Thomas, Jeffrey. Punktown. Rockville: Cosmos Books, 2008. 288 pp. $7.99. ISBN 0843962062.

Truly an astoundingly impressive literary writer, Jeffrey Thomas continues to carve significantly formidable etchings into the dense stone edges of the science fiction and horror genres. A collection of emotionally powerful, as well as frighteningly prophetic, short stories, Punktown is a masterpiece. Garnering wide acclaim, Punktown was first published in 2000, and then again in 2005, the latter including a couple short stories not available in the first press.

In his foreword, Thomas remarks: “I would attempt to caricature humankind in the often obscure but always unsettling way Bosch did in his paintings.” Bosch was well known for his fantastic imagery of religious concepts and narratives, reflecting the medieval morality of his time. Thomas’ Punktown satirizes humankind, focusing on industrial development and technology; humans are slowly but progressively replaced by machines. Humans are obsolete, but we must ultimately blame ourselves for becoming too comfortable in this depraved and self-indulgent world we live in.

Stories such as “Union Dick,” which portrays humans as being systematically weeded out of factory jobs, and “Precious Metal,” which entails a battle of the bands involving a civil war between humans and machines, share a similar theme. In our evolving technological industry, humans become antiquated because machines and robots are much more efficient and reliable. This creates animosity among the men, parodying the somewhat popular human notion of losing jobs to immigrants, and the all-too-common human reaction: hostility and prejudice. As well, with the rise of the machines, human existence becomes more and more stagnant.

Also sharing a similar theme, “Unlimited Daylight” and “Library of Sorrows” comment on the unnatural way we live. “Unlimited Daylight” presents Thomas’ indoctrination of virtual reality taking over real life. People have become lazy and complacent, favouring fantasy lives over real ones. Like being on life support, machines run our lives, and we do nothing but exist. We cease to really live, while everything is done for us. In “Library of Sorrows,” Thomas introduces an innovative method of life support, keeping humans alive and defying nature. In this question of ethics and euthanasia, we refuse to see death as inevitability; we resist it, we cheat it, we live unnaturally.

Computer scientist Nicholas P. Negroponte says: “It's not computer literacy that we should be working on, but sort of human-literacy. Computers have to become human-literate." Before we allow ultimate computer supremacy, we should make them more applicable to humans. This might possibly bond the link between man and machine. It is an extremely difficult task, because while technology progresses, man remains in a permanent form of stasis.

—Richard Nicol