ARCHIPELAGO OF LIGHT by Dmitri Lincoln Mehlhorn, beyond post modern novel of the future=present?

In 1973, Thomas Pynchon published Gravity’s Rainbow, joining the post-modern pantheon of literature that reimagines other literature with literary and political themes.  In the 1960s in the U.S., alongside the counterculture, this style emerged with Pynchon, as well as Kurt Vonnegit, Philip K. Dick, Kathy Acker and others.

Archipelago of Light (Shearline Press)DD Dmitri Lincoln Mehlhorn is reimagining a future already arriving. There’s an urgency in this novel, set from 2003 to 2039.  The old cultural order, based on WW2 ethics and ideology, is not just decaying but dead, buried in an amoral AI driven authoritarianism amid a worldwide environmental imperative–the Anthropocene. (A supposed geological epoch when human activity shapes Earth’s climate, environment and ecosystems.)

Mehlhorn’s novel is a new form of novel with short chapters headed by character’s name, when and where, almost like a video game. He may have in mind readers, who spend more time in action on work-related screens than reading books They, like many of the characters, are on-line 24/7 and exist in the programs they use. This kind of person might recognize the hyperawareness of this always in motion novel. 

Oddly, this form is somewhat like John Dos Passos’ U.S.A. Trilogy (1930-1936), where the sweep of social and political change is staggered through evolving human lives amid inventions. A more apt influence is probably scientist/science fiction writer Vernor Vinge’s novels and theory about the approaching “singularity” of super-intelligence. True Names, a favorite of mine, is set in a future, when a free-wheeling computer culture is pursued by a relentless law enforcement system wanting to control the underground.  The value of “truth” in Archipelago of Light is not unlike the value of Vinge’s “Names.”

Archipelago of Light, invites such comparisons, since it’s language challenges the norm of our present internet systems. For instance, “code is law,” but it can be rewritten by whoever owns the platform. So intelligence challenges come from all over the world– Russia, the United States, Jordan, the Republic of China, Kenya. And some systems are built on energies not at all synthetic. 

Consider one off the grid global operator in the “game” of this book. SOPHIA, a child trafficking survivor, builds a criminal empire driven by synthetic perception and memories of the dead. Here is her log on: SOFIA/2026/Caracas/Venezuela/

Her empire and other such secret platforms, vy for dominance all over the globe, as do conventional intelligence agencies in the U.S., England, Europe.  Her objectives collide with conventional visions of a moral world order. In the process of such conflict, perception is shattered by augmented reality. A big question of this book: Who is the victor, when power is worthless without objective truth?

This is an intricate novel that moves fast. The characters are original and intriguing, but often serve more as markers than people who evolve and change. We readers are but spectators, watching these soldiers in an unknown war for our planet–This is not exactly a human race. 

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Dmitri Mehlhorn is an attorney, entrepreneur, investor, and democratic activist. Dmitri also writes science fiction to stress-test the century ahead: the thermodynamics of intelligence, the engineering of shared belief, and the question of how open societies survive when their foundational assumptiona no longer hold.

S.W.