Machine Dreams

By Joshua Mertz and Joshua Mertz

Machine Dreams is a dark, dystopian cyberpunk thriller set in the dangerously near future of a hyperdensified San Frangeles of a hundred fifty million people. Anson Hockney, a street shark with a photographic memory who hides stolen files for a living, is hired to protect Daniel, the young boy consort of Schlosser, a rich industrialist, while negotiations are underway for a new and fabulously valuable entertainment technology. Anson is to accompany Daniel to Schlosser's mansion in the Sierra Nevada mountains, but what should have been an easy payday goes wrong immediately. The mansion has been taken over by hostile corporate troops, and Anson and Daniel must trek down the mountains and through the automated farms of California's central valley to return to San Frangeles and lie low. Anson leaves the boy with his girlfriend, Lorie, while he goes off to assess exactly what kind of corporate intrigue they are involved in. Meanwhile, Anson's mysterious past keeps haunting his dreams, and the megacorps chase him for a secret file he unknowingly possesses that will unlock the new technology. As the climax nears, all these threads come together in a hair-raising confrontation that upends everything Anson thought he knew, and the balance of power of the world he lives in.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H97G3HCS
• ISBN13: 9798990657540
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Planet Mertz Publishing
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Citizens United

Worried that Citizens United might unleash corporate excess? Want to see where this could lead? Joshua Mertz shows where in Machine Dreams - the dark side of San Frangeles ... there isn't a light one. Teachers carry guns, rich geezers in wheelchairs own catamites (look it up, you won't be disappointed). Corporations have nukes. Fear, torture, sex, love, heroism in an only too plausible future. Mertz is a poet in prose. His writing is immaculate, his images sharp, his rhythm flawless. This is a beautiful book about a far from beautiful world, and the contrast is only one of its stirring components. Don't read it if you can't take the terrible truth.

A Thrilling Distopian Tale

Machine Dreams presents the reader a futuristic world that seems the epitomy of things gone wrong. Yet, it is a world that we cannot wholely disown for hidden in each scene is a tie to our present. Within this world is an action-filled story with many subplots, twists, and turns, including a horrifying surprise at the end. Machine Dreams is definately a good book for an exciting story and a stimulating perspective of the future.

A Terrific Debut From Joshua Mertz

Novelist joshua Mertz escapes many of the pitfalls of first-time sci-fi writers and creates a surprising and stunning debut with "Machine Dreams." Mertz thankfully knows that charactarization and plot need not be sacraficed for whiz-bang gadgetry and high tech concepts in this genre, and provides the reader with both compelling characters and fascinating ideas. Though some of the premises found in "Machine Dreams" seem familiar from other classic sci-fi works (the corporate political control of Robinson's "Mars" series, the clausterphobic urban sprawl of "Bladerunner," the total sensory technology of "Brainstorm"), Mertz manages to present enough new ideas and interesting twists to make his world of San Frangeles a unique place in the sc-fi lexicon. Anson Hockney, the main protagonist, comes across at first as an uneven and sometimes contradictory character, but what seems like a flaw on the part of an inexperienced writer instead reveals itself as a brilliant plot twist by the end of the book. Packed with action but never at the cost of believability, "Machine Dreams" is an actual page-turning thriller. But the real beauty of this book lies in Mertz' unique vocabulary; in his ability to make his world come alive at a sensual level through his choice of words, metaphor and analogy. Buy this book and enjoy it, and we'll all wait impatiently for Mertz' next offering.