Scenebux

Part noir, part counterculture fever dream, all Cairo Smith. Neo-Luddite Ben Etxina travels the globe in a drug-addled delirium, tracing the threads at the heart of a growing vibe shift.

In this rapid-fire tech-weird picaresque, Cairo Smith paints a searing and wry portrait of the mid-2020s, an era careening at high speed toward an uncertain future.

Ben Etxina is a software engineer who can’t bear to look at a screen. When he crosses a shady German motorcycle club in downtown San Francisco, he ends up thrown into a mess of underground parties and venture funds rumored to connect to a certain neoreactionary billionaire. A mysterious Pacific island, Vietnamese Catholic femme fatale, and anti-AI terrorist sect all spell deeper trouble for the jet-setting sensitive young man.

Undeniably at the head of the New Wave, Smith has penned his punchiest and most incisive novel yet.