The Machine

Months after the impressive raw science fiction of The Explorer, James Smythe is back with this chilling literary tale of body horror reminiscent of a creepy episode of Black Mirror or The Twilight Zone.

In a dystopian near future with an unnamed war raging, Beth is trying to rebuild her husband using a long-banned machine. He's suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and his memories are a mess. He's a blank. She's living on the Isle of Wight, watching as the world crumbles around her. She's lonely. She's unsure. She's wrongfooted without her husband. So she buys a machine to help restore his memories. But can the machine rebuild a person entirely on what they've recounted? Can the machine's memories paper over the cracks of a violent past and trauma caused by war?

What ensues is a chilling slow-burner of a thriller where Beth and her husband must try and remember what it feels like to be married and her husband must take steps to own what he has experienced. Smythe is considered in his prose and tells a brilliantly chilling story that holds up a mirror to our society and asks, can we live forever in technology? And does that technology ever truly get the whole of us?