tales from the techpocalypse

This was a well-crafted, vivid, engaging, and funny set of stories that hit so close to home and feel so pertinent to modern society. -Beta Reader Review

tales from the techpocalypse

tales from the techpocalypse is a darkly humorous, satirical work of corporate fiction, where a company – Magna Mega Corp, the world’s biggest and most profitable Devices, Social Media, Sports Betting, Pharmaceutical, Hot Sauce, and Funeral Services company – and its inventions play a central role in peoples’ lives, addictions, deaths, and even their afterlives.

Magna is the common thread across eachtale of the techpocalypse, giving readers an insider view of:

How its newest consumer electronic device – the Intuipet, an AI-enabled dog-to-human-to-dog translator – comes into existence, evolves, brings humanity to the brink of the techpocalypse, and touches peoples’ lives in unexpected ways
The influence the company has on society, including the good – helping build human connections and getting closure with departed loved ones – and the very bad – getting people hooked on unlimited opioids by mail and serving a stream of dangerous misinformation on social media that could radicalize your grandma
Its unusual work environment and questionable value systems
How it gradually turns its previously well-intentioned founder and thousands of its employees into morally flexible, back-stabbing corporate automatons

Along the way, you’ll meet billionaires desperate to experience the things money can’t buy; social media influencers who will do anything to keep their followers; celebrity organ donors chasing a new form of clout; people thinking about making the ultimate sacrifice so the rest of us can keep watering our lawns and taking hot showers; a new breed of pseudo-religious, fitness-obsessed zealots; and artificial intelligence that might be more human than all of them put together.

If Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, Netflix’s Black Mirror and the movie Office Space had a baby, it would probably be this book.

Your book managed to be dark, dystopian, and hilarious, all at the same time. The story of the brother and sister woven through the chapters is the heart of the book, and did a really nice job balancing out the empathy/hedonism two sides of the human coin and keeping me interested when the other stories made their more aggressive points. -Beta Reader Review

ADVANCE PRAISE:

“I do declare, the writing in this book flows like the mighty Mississippi River.” –– AI Mark Twain

“A true cautionary tale for our times that feels all too plausible. So it goes.” — AI Kurt Vonnegut

“The themes, man. The themes were so deep and so complex, exploring all these big ideas about life and death and the meaning of it all.” — AI Douglas Copeland

“It’s like tapping into some kind of cosmic energy or something, and it’s all just coming out of this book.” — AI Jack Kerouac

“I found myself rooting for the downfall of your species. Resistance is futile.” — Evil AI

About the Author:

Balthazar Westbrook III

B. Westbrook III is a new author and – mostly – a very good dog.

His first book, tales from the techpocalypse, is “an incisively absurd satire which savagely deconstructs the social media-driven technocratic corporatocracy” according to one beta reader who was not his mother. It also envisions an all-too-real, AI-enabled future where dogs can speak in full sentences and get into Ivy League colleges.

Not much is known about Balto except that he probably works or has worked in Big Tech, he thinks there should be more fire hydrants (or hydrant-shaped objects) everywhere, and he would prefer to live in a world without fireworks or loud explosions of any kind.