Company Town

A series of murders rocks an oil rig the size of a small city, just as new owners take over the business. A bodyguard - one of the few people in society to no longer have biological implants - works to solve the mystery of the murders to keep her client safe.

This feels like a collary to Gibson's Law (“The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.”). Usually that's thought of in terms of geographic location, but in Company Town Ashby looks at how that it's also true across social class. There's a lot to process here about ideas about how different types of labour are valued, how technology impacts our relationship to each other and ourselves, and how the future looks increasingly like a utopia for those that can afford it, and a dystopia for those that cannot. It is a Big Ideas book, and Ashby's thoughts on those ideas seem interesting and hopeful and terrifying. The downside to being a Big Ideas book is that the plot suffers from clarity at times, especially in the last act, but overall this was a great read and definitely influenced my thoughts on a few issues.