A swarming techno-dystopia set in London four years hence, Joanna Kavenna’s new novel concerns the reputational damage suffered by Beetle, an all-conquering tech giant, when George Mann, a nondescript middle-aged father with no history of violence, suddenly murders his wife and two sons. The crime isn’t the centre of the story, more its impact on Beetle’s CEO, Guy, whose aura rests on the accuracy of his predictive algorithms, which – nourished by 24/7 surveillance of everything from browser history to heart rate – are supposed to pre‑empt such atrocities.
The early part of the novel catalogues the ills of life in a data-driven dictatorship, in which the poor are jailed before they can commit crimes, and you need BeetleBits, Beetle’s cryptocurrency, for “basic functioning in society”. But you can only earn them by working for Beetle, which only hires the best; a degree helps, but universities only accept payment in… you guessed it.
Policing is down to Anti-Terror Droids, which compound the error of not catching Mann by instead executing an innocent veteran, Lionel Bigman, in yet another “Zed moment” – Beetle’s term for random mishaps, by which it seeks to wash its hands of responsibility. This hardly plays well with Guy’s prospective business partners in China.
The tone of all this is busy and comic. Guy, a serial womaniser, receives rejuvenating transfusions of children’s blood “acquired within WHO guidelines for ethical conduct”. “There will be no further glitches... That’s absolutely guaranteed,” his troubleshooter, Douglas Varley, tells him. “Unfortunately, at this moment [Bigman’s widow] appeared outside… brandishing a pistol,” the next line tells us.
Subplots fizz everywhere – including Guy’s wife pointedly revenge-sleeping with a bookseller fond of letter writing. But the main thread hangs on a rebel movement, the League of the Unverifieds, whose radical underground action prompts a crisis of conscience in a bought-off newspaper editor, David Strachey (who reported Bigman’s killing as “suicide by droid”), while affirming the doubts of Eloise Jayne, a counterterrorist sceptical of the 21st-century sus laws she’s ordered to enforce.
A brainy, bustling novel, Zed is hugely enjoyable as well as hard going at times: robotic chit-chat from ubiquitous Very Intelligent Personal Assistants, as well as a blizzard of acronyms and Beetle’s own Newspeak (“Bespoke”), added to the fact that much of the firm’s senior-level discussion takes place in virtual reality, or “Real Virtuality” (in which, for instance, “the Real Douglas Varley” speaks alongside “the actually real Douglas Varley”), can make for a bumpy ride.
What’s great about it, though, is that Kavenna uses her scenario not only for horror, but laughter, too, as a send-up of corporate hubris and government heedlessness. Beetle targets London because the UK is “the most advanced benign regulatory environment in the world”; the prime minister is mentioned for the first time only a few pages from the end, and even then Kavenna says her name isn’t important. As for Brexit? Compared with Beetle, or whichever voracious duosyllable it’s a proxy for, it seems to be irrelevant, which may be this madcap satire’s most chilling point.
• Zed by Joanna Kavenna is published by Faber & Faber (£16.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
