Nexhuman

by Francesco Verso

‘Francesco Verso brings classic cyberpunk attitude to grand romantic obsession . . . a thoughtful meditation on what it means to be human and an exciting peek into a world that is just around the corner.’ – James Patrick Kelly (Nebula, Locus and Hugo Award winner)

In a future where most of Earth into a junk heap, Peter Payne is a trashformer, a scavenger, a kid under the thumb of a world too brutal to stay human. When his chance to change his fate is violently torn away, he embarks on a quest to rebuild the object of his obsession.

Examining themes such as cybernetics, prosthetics, consumerism, robotics and transcendence, Nexhuman expands on classic science fiction to build a world as deep and searching as its main character.

First published in Italian by Delos Books in 2013. First English edition published in Fantastica 2014 as Livid, rereleased 2015 as Nexhuman.

Genres: Science Fiction, Italy, Fiction

260 pages, Paperback

Published October 30, 2015

About the author

Francesco Verso (Bologna, 1973) is a multiple-award Science Fiction writer and editor. He has published: Antidoti umani, e-Doll, Nexhuman, Bloodbusters, Futurespotting and I camminatori (made of The Pulldogs and No/Mad/Land). Nexhuman and Bloodbusters have been published in Italy, US, UK and China. I camminatori will be published by Flame Tree Press as The Roamers in Spring 2023. He works as editor of Future Fiction, scouting and translating the best SF from 12 languages and more than 30 countries. He’s the Honorary Director of the Fishing Fortress SF Academy of Chongqing. He may be found online at www.futurefiction.org.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nexhuman is Italian Cyberpunk Science Fiction. Part Clockwork Orange. Part Blade Runner. Part Soylent Green. It is set in a future which is an environmental catastrophe, waste of all kinds has overwhelmed the cities. Junk is sifted through, scavenged, recycled. Beneath the junk and threatening to swallow all the junk is kibble, a word coined by Philip K. Dick. Those who are the bottom rungs of society filch through the filth of the kibble for anything that can be salvaged. Sometimes losing an arm, a leg, an eye, a life in the process. Gangs of teenage youth gather together to find prizes and beat violence on anyone caught in their wake. Peter Payne's pathetic pathway through life with his mother and his bullying brother is at the center of the story.

Peter Payne, who already has an artificial arm and an artificial leg. Others are not so fortunate or are more fortunate as the case may be. They are nexhumans, nexies, of next-humans. The human consciousness has been uploaded into an artificial person, an android, a being of ultimate physical perfection. Much of the story is Peter's obsessions with a nexhuman of unimaginable beauty who smiles at him from her travel agency and his daydreams and fantasies of her and their life together. And, when she is torn apart and her parts rendered asunder, his dream of putting her back together -like humpty dumpty- or Frankenstein - and building the perfect woman for him. Is it a love story or a twisted perverted obsession where he is more like the guy who lives with a sex doll for years and thinks its wonderful?

This is an incredibly interesting, clever, and unusual story that posits a future that may not be all rainbows and stars, but more garbage, sewage, kipple, and loss of limbs. With people living like squatters in basements and sub-basements and picking through the trash. A future though with many technological advances.

It also poses questions about what consciousness is and whether the soul could survive being placed in another body, in an artificial body. What is the person and what is a cyborg?

Well-written, fascinating, but perhaps more of a cult favorite, than a mass appeal book. Leaves the reader very interested to find out what else Verso and his Italian Science Fiction have to offer.

[Hologram Dystopia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Payne lives with his mother and older brother, Charlie, in a cyberpunk reality where they make ends meet by digging through waste looking for things that can be reused, recycled and resold. The only pleasant thing in the life of teenager Peter is Alba, a beautiful young woman working in a travel agency. He looks at her from afar and visits her when he can. In his bleak world, she is like an angel of kindness. But Alba is a nexhuman, a human conscience uploaded in an android body. And someone destroys Alba’s body, tearing it to pieces. From that day forward Peter will be obsessed with the task of “rebuilding” Alba, searching for her pieces and hoping to see her whole again. His obsession doesn’t vanish with adulthood, and is in fact awakened when he finds out something about the placement of her body parts… but it’s not going to be easy for Peter.
This is an interesting novel, because it manages to blend traditional cyberpunk elements (androids, conscience uploading, landfills) with new nuances. Indeed, the author manages to create his own cyberpunk world, with enough elements to make it stand out, a rare feat for cyberpunk written in the 2000s. As you can guess, the setting was my favorite element here: Verso manages to paint a vivid and extremely human world. This is also why a character like Charlie is a successful villain: because he’s frighteningly real, there’s plenty of people like him in the world, more than there can ever be crime overlords or megacorp CEOs. Other side characters, like Ion, are very well crafted, with just the right amount of info to make the reader curious without revealing too much.
The thing I’m not personally a fan of is how Peter’s relationship with Alba was treated. Other characters may call it a love story, but what’s between Peter and Alba is just obsession, Peter’s obsession. Since Alba is a series of broken pieces for most of the novel, she has little to no agency (and this is why I was hoping for another ending). We don’t know what she dreamed of, what she wanted, what she hoped for, and that is kinda sad to me. I also felt that most female characters are pretty much all in a negative light (one becomes not too different from Montag’s wife in Fahrenheit 451, one is ridiculed for her sexuality, and the other is made to be annoying), and while there’s plenty of beautiful nexhuman women, I can’t recall descriptions of equally handsome nexhuman men. Men are allowed to be ugly (and are not ridiculed for it).
If I were to be completely honest, I’d say that this is a well written novel, Verso’s writing skills are undeniable and the setting is satisfying, I just do not like the kind of story he chose to tell in relationship with the ending and its aftermath. This is incredibly personal of who I am as a reader in this moment of my life, mind you, and you may find out this is your new favorite novel. After all, it is a good novel and if I were still giving votes in my reviews this one would get a positive one. If you’re into cyberpunk and looking for something interesting to read, this might be your jam.

[Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

A kind of cyberpunk love story about a kid saving his dream girlfriend. The setting is a semi-apocalyptic / hopeful future with many technological advances, the main one being the ability to upload a consciousness into a new body. I liked it, an average 4 star read.

[Tessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book started really great for me. I found the juxtaposition between the dirty, garbage filled environment and the way the main character saw his "love interest" to be beautifully done. However, that soon ended and the story took a turn I wasn't expecting. Whereas at the beginning the author struck a nice balance between grime and beauty, that balance was soon lost and almost all the reader could feel and see was the grossness of it all.

Even though the book made me quite uncomfortable, I can't say it wasn't well done. Whenever I tried to leave it, I couldn't, like the obsessive nature of the characters was wearing off on me. I still don't think it was for me, but the author knew what he was doing and did it well. All the horrors presented fit in with the theme of the book and told us something about human nature. And let's face it, when has human nature ever been pretty?

I would still recommend this book, but not to the faint of heart. The only big issue I had with the title (that I couldn't honestly justify as intentionally off-putting by the author) was the multiple endings. I found it cheap like the author couldn't make up his mind how the story should end. Reading multiple versions of an ending leaves the reader feeling unsatisfied like there is not real resolution.

[Jimbo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book of humor, grace and beauty. Launching from the concepts explored by Phil Dick in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (from whence comes the word "kipple," meaning useless garbage), this book explores transhumanism as a means, perhaps (?) the only means, to escape the toxic world created by an endless and pointless cycle of consumerism. Even more, it explores the nature of love and connection, their place in human nature and their eternal struggle with the equally strong human impulses of cruelty and violence. Highly recommended.

[Suzanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Imagine a guy singing Baby It’s Cold Outside - both parts - “with” the dismembered head of a female mannequin. Yeah: ick.

[Leonardo Benavides · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nexhuman es una novela de ciencia ficción italiana contemporánea que, si bien se presenta a sí misma como una obra de exploración transhumanista, me ha parecido que encuentra su punto fuerte en algo más puramente humano: los traumas irreparables de una infancia violentada, destrozada —con brazos y piernas protésicas a modo de recordatorio grotesco de lo amputado y lo perdido— y de la subsecuente espiral inevitable de putrefacción, que no es más que un posible ciclo biográfico del que nadie podría estar del todo libre. En este caso, al modo de un coming of age, seguimos al protagonista desde su adolescencia, con su inocencia mutilada a través del horrible devenir de quien fuera su primer esbozo de amor, y que ocurriera que fuese una “replicante”, la copia inorgánica de un Otro, de Alba, que siempre estuvo —desde su concepción simbólica— fuera de nuestro alcance. Acompañar esta vida truncada, que pretende repararse a sí misma reparando lo arrebatado, me ha resultado una lectura bastante interesante: por momentos me tuvo enojado, por momentos discrepando, por momentos comprendiendo el sufrimiento presentado, pero sin dejar de lado en ningún momento una especie de frustración que se me adhería desde el inicio del libro.

La historia transcurre en una ciudad del futuro cercano, donde la basura se ha vuelto un problema social que repleta las calles y que ha conllevado a una forma de vida en torno a esta, ya sea esquivándola o transformándola o, en el peor de los casos, convirtiéndose en ella: riesgo mayor para los que son más de metal que de carne, más “fácilmente” descartables y deshumanizables.

Rescato y destaco una cita, brutalmente fatalista, que me gustó para ruminar: “The immaterial soul does not exist. The body is a prosthetic. The first but not the last to be used.” Se siente una paradoja bella…

[David Cain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nexhuman is a dystopian cyberpunk short novel that owes a great deal to Philip K. Dick. The two themes in this work that I found most compelling were how society might react to the digitization of human consciousness, and how people in general (and corporate interests in particular) would respond to the unsustainably large waste stream produced by a society in which consumerism has spiraled out of control. The protagonist (Peter Payne) is a bit naive and idealistic, but his behavior defies credulity when he's dealing with his sociopathic brother. He makes a staggeringly dumb decision during the climactic scene, which leads to seriously bad consequences for himself and none whatsoever for his brother (it's quite unsatisfying that the antagonist never gets what he deserves). Actually, I think the logic of this scene falls apart if you look too deeply, so perhaps this is just an example of a weak plot point. The translation into English from the original Italian is excellent (although it's not American English - e.g., "arse"), and I noticed only a few grammatical errors. I'm pleased that the publisher (Apex Publications) has brought this work to English-speaking audiences. I wrote this review in exchange for an advanced reading copy.

[Maurizio Codogno · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's funny to read an Italian novel in an English translation, but sometimes such things happen. In this book, rubbish (or better "kipple", a word Verso borrowed from Philip K Dick) becomes the basis for an ecosystem of people shoved out of the cities and getting a life by rummaging for useful objects thrown in the trash. At the same time, rich people who are old or terminally ill may choose to be "uploaded" in a synthetic body, becoming so Nexhumans. The main character, a crippled young man, sees the disembodying of a Nexhuman he dreamed of; his quest was to retrieve all her parts to bring her again to live. The book touches a lot of themes, both scientific and philosophic; maybe too many to have them fully developed. This is in detriment of the plot, however: for example the climax with the game between the two brother just does not make sense, and the very existence of machines which decompose kipple does not match the reality perceived by the people in the kipple. Maybe Verso should have stuck to a narrower theme, keeping his other ideas for sequels.

[Robbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The description of this didn't appeal that much to me and if I were to summarize it having now read it then it still wouldn't sound like something that I would like, but it turned out to be really good. What's most interesting about it to me is that it's a boring dystopia in which the protagonist isn't struggling against the dystopic features of his world and more or less just accepts them. It's a world corrupted by the waste of out-of-control consumerism with a very high Gini coefficient and pretty much no hope of class movement in which the lower class lives among and makes a living from the waste of the wealthy. But none of that is really at the forefront of the protagonist's mind: the story is about his crush on a Nexhuman woman and the lengths that he goes through to be reunited with her. It tells the story of both the dystopia and a transhumanistic hope for humanity in the background of his adventure. It was easy to get drawn into the story and the characters and it was really enjoyable to read.

[John Folk-Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nexhuman by Francesco Verso brilliantly blends the story of a young man’s obsessive love for a transhuman being with a vivid depiction of a consumerist society strangling on its own trash. Skillfully translated by Sally McCorry, the novel poses powerful questions about what it means to be human.

We see this world through the eyes of Peter Payne, a fifteen year-old learning the trade of salvaging trash, or kipple (a term borrowed from Philip K. Dick). Relentlessly shamed and manipulated by a bullying older brother, Peter immerses himself in fantasies. When he’s not learning his hardscrabble trade in kipple, he spends his time in the virtual “gamesphere” pursuing adventures around the world. But all that changes when he finds someone to love.

See the full review at SciFiMind

[Sue Chant · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag. Well written but not a totally plausible storyline. It's basically about trans-humanism but the central character is unlikeable, the females are just names with random characteristics assigned, and the world-building is a bit jumbled. Also, if I never hear the word "kipple" again I will be pleased!

[LaShana Claude · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is Alba. And there is everything else.

In a future threatened by the spread of "kippie" (garbage &trash), Peter Payne is part of a fringe society that scavenges junk to survive.


Exploring cybernetics, consumerism, robotics, and transcendence

[RReader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting premise, great chracter development / mood.

[Dan · Rating 1 out of 5]

The levels of misogyny in this book are absurd.

[A · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 really.

[J.D. DeHart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nexhuman is fiercely creative and fun to read. It's told in an intense first person and is just the right amount of "could" and "could never" happen. If you are on an oasis, searching for a quality and kickass sci-fi apocalypse, then this is the book for you.