The increasing power of corporations and advertisers in contemporary society has gotten a lot of press in recent years and has become fodder for fiction, especially science fiction. In this, his third novel, Toronto writer and former Adbusters managing editor Jim Munroe tackles the subject with all the subtlety of a chainsaw. Set in Vancouver, 2036, Everyone in Silico describes a nightmarish world where people absorbed in materialistic diversions are helpless to stop governments from being replaced by big business and where environmental pollution has become an everyday health hazard.

Munroe’s fast-paced narrative weaves between three characters: Doug, a senior ad executive struggling to keep his job; Nicky, a twentysomething slacker engrossed in what has become the anachronistic field of genetics; and Paul, a master of manipulation who doubles as Doug’s boss while secretly employing Nicky for his own morally ambiguous aims. At the heart of the story is Frisco, a virtual world where people live free from the restraints of the human body – Doug wants in, Nicky wants out, and Paul wants to either own or destroy Frisco.

Munroe never lets the technology and fantasy of his imagined future ride roughshod over his characters – the science fiction never gets too scientific. However, the same cannot be said of his political and social messages, which eventually overwhelm the story. Munroe constantly bombards the reader with amoral characters to illustrate how the horrors of contemporary society will eventually sabotage the future of humanity. And while effective at times, the continual use of children for these purposes quickly becomes simplistic and sentimental. There are prepubescent children competitively selling advertising, nine-year-olds with breast augmentations, 12-year-olds partaking in literal video-game warfare.

In the end, Munroe’s excessive moralizing has so numbed the reader that the shocker ending rings like a cliché, not the dystopic message that was intended.