Immaculate Conception

by Guilherme Solari

The year is 2116. Millions of American and European refugees run from the destruction of the war-torn Northern hemisphere and flood into Megasampa, the urban sprawl formed when the metropolitan areas of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro joined in the mid-21st century.

They gather in the Novo Bronx ghetto, a place of vice, death and hardship, but also of refugees just trying to rebuild their lives. Novo Bronx was never a quiet place by a long shot, but now unrest grows as a series of macabre murders strike fear into the heart of the populace. Murders attributed to a creature the locals are calling Bebê Diabo, the Devil Baby.

The Proctech private police quells the rebellion for the time being, but the gruesome deaths are unlike anything they have ever encountered. Reluctantly, they call out of retirement the only detective insane enough to solve an insane case.

A detective called Cascavel.

Immaculate Conception is the first book in the Cybersampa series.

ebook

Published October 29, 2015

About the author

Guilherme Solari is a journalist and writer from Sao Paulo, Brazil. He has written about movies, literature and videogames for some of Brazil’s biggest news sites, like UOL and Folha de S.Paulo.

He grew up playing video games and watching action movies, but his main hobby as a child was to imagine fantastical stories involving ninjas, dinosaurs and cyborgs. An avid reader of classic cyberpunk sci fi and pulp fiction, he tried to bring these two passions together in the Cybersampa series. The initial novella, Immaculate Conception, is his first book written in English.

Solari is the author of The Cascavel Chronicles, a prequel to Cybersampa and a love letter to old action movies. The book, released in Brazil in 2015, follows the owner of a run-down video shop that decides to fight crime. His only “superpower”? He watched every single 80’s action movie ever made.

He is also the cowriter of the play Fogo, which was presented in Sao Paulo in 2010. His short story Egofobia has appeared in the Portuguese edition of The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, alongside the works of authors like Neil Gaiman, China Miéville and Alan Moore.

Reviews

[Marian Thorpe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Immaculate Conception is a cyberpunk novella by Brazilian journalist Guilherme Solari. The setting is the megalopolis of Megasampa, a couple of hundred years in the future, a sprawling, dystopic city that has swallowed Rio and Sao Paulo, ruled by corporations, dark and divided. A brutal murder introduces us to Cascavel, the protagonist, a man with a mysterious past, multiple synthetic parts, and a film-noir-detective attitude.

Immaculate Conception is in part an homage to the cyberpunk world of Philip K. Dick, and references to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (the story on which the film Blade Runner is based) are embedded in the story, as are references to other dystopic classics. These references help ground the story in a classic cyberpunk world without detracting from the new creation of Megasampa.

The world-building is solid, pulling from established cyberpunk and other dystopic themes, but the South American setting gives it a different life. The characters are not quite three-dimensional, but are as developed as many characters in this genre. The plot is a mix of film noir, classic horror, and dystopian sci-fi, and for the most part maintains its momentum and tension well. Descriptions of the locations effectively evoke the desolation of Novo Bronx as well as the shiny artificiality of corporate headquarters.

English is not Guilherme Solari's first language, and while most of the writing is competent, there are enough mistakes in spelling, grammar and voice to detract from the flow of the prose. These could be easily corrected in a second edition of the e-book. My other quibble is the description of the novella on Amazon as meant for the 12-18 age group; the subject of the book and its violent murders, as well as the reading level, suggest to me the lower age limit here is too low. This may be a difficulty with Amazon's classifications and not the author's intent, to be fair.

Overall, I am giving Immaculate Conception three stars; it would have been 3 1/2 except for the language errors. I should say cyberpunk is not a genre I have read widely, and most of what I have read is by either Dick or William Gibson, so I may be a bit out of date with the evolution of this type of writing. Immaculate Conception is the first in a planned series of Cybersampa books, and I believe they will find a satisfied readership.

Review by Goodreads Author Marian Thorpe

The author provided me with a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. The opinions here are mine alone.

[Don Sloan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Casavel is an old-school private investigator -- right down to the implanted portable data processor on his wrist. It doesn't get Wi-Fi, though. He needs to insert a cable into the side of his head for that.

Such is the outre nature of this standout cyberpunk/science fiction novel by author Guilherme Solari. Set sometime in the not-too-distant future, Cascavel is called to assist the regular cops -- employed not by the city of Megasampa, but by ProcTec, Inc. -- in solving a grisly double homicide in a seedy walk-up hotel. The bodies have been butchered and disemboweled.

The much-younger sergeant assigned to the case suspects drugs -- dreamtears, specifically.

"Cascavel took a handful of dark blood and put it in his mouth, gargled it and spit it back. 'No, they were clean, at least physically.' Cascavel said, his teeth dirtied by the blood. 'The girl was alive when the innards were taken.'"

This is a tremendously imaginative, futuristic take on an old genre -- the hard-boiled P.I. character, called in to cases the regular police can't -- or won't -- solve. Cascavel has a thousand one-liners to annoy the straight-man sergeant. Among them: "I'm wearing underwear that's older than you."

The criminal investigation often takes a back seat to the incredible otherworldly background and the more-than-quirky supporting characters.

Cascavel's son gives him a robotic sheep as a birthday present. Cascavel quickly uploads a guard dog program into its central processor and arms it with titanium teeth, renaming the ruminant Jaws. Cascavel's brother, seeking increased wealth, has leased the use of his brain to a conglomerate. The process has rendered him a drooling, unresponsive mess. A public relations android at the pharmaceutical company where the victims were employed has non-stop commercials running all over his naked body.

And then there's the suspected perpetrator of these hideous crimes -- a demon the size of an infant. Its name is Bebe Diabo -- Devil Baby.

Cascavel and his partner penetrate the drug company headquarters and, after fighting hand-to-hand all the way to the inner sanctum, they receive a terrible shock. And the reasons for the crime wave become terribly clear.

Immaculate Conception is a worthy story that any fan of this genre will enjoy. I'm awarding it four stars only because I believe it could benefit a great deal from an English-as-a-primary-language editor. Much must be overlooked in reading this otherwise fine novel.