The Electric State

by Simon Stålenhag

Hardcover, 133 pages

English language

Published Nov. 22, 2018 by Skybound Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-5011-8141-2
OCLC Number:: 1027188764
ASIN:: 9187222671
Goodreads:: 36836025

In late 1997, a runaway teenager and her small yellow toy robot travel west through a strange American landscape where the ruins of gigantic battle drones litter the countryside, along with the discarded trash of a high-tech consumerist society addicted to a virtual-reality system. As they approach the edge of the continent, the world outside the car window seems to unravel at an ever faster pace, as if somewhere beyond the horizon, the hollow core of civilization has finally caved in.

6 editions

Soh Kam Yung reviewed The Electric State by Simon Stålenhag (Tales from the Loop, #3)

A road trip through a disturbing and gloomy landscape

3 stars

A road trip through a landscape littered with the debris of robots and mechanical creatures from an unsaid war, while most of humanity is apparently too preoccupied wearing headsets and living in a virtual world to the point of starvation. Said road trip is by a girl and her 'pet' robot that behaves in a rather unrobotic way. The reason for this, and the purpose of the road trip, only becomes clear at the end when the girl (also the narrator) provides the reason.

The book is filled with illustrations from the road trip, of a landscape where robots roam at will and emaciated people gawk in wonder through their headsets.

bookafnd reviewed The Electric State by Simon Stålenhag (Tales from the Loop, #3)

disturbing, and atmospheric

5 stars

it's a book about a road trip whose point isn't clear until the end. along the way there are many strange retrofuturistic horrors—beautifully illustrated