The Electric State

Although this has the same wonderful artwork (full-page, often double-page), The Electric State differs from Stålenhag’s first two books in that it’s not set in his native Scandinavia and doesn’t appear to be anything to do with the “Loop”, the giant particle-accelerator ring under the Swedish countryside. It also lacks their nostalgic feel—here in fact, while we are again seeing the world through the eyes of a teenager, this teenager has had a horrible time of it and the world itself is in the process of unravelling around her.
    There’s more of a conventional narrative too. The year is 1997 and we’re in the southwestern USA as Michelle and her little robot Skip head west out of the Blackwelt Exclusion Zone, across the state line into Pacifica and then on through the Sierra Nevada mountains making for the coast. She’s armed with a shotgun, avoids main highways and cities. The landscapes are littered with grounded attack ships and rusting combat robots, the winding roads themselves largely deserted—although not as a result of the recent war. Much as television followed radio, so neurocasters are replacing TV: supplied by a company called Sentre, these are headsets which pick up virtual-reality broadcasts beamed from the huge neurograph towers now looming up into the sky everywhere; and after an upgrade the previous year, people are becoming addicted to this virtual world. In suburban homes they starve to death sitting on their own couch, neurocasters on, lips twitching like dreamers. That’s how Michelle got the Oldsmobile she’s driving: it was parked beside a desert road, doors wide open and its two elderly occupants sprawled nearby, headsets still in place. Later, they come upon a crew of road-workers and their rig, the work stalled half-done, all three in their fluorescent orange jackets with headsets on, oblivious.
    This is what’s happening everywhere, the USA itself stalling in mid-stride as people abandon themselves to the virtual world. Through this eerie alternative-present Michelle guides the car—not aimlessly, but towards Point Linden to the north of San Francisco. Her little robot is the key: it gets tired like a child, reads comic-books like a child, but once you suddenly understand what Skip really is and why Michelle is crossing the mountains, it’s a hugely touching story.
    I’m bowled over, have become a complete fan. Stålenhag’s books have captured my imagination like nothing else I’ve read since I was a teenager myself.