Severance is a novel which fully demonstrates Mark Fisher's adage that "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."


Ant infected with 'zombie fungus' Ophiocordyceps

Candace Chen experiences the end the world in two timelines. In one, she is the daughter of Chinese immigrants, working as a project manager at a publishing company where she supervises all the miniscule details that go into producing this year's Bible at the Chinese factories which actually make the things, along with all the other things. She has an alienating job that pays just well enough not to starve in a very expensive city, two cultures she doesn't feel a part of, friends she's not cool enough to hang out with, a moderately sketchy boyfriend who freelances and works on his novel, and dead parents.

In the other, Candace wanders through a world hollowed out by Shenzen Fever, a fungal disease that turns people into hollow husks of their former selves, enacting out the static rituals of the lives before biological damage claims them. She links up with a small group of apparently immune survivors heading towards a Facility in Illinois, falling under the domineering personality of rifle wielding Bob, a former IT manager. They scavenge what they need from the post-apocalyptic suburban landscape. Canadace is imprisoned and breaks free, ambiguously alive in the place that was once America.

So this is a perfectly serviceable novel about Millennial ennui in New York City, wedded to a perfectly serviceable post-apocalyptic fantasy. Ma has a genuine talent for those MFA-honed moments of specificity, an image of a starlet in a Shenzen print shop, a Puerto Rican chicken restaurant before a hurricane, the survivors removing their shoes and chanting a benediction to the tune of "New Slang" before starting one of their 'stalks' to get supplies. But the sum is weaker than the parts. This is a fine novel for people who can't handle the heavy stuff, who would find Mark Fisher, J.G. Ballard, and James Tiptree Jr. too hostile and distressing, who need to leaven post-human post-apocalypticism with quirky Millennial pink narrators. But that isn't me. I want my stories to go all the way, and Severance blinks in the finish.