Review:
In this near-future America, mass shootings have been monetized and turned into entertainment. John McDean executive produces Vigilance, a game show supposedly designed to keep Americans vigilant against all threats. At unspecified intervals, a public space is selected and several contestants (the active shooters) are set up at various entrances with weapons of their choice and all the ammo they could want. There are monetary prizes for contestants who manage to kill all the civilians and survive, for civilians who manage to kill a contestant, and more.
McDean is a marketing wizard who has all of this down to a science. He knows who his Ideal Person, his target audience is, and he knows exactly what they want. He's so good at what he does, in fact, that his bosses have used his work to train a new AI, Perseph, to do what he does, only better, and Perseph is set to debut at the height of the most recent Vigilance.
The America of this novella is a shambling corpse that doesn't realize it died years ago. It's slowly smothering its remaining inhabitants to death with the rotting chunks falling off its carcass. Based on Bennett's descriptions, it's tough to imagine anyone actually going about and living their lives, much less visiting malls and skating rinks.
Most of this novella is focused on McDean and his efforts to roll out a new Vigilance that strikes just the right balance of fear, anger, and victim blaming in his intended audience. The horror comes not just from his complete lack of empathy, but also from the fact that the technology and techniques he uses aren't all that far off from what can be done now. I was reminded of Facebook's targeted marketing in Sarah Wynn-Williams' Careless People, and the attitudes of people like Sam Altman in Karen Hao's Empire of AI. The "reporter" and "expert" commentary during the Vigilance (provided by digitally crafted people designed to appeal to McDean's target audience) gave me flashbacks to years worth of active shooter trainings.
McDean's scenes are occasionally interrupted by scenes at a bar, during a young Black woman named Delyna's shift. Initially, I thought this was where the latest Vigilance might be taking place. Instead, this turned out to be just a glimpse at one segment of McDean's audience, a way to see how McDean's work was affecting people (and another way for Bennett to highlight why America's mass shooting problem wouldn't be improved by the addition of more guns). Unfortunately, I didn't think McDean's and Delyna's sections meshed together very well.
This was an incredibly depressing read, where the conclusion was basically "there's no fixing this."
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