Vampires of Avonmouth

by Tim Kindberg

Plagued by his inner demon, a detective leaves behind his beloved daughter. In exile, he finds himself rebelling against a dystopian world of mental enslavement, where technology connects directly to the brain.

Everything changes when a ship arrives from his former home in West Africa, carrying a vampire who hungers not for blood but mental energy. He falls in love with the woman she hunts – despite himself. For the monstrous secret inside him wants to get out. How can they possibly survive?

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror, Ghana, Vampires, Gothic, Dystopia

332 pages, Paperback

First published November 2, 2020

About the author

Nottingham -> Cambridge -> San Francisco -> London -> Palo Alto -> Bristol -> Copenhagen -> Bristol -> Guangzhou -> Bristol.

Operating at the intersection of the strange and the mysterious.

Reviews

[Ross Jeffery]

Vampires of Avonmouth is a beautifully rendered vision of the future (2087). It’s a techno-dystopian sci-fi but has some grounding in horror (possession of some sort and Vampiric in thematic devices - spliced with a distinct vision of the future).

Kindberg splices elements of science fiction into this offering with great aplomb and these reminded me of some of the work from Asimov and Dick in their visionary reach and crazy.

I didn’t particularly gel with the language of this offering I found it quite cold and clinical (intellectual) for my liking (but that probably speaks more about me that it does Kindberg’s craft, because the guy can write - this book was just a little out of my wheelhouse.

If you’re after something that different from the norm and visionary in scope I’d recommend checking this out.

It wasn’t for me - but I’m sure it’ll find an audience. (DNF)

http://vampiresofavonmouth.com

[Stephen Hunt]

What is lurking near the end of the grand pier with its wisht presence? Anyone who has taken a cursory glance at a field guide to the natural history of the vampire will know that there are vampires of blood, and other species hungry to feed upon the psyche. Those that inhabit the irresistibly titled Vampires of Avonmouth are the latter. Set in the late twenty-first century West Country and Ghana, the novel follows the efforts of the chief protagonists, rogue ID cop, David, tracking “renegades”, and the Ghanaian Pempansie, named after an Adinkra symbol of foresight and resilience. The relationship between the two is forged in a shared yearning to free their bodies and minds of their vodus, seemingly alter-beings that have entered them and dwell within. These, perhaps, are malevolent versions of those integrally connected dæmons familiar from their co-habitation of Phillip Pullman’s characters. This is a world animated by “mentalmagic” and populated by fleshren (humans), quasi-sentient, shapeshifting robots called bodais, electro-sorcerers and a dog called Coleridge. And, of course, there is the vampiric Obayifa, an attractive but menacing psychic predator, who unaccountably arrives on a rusting hulk of a ship. A haunting presence for the duration of the novel, Obayifa is more chilling than the common or garden sanguivorous vampire. Will she get her sustenance?

Like all good histories of the future, this novel extrapolates present trends into their fuller manifestation. After the time of “the Disruption,” (illegal to mention) trajectories of technological determinism have intensified. Artificial intelligence is a dominant controlling force, there has been a pandemic in the form of a dementia plague and bytecoins are in circulation. Errant Big Tech overlord’s increasingly condition present-day technologies from investment through research and development to their implementation, distribution and supply so that they are channelled to their interests and saturated with their ideologies. Here, the power of the undisclosed Big Mind is the controlling power. In this risky and uncertain reality, identity is a currency and David bends the rules of what is acceptable to the Big Mind in his pursuit of ID criminals. Most controversially he even periodically goes offline, a deeply suspicious and questionable activity. A misfit who breaks with his assigned role, David is a sci-fi noir character, recalling the desperate anti-heroes of Philip K Dick and William Gibson. Readers quickly find ourselves in a dystopian class society, where the unfortunate victims of vampirism are “nonned” into a zombie-like state:

Unresponsive, void-staring husks of human beings climbed into the branches instinctively and tottered until, finally weakened, they fell like empty, wing-clipped angels into the Accra-city streets.

Agency is a privilege of the digitally well-endowed. The wealthy inhabit communities that are more firewalled than gated, enjoying a state of “virtual segregation” a kind of class apartheid secured by algorithms. Others live in the realm of the “down-below”, fed “sensa” through mechanisms of telepathic domination so that a state of “numbed peace” prevails. For most of society, therefore, history has ended in perpetual social sedation. As one character scoffs, with a nod to Fukuyama, “I thought history ended decades ago”.

If the world of Vampires of Avonmouth for the most part exists outside time, much of it is also an atopia, a non-place where local distinctiveness has been erased. Only in pockets of “down-below” do differentiated streets and parishes of the eponymous Avonmouth endure in folk memory:

The city’s regions were but topological contingences of the built environment, without individual character. And yet flesh sometimes referred to parts of the down-below with the names of streets as used to be: Merebank, Kings Weston, Ironchurch.

There are some familiar place names such as Arnos Vale, but this is not recognisably the West Country as we know and love it. Now a hub, Avonmouth.city, has become the main centre of settlement, cheekily eclipsing Bristol.city which:

lay drab and dilapidated, unrecognisable from its days as a centre of creativity and technology early in the century. Now it was little more than a collection of cemeteries. They left the uninhabited suburbs, soaring above the fleeting landscape. The Avon, with its crinkly mud walls at low tide, snaked back to the Severn Estuary beside them.

Beloved cultural institutions that help create a sense of place have lost their purpose and disappeared,
“… there were no longer any parks, gardens, galleries or museums, since those could be experienced virtually, telepathically via sensa delivered at optimum times.”

Tim Kindberg has more fun with “Super Mare”, which is somewhat legendary location, at turns the end of the rainbow and an El Dorado in the popular imagination. “Not on any map”, for much of the novel the characters are unsure as to whether it actually exists. It is also apparently protected by a field of repulsion that ensures outsiders rarely visit.

Cities are typically hubs with domain-names signalling that the distinction between the physical, organic world and virtual world has largely blurred and collapsed. The physical world of the post-Disruption has clearly suffered from traumatic ecological crises. Despite the presence of solar panels and wind turbines, urban dwellers live in fear of rising sea levels and migration, as presumably large swathes of the planet have become uninhabitable. Echoing the concerns of David Goulson’ Silent Earth, this is also a post-insect land. It is unclear how crops might be pollinated. Indeed, not much eating or drinking occurs in the novel, even on the part of the characters who are flesh. An exception is David’s consumption of an “unmeatburger” in Spoons, the eateries that have somehow survived like corporate cockroaches. As David breaks away to a freer life an unexpected experience of biophilia in a garden of fragrant flowers and embracing trees is a moment of therapeutic liberation. However, both he, and we readers, are left uncertain as to whether this green place of beauty is authentic.
Kindberg’s expertise in computer science enable him to conjure a complex other world that is convincing, if bewildering, in its detail. It evokes an alienating future technosphere where digital identity is both a vulnerability and a refuge and where there is no religion but “the worship of consumption”. In this context, memory is a form of resistance; even David is unsettled by the unnamed notepad and pen-wielding heretic, his cellmate who speaks of the forbidden times of football, skateboards, and bicycles. Vampires of Avonmouth has pace and momentum. It is recommended reading for all West Country sci-fi fans and for those with a taste for speculative history. Future Song, Kindberg’s new novel forthcoming at the time of writing, is also set in a West Country of impending decades, beset by climate change. It will be one to listen out for and to look forward to. (Review for Bristol Radical History Group)

[Michael Beecher]

I thought the vampire genre had been pretty much done to death, perhaps even a stake firmly driven through its heart. However, Kindberg avoids the Transylvanian clichés and finds a distinctive new angle with African vampires and has plenty to say in his journey beyond the analogue and digital into a convincingly constructed dystopian future world. With a heady mix of legend, witchcraft, AI, and a population sedated by consumerism, there is a quest underlying the action and we are left guessing to the conclusion, who really is the hunter and who the prey, who can be trusted and who will survive. This can be read as just a good story, but Kindberg weaves into the action questions about the nature of consciousness, free will, love and plenty more. There are even nods to the Turing test, and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; never a bad thing. I would possibly have preferred the seriousness leavened with a bit more humour, but in the film of this intensely visual book, there will be a wonderful sight gag to play with as a robot has to continuously regenerate in different humanoid forms for reasons you will discover when you read this book. The most enjoyable vampire book I have read since Barnham’s, “Among the Living”.

[Max Beecher]

This Afro futurist gothic noir finds interesting ways of re telling elements of classic vampire fiction. Set in a strange near future, made almost unrecognisable by advancements in communication technology, yet eerily familiar, so as to act as a cautionary tail in a way reminiscent of the the best episodes of Black Mirror.
The world building is consistent, thou not overbearing, logically extrapolating a future based on the way we interact with technology now and taking it to its bleak and dehumanizing conclusion.

The narrative follows someone isolated in this world who must shed his daemons to find connection.

[Dave Higgins]

Kindberg fuses Ghanian mythology with images of the direction social media and AI might go, creating a cyberpunk thriller that is both a tense race against an assassin and an exploration of whether souls are more than information.

When rebels opposed to both the West African government and the shared sense-net that oversees most of the rest of the world implant a being inside his mind, David abandons his life in Accra and flees to Avonmouth, UK.His new life policing illegal tweaks to people’s digital identities gives him the distance from others he believes keeps the being caged—until a ship arrives from his former home bearing a woman who has the same sort of being staring out behind her eyes.

Kindberg’s setting is a late Twenty-First Century where an unspecified upheaval caused the collapse of national governments and the invention of implanted mind–internet connections that can share feelings as well as thoughts has resulted in a ostensibly benevolent unification of most humans into a global society. Thus, while the technology displays the practical futurism of cyberpunk, the physical geography is filled with the abandoned areas or even cities of post-apocalyptic narratives. In contrast with classic cyberpunk and post-apocalyptic tales, most characters display no concern over living amid this decay, providing a chilling display of how permanent connection to a social media feed that directly shapes emotions could be an existential threat in the wrong hands.

As with Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy and other seminal works of cyberpunk, some perceive the technological severing of mind from flesh through a mystical lens. However, Kindberg makes this a central pillar of the world and the story rather than leaving it at the level of narrative flavour; in addition to sustaining the reader’s uncertainty over whether the possessing beings are AI constructs or actual spirits, this building of the traditions of African spirituality into the imagined future rather than layering them over creates a greater sense of depth and nuance.

The being whose arrival threatens David’s new life displays an inability to enter places without being invited, resulting in the classic vampire trope of approaching victims via an upper-storey window; however, its hunger is for minds rather than blood. Thus, while it fulfils the broader definition in that it feeds on the intangible rather than the flesh, the titular vampires are a metaphor David uses to label a being that echoes some of the classic traits rather than an indicator of what sort of story the novel overtly tells.

Instead the central thread is that most cyberpunk of questions: how does one track someone who has no online presence when the investigatory apparatus is maintained by AIs that—ostensibly—treat the online world as truth and the flesh world as irrelevant. Thus, the main plot is woven from threads of David and his possible allies trying to assemble a picture from a combination of what isn’t there and guesswork, and David struggling to know who to trust when the ID police he is a part of are disinterested in then actively hamper investigation of a woman with no ID.

A second narrative from the point of view of a former agent of the global network who is trying to escape both the network and a hacker syndicate provides the reader with a clearer picture of the methods the de facto world government use, adding to the feeling of cyberpunk dystopia; however, this remains a single—albeit perhaps better informed—perspective on specific events rather than a broader reveal of what any master plan might be.

The ending of the novel brings the various threads to a clear but not entirely happy conclusion while leaving the broader situation of humanity being enslaved by the network unchanged. Thus, while there is space for further stories in the world, it feels like a stand-alone novel rather than the opening of a series.

David is burdened with the belief that if he gets too emotionally close to someone, the being in his head will escape whatever is currently keeping it caged; a belief that the reader is given enough evidence to not dismiss out of hand. Thus, while his behaviour is not always exemplary, his petty vices are likely to seem a human reaction to a life of trying to do the right thing while having to constantly avoid true human contact rather than an unsympathetic personality.

The agent, also implanted with a non-human presence, displays an active rejection of the broken system that contrasts with David’s choice to participate in a system he dislikes because his position offers some perks; thus, readers are likely to more immediately find her sympathetic. Her experience of having the being in her head is also different, both strengthening the impression that the implanting is an experimental procedure and providing the reader with more evidence of what the beings might be.

The supporting cast, including to a lesser extent semi-autonomous AI agents, have nuanced personalities but also display a noticeable divide between those born before the invention of emotion-transmission—who often display concerns about or mental incompatibilities with the constantly online society—and those born after—who mostly embrace the network and rapidly feel uncomfortable if not connected to the point that disconnection is a technique the police use in interrogations.

I enjoyed this novel immensely. I recommend it to readers seeking a cyberpunk narrative that is focused on the effect of technology on human society and the characters rather than chrome and neon.

[Penni]

Compelling vision of our realities in the present day, through the lens of the future, you realize just how much our minds are inhabited by psychic vampires manifesting as corporations. I loved the use the adinkra symbols to convey messages.

[Mr Andrew]

Vampires of Avonmouth is actually the first book I have finished in a very long time. The author evokes a dark, dystopian future whose psychological challenges drive the key protagonists ever deeper into a form of seemingly insurmountable trauma whilst they are driven on by the overwhelming desire to achieve ultimate liberation of mind. The skillfully painted scenes are superbly atmospheric. I felt an empathetic connection with the struggles of the characters as the narrative itself simultaneously entices the reader to wrestle with the conceptual ideas of mind & meaning. Creatively juxtaposed Ghanaian symbolism & the interplay of "altered" minds artificial, controlled, invaded, liberated all serve to highlight how precarious the journey to understanding ourselves has already been and how it will inevitably only continue to become more and more convoluted. An essential & unavoidably human story. Thought provoking and highly recommended.

[A.A. Abbott]

This is a tense dystopian thriller, well-written and so brilliantly described that it is completely believable. ID cop David lives in Avonmouth, a hot polluted city in 2087 England. He has been forced to flee the free zone of Westaf to protect his daughter from a psychic vampire implanted in his brain. Afraid the vampire will grow in strength if he falls in love, he avoids friendships and visits prostitutes in a seedy hotel.

There, he meets Pempamsie, a woman eager to banish her own vampire - and flee from a far more dangerous foe, who is already crossing swords with David.

The thrilling adventure that follows offers David and Pempamsie hope of a better future, while also plunging their lives into danger.

[Nicola Martin]

This complex, intelligent, intriguing novel makes the reader work gratifyingly hard to keep hold of the enticing, overlapping threads which explore, from intersecting angles, what it is that makes us human. Futuristic and ancient ideas are set against a backdrop of familiarity which is almost out of reach, and at the same time, very near. The characters are infused with a sense of longing to return to a simpler time which stays with the reader long after the book is read.

[Runalong]

DNF - Unfortunately the style and world here didn’t grab me as much as I was hoping for - not my cup of tea