Collective Mind by Vasily Klyukin – Review

Russian designer-turned-author Vasily Klyukin decries the encroachment of Big Tech on our private lives in his new novel Collective Mind, a gripping dystopian thriller in which artificial intelligence threatens to rob mankind of its creativity.

Klyukin conceives AI not as an army of vengeful robots but as the “Collective Mind”, a vast server full of the harvested memories and intellects of millions of ordinary people. Such a powerful resource, though useful in curing the world’s ills, comes at a price. Creativity donors, people who willingly give up their intellect for cash – Klyukin calls them “Happies” – live out their days in a state of bland contentment, devoid of imagination and unable to break the placid conformism enveloping this future society.

Collective good is weighed against the importance of individual expression as the protagonist, Isaac Leroy, a barman, rubs up against the corporations bleeding humanity of its brain power. Isaac identifies within himself a reckless streak that puts him at odds with the conformist culture, and together with a dynamic assortment of spirited youngsters, he rises to strike against the parasitic tech conglomerates bleeding humanity dry.

Klyukin worries that advanced technology will lead to a new age of primitiveness as humanity divests itself of the guile that made such progress possible in the first place. But for all that Collective Mind is steeped in ideas, it remains pacey and propulsive right to the final page. Comparisons with Orwell and Bradbury are inevitable, but Klyukin insists that, unlike those sci-fi titans, the subject of his anxiety is not where society is heading but how it is now.