In the near future, government will cease to exist. Crime, including murder, will rule the streets, with no accountability. Only the strongest will survive complete social anarchy—that is the world of speculative action thriller Omniviolence.
With a soupçon of satire, authors Stu Jones and Gareth Worthington explore vengeance and redemption, terror and hope, hate and ultimately, love for humanity.
In this story, Jackson, a fifteen-year-old drone killer-for-hire, and Joe “Bones” Carboni, an older, conventional hitman, come together to navigate this world, which, in the words of co-author Jones, is “brash, disrespectful, and super violent.”
It’s a world the authors believe is frighteningly possible. Worthington points to scientific evidence showing an abundance of resources lead to societal collapse, at least in an experiment with mice in the 1960s and 1970s.
“The results have been controversial for years and interpreted differently,” he says, “But upon reading it was uncanny how the malfunctioning social groups identified reflected those seen in human societies today where over-abundance and near-utopian status has been achieved.”
Jones adds, “We live in the safest, most comfortable, most wealthy period in human history. Couple this extreme comfort with rapidly advancing technology that humanity is still trying to adapt to, and you get bored people who have enough time in the day to get into heated virtual arguments on social media. Now add to the mix the democratization of that technology and the ability for the average person to weaponize the hate they spew on social media. It would be every person for themselves out there. That’s the world of Omniviolence—and we’re on the brink of it.”
It’s not total gloom and doom, however. Jones, a self-described conservative Christian member of the law enforcement community, and Worthington, a self-described liberal atheist scientist, both believe in hope.
“Jackson is redeemable,” Worthington says of their protagonist.
Jones adds, “The main characters, though self-serving and self-interested in the beginning, start to see beyond themselves. Fifteen-year-old Jackson starts to rely on old Joe, begins to care about his opinion, and even rescues a kitten at Joe’s direction, much to Jackson’s chagrin. That little kitten becomes a window into Jackson’s growing heart, just a glimmer of a thought that maybe there’s more to this kid than what’s on the surface. Joe, for his part, is ready to leave his old life behind. His path to something new is through mentoring young Jackson, whom Joe sees as still having some glimmer of life Joe lost along the way. Like a fragile tongue of fire on open ground, Joe crowds around it, vows within himself to protect and cultivate this spark within Jackson. That’s a desire to see something better from the world.”
Worthington hopes the book will “provoke thought, discomfort, and encourage readers to take responsibility for their actions. There are other books coming out this year with the theme that there is some miracle medicine for happiness that the government doesn’t want us to have because they like us fighting. Which for me is exactly the point of Omniviolence: everything is everybody else’s fault; thus, we must take it out on them.”
In Jones’ words, “This book will make you cringe one moment, feel the thrill of epic action the next, laugh out loud at a bit of dark comedy, and then feel the pinch of genuine emotion—all in the span of a chapter. That’s the world of Omniviolence. We hope you love it.”
