Many have tried to write fiction based on social media with mixed success. Monumeta goes a long way to being the definitive work on the subject.
What is The #Monumeta Social Media Book? At first look, it appears to be a hashtag-led manual that will teach readers how to use the media. However, this is misleading, this book may finally be the fiction that brings together modern-day reality, old school storytelling and a possible future.
For fans of Dave Eggers’ The Circle, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, this book is perfect. Part dreamworld, part comedy and part right-here-and-now, Monumeta could also claim to be a contemporary version of The Wizard of Oz.
Let’s sum it up. Based in the around-now future, Mee Corp is the developer of the world’s number one social network, The Stream, and is based at the recently sold-off Natural History Museum, it’s run by aliens whose human appearance masks a secret: their mission is to make (fake) people matter.
Tara Tamana, The Stream’s Head Architect and key to the story has gone missing. The only people who can save her are an ageing janitor, a large marble statue, a small bronze boy and a fairy queen. Their quest is to find Tara and save London from mind control, ham-fisted cloning, and a hungry arachnid.
The characterisation of these four people/objects is strong and the story wends around to an ending that does credit to the story leading up to it. Lots of fun, aimed at anybody from 8 to eighty years old, this is a great read.
The writer Roger Warner, once a football trialist at Charlton FC and who has built up and sold a social media agency knows his subject and clearly has a head with a lot, maybe too much, in it. But that’s what books are for, to let interesting people put their thoughts into print.
I loved this book, available for £9.99 on Amazon right now.