Book Description

In 2297, decades after the last polar ice caps have melted, Argentina has been almost entirely submerged and its Pampas plains turned into another Caribbean Sea. The super wealthy enjoy pristine beaches and promises of life on Mars or Jupiter, while the rest struggle with extreme heat and no future. Plus, a handful of international conglomerates rule the world by running pandemic stock exchanges, making clear the direct link between ultracapitalism and human misery. Meanwhile, the youth are escaping into their Pampatone VR machines to play Christians vs. Indians, a game that vividly recreates the 19th century, and the bloody battles for control of the plains, where players choose between being rifle-toting Christian invaders, or Indigenous people fighting against colonialist incursion.Against this backdrop of massive and inevitable socio-environmental crisis, meet Dengue Boy, a humanoid virus-carrying mosquito whose monstrous appearance makes him cannon fodder for his classmates. But an experience at summer camp helps Dengue Boy come to a shocking realization, not only about his (or rather her) identity, but also about how fragile this global rule of the powerful few really is.Extraordinarily frenetic and acutely smart, Dengue Boy paints a future as chilling as it is original, as cynical as it is realistic. Michel Nieva follows in footsteps of Kafka, Cronenberg, Philip K. Dick, and Junji Ito to create a universe entirely his own, holding up a mirror to our faces and asking the dire question of what we want our future to really look like.