It's a rare occasion when you pick up a new author and know within the first few pages that you'll want to read everything they publish. Segmentation Fault was that kind of story for me." ★★★★★ (Amazon Review of Segmentation Fault)“Safe State’s world is an absolutely standout creation, full of fascinating ideas—the Storybirds, the Hoffman-Schwarz syndrome, those emotion inductors—and such clever extrapolations of current tech that, reading it, this future seems not only possible but somehow likely.” ★★★★★ (Amazon Review of Safe State)“This is gripping, fresh cyberpunk with relatable, clearly defined characters, each with their own arc, and an ending that will make your head spin.” ★★★★★ (Amazon Review of Safe State)"I adored this story. I’m a sucker for a near-future dystopia and Segmentation Fault’s world is one for the ages — fascinating, terrifying, and all so grimly plausible." ★★★★★ (Amazon Review of Segmentation Fault)“This book nails the quintessential "high tech, low life" grit of cyberpunk, but blends in a deeply relatable, sympathetic character I really came to care for.” ★★★★★ (Amazon Review of Safe State)

296 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 15, 2025

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

An author I haven’t read but a setting (Dystopian cyberpunk future) that I enjoy. Turns out Klements is actually pretty good writer. I enjoyed the story and the characters, and even when I thought I knew I was going to happen with some of the characters, it turns out I was thrown some interesting surprises as what I thought was going to happen manifested enough differently to be interesting. The ending really fit, absolutely fantastic. Honestly, I have to recommend this one for people who like this type of setting. In fact, I actually enjoyed it more than I enjoy William Gibson, because Klements made me care about the characters more than I ever cared about any of Gibsons.

I picked this relatively unknown author and title when I saw it on BookBub. It is still on sale on Amazon when I last checked.

I plan to pick up his other stories.

[Terri · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF, stopping 17% in.

I really wanted to enjoy this one. Great worldbuilding and sense of dread mixed with bits of this MC's life--but at nearly 20% in, there's just not enough to keep my interest. Sigh.