The sequel book that complements Future X, but it also stands on its own. Notes from Lunar Underground takes you into the future where they've built a moon community. Earth isn't doing so well. I love the documentary style of letters and vignettes. Very cinematic story telling. Filmmakers should be looking at Georg Koszulinski's work.
Emptiness. That’s what blares at us from our TV screens, from our phones, from our AI driven thought bubbles, from our lack of coping. We’re arrogant and over indulgent. We have too much and we take too much. We’re selfish and self indulgent.
That’s the backbone of Notes From Lunar Underground, or as I like to call it, Lunar Underground.
The backdrop of the story is a man named Gedeon Kravchenko, not to be confused with Georg Koszulinski, travels to the moon to write a biography on Noel Rodgers, an eccentric trillionaire.
Despite being an immediate commentary on wealth disparity and the vanity of consumption through technology, Rodgers is made to be somewhat sympathetic. A cult of personality, I think.
This is further built on by the end of humanity on earth. Everything is gone besides those on the moon. And information is key. And boy, how it’s manipulated by machine intelligence and propaganda. It seems also like a meditation on echo chambers and being surrounded only by your own thoughts.
Some commentators have discussed this piece being a successor to FUTURE X, and while not a true “sequel,” it’s definitely a duology in that they mirror one another and compliment one another, being based in the same universe.
Lunar Underground is lonely, reflective, and tragic. You know the characters are born to die. To self-immolate. And maybe that’s for the better.
A disturbing, riveting, deeply human story about legacy, survival, and the price of being human. I'm obsessed with spec fiction alt history from the future, and what makes this so compelling is how easy it is to believe in the world on the page. Gedeon is the kind of disaffected narrator you can't help but watch in fascination, even at his most questionable and flawed, even as he documents the luxury-clad-atrocities around him. Notes from Lunar Underground is a companion novel to Future X, but it stands alone as a piece of prophecy, or at least as a thoroughly relatable piece of fiction.