aama. Vol. 1: The Smell of Warm Dust

The Smell of Warm Dust is the first volume in a four-part series by acclaimed Swiss author Peeters (Blue Pills). Verloc Nim remembers only his daughter when he wakes up alone on a strange planet. A robotic ape named Churchill arrives to rescue him and gives Verloc back his journal as an explanation. Having given up on a world where technology controls lives and has been integrated into human biology, corporations control the technology, and society has cleaved into the haves and have-nots, Verloc is found by his younger brother who convinces Verloc to accompany him on a mission. Told as flashbacks within flashbacks, Peeters's work plays with the tropes of the sf genre as the author creates an unnerving commentary on the future and our obsession with it. Verloc is his antihero; disgusted by technology and shamed by a dark past, he is the strangely likable voice of reason in the madness.