“A Dire Vision of the Future”: A Review of Enemy, by Kimberly Amato

 (Kindle, 2020). ASIN: B08QBHC98R.

On September 12, 2001, I threw about two and a half feet of Tom Clancy books into a dumpster because, when fiction started to feel like fact, there was no point in reading that kind of fiction anymore.

A decade later, average citizens in America and the world are suffering from a social media society that cannot tell the difference between fact and fiction (a condition that the Corporate Oligarchy Military–Industrial–Intelligence Complex, or COMIIC, has not only created but of which it has made sinister use). The COMIIC’s agenda and messaging affect responses to and beliefs about climate change, supposedly democratic elections (have they ever been?), COVID-19, and the Federal Reserve/Stock Market/cryptocurrency. These practices have created a condition where 1 percent (probably far less after the past two years of pandemic-era money grabbing) of the U.S. population controls 99 percent of the money (and the space program, Big Data, media, energy, pharma, and Congress).

Because of this, I have changed my mind about rejecting political, speculative, or dystopian fiction that holds more than a kernel of fact and truth. During Christmas weekend, I watched Matrix: Resurrections, Don’t Look Up, and Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

I was also reading Kimberly Amato’s Enemy. In the past two years, I’ve reviewed half a dozen books with dystopian visions like Amato’s. I call them guidebooks. I also write demi-fiction that calls attention to the practices of different iterations of the COMIIC going back to the thirteen hundreds.

People who ask, “What has happened to America?” might be surprised that the answer is rather simple: Nothing. It has been this way from its pre-Revolutionary roots.

Such were the context and mindset I had while reading Enemy.

The story begins in January 2045 (fitting—I wrote this review on the one-year anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riots). After a Final War twenty years ago (doing the math? Paying attention yet?), the world has a king, named Valkov. As for America, after voting “for emotions over rationale, social media over actuality,” “when corporations and profits were more important than balance,” it became so vulnerable Russia took it over. Instead of stars, the flag now sports a white hammer and sickle. The president of the United States of the Russian Federation is Jerrik Laskin, the son-in-law of the king.

When the double-headed eagle motif is mentioned, I couldn’t help but think of this link and others between the Putin and Trump families and the proliferation of Nazi-rooted families in America and Russia post–World War II through Operation Paperclip and its Russian counterpart.

Although Amato never mentions China, Asians in America are still suffering from the rabid hatred that began with the absurd suggestion that they were to blame for COVID-19. They are noncitizens, subject to sexual molestation by the elite on the streets and used for slave labor and experiments.

Riker’s Island is a tech-nightmare prison facility, run by Colonel General Gregor Macalov. This is a return to Eugenics (to create a “generation of perfect children”), and—reminiscent of Philip K. Dick’s Man in the High Tower—Laskin’s son stutters, which makes him defective/“impure” and in danger. The mindset of the New Technic, as I call it, is everywhere—implants, super soldiers, state-run (which means COMIIC-run) media, vaccine registries, and neurological/genetic experimentation and engineering. There is also reference to “alternative facts.” Historically, Russia is the undisputed leader in disinformation campaigns (highlighted by the 2016 US presidential election), but all superpowers play the false flag/red herring game like pros. Churchill and his intel people during World War II were masters of it.

As with all dictatorships, violence is both ubiquitous and, for that reason, made almost mundane to those who enact it (think Pan’s Labyrinth). Any ounce of compassion or mercy is seen as a sign of weakness, with the inner circle of wolves always ready to pounce upon their leader. Furthermore, sexual or sadomasochistic “proclivities” are fine, as long as “the cameras are off.” Torture is also mundane. It all links to health and medicine, with the aforementioned vaccines and Mengele-like experiments. Amato also weaves in diseases emerging from prehistoric plant life exposed during the melting of ice at the poles—a genuine possibility.

The weaponization of medicine—and everything else that should be morally pure in a just democracy—began with the rise of the OSS/CIA, strengthening in the 1960s with the parallel rise of the Dulles brothers, the Rockefellers, and United Fruit Company in Central and South America, under the guise of protecting these countries from communism. In Enemy, Africa is the epicenter of all the harm that COMIIC-engineered globalization has done.

With this much state control—which began with the changing of voting laws and districts—there has to be a rebellion, an underground. In Enemy, the tough as nails Ellie Goldman leads it. There’s a double bind in Enemy that makes it different than many dystopian narratives. First, true to history, the rebellion and revolution are in danger of failing because of distrust of the hierarchy (after all, that’s what the rebels are opposed to in the first place) and the lack of organization that comes with inexperience and infighting. Think about it—conservative groups tend to be far better at organizing, fundraising, campaigning, and controlling the narrative than more liberal groups (consider the NRA). There is also an element of ego and betrayal as the stakes are raised. The first Matrix film is a good analog. Second—and even rarer—in Enemy, all of these conditions also exist with those in control. At every level (which match up for the rebels and rulers in a tight symmetry)—from the familial to the mid-level soldier, to the leaders—there is intrigue, double-crossing, posturing, and soul selling. The kind of infighting that thankfully kept the Third Reich from ruling the world.

As Enemy enters its third act, all of this relationship-building puts flint to kindling, culminating in an ending and epilogue reminiscent of the recent Amazon Studios polarizer, Don’t Look Up, and the Kubrick classic Dr. Strangelove (which, as I mentioned, I watched Christmas weekend).  

Amato pulls no punches in this well-crafted fictional-yet-not cautionary tale. For that, I am grateful, and you will be too when you read it.