Review: 2048: Demockracy (The Covid Chronicles) by Peter Moore

Author Peter Moore launches an entertaining series of standalone novels set three decades in the future with 2048: Demockracy, the starting point of The Covid Chronicles.

A conservative-leaning commentary on the cancel culture of today, and the slippery slope that progressive ideals can stumble down, this novel is written in the spirit of Orwell’s 1984 with caustic wit and a colorful cast of characters with names that summon visions of England’s past. In this iteration, however, Big Brother has been replaced by Mother, a character depicted as being drunk on their own “wokeness,” power, and societal control.

In this dystopian imagining, holographic assistants – futuristic versions of Alexa – act as AI tools of convenience and care, while also quietly observing and reporting any and all activities that may be deemed illicit, or outside the government’s strictly accepted social norms. The culture war has been won by the left, but instead of the utopian vision some may imagine today, the shift in power created an atmosphere of extreme mistrust, fascistic governmental oversight, and the blatant restriction of freedoms.

At the center of this near-future drama is Eric Blair (a not-so-subtle nod to Orwell), an Old Guard defender of personal freedom, along with the hot-blooded Winnie Smith, who is determined to bring down the power structure that swept in with the Enlightenment Coalition, more specifically through Rose Cromwell’s victory on the back of a feminist wave of elections. Shifting between stream-of-consciousness narration, far-flung horrors of a too-woke world, and poignant commentary on the world today, this is an unpredictable David and Goliath story where readers may end up cheering for the traditional villain. The hyperbole and satire are rich, but the passionate anger of protests, the frustration of the freshly oppressed, and punishments doled out by the powerful feel all too realistic. From the New Dream and Big Mother to vile trolls and pissed off crowds outside Number 10, this novel brilliantly blends righteous anger with conspiratorial fear.

Ultimately, this novel functions as a dark prophecy, imagining the direction a post-Covid world may head, with harsh restrictions, unfair manipulations, and global conspiracies to quell the dissent of the masses. However, it also comes with a dismissive edge of anti-liberal bitterness that may dissuade readers, especially young ones, who may not be so cynical about many of the issues this book is targeting. At times, it can be hard to separate the narrative voice of the author with the inner monologues of characters, which is problematic, given the occasionally misogynistic, ableist, racist and ignorant musings that mark these pages.

On a technical level, the idiomatic and colloquial English speech is consistent and immersive, though it may be tricky for non-British readers to extract the full significance of this cleverly worded critique of both the present and future. There are also some grammatical errors, such as missing letters, fragmented sentences, and redundant language that an editor should have caught and adjusted accordingly. The heart of this novel is strong, and fiercely confident in its indignation; while the author’s political bent may come off as over-the-top, if not tongue-in-cheek, the ideas upheld here are no less valid, representative as they are of real conflicts being born and brewed today.