Set Free
Image: Felipe Antonio Sepúlveda Rodríguez via Flickr. In Vanessa Veselka’s first novel, Zazen (2011), a geologist named Della contemplates the political unrest in her native Portland, Oregon and the meaningless wars her country is busy losing: “It’s not any better here — here, there, now, tomorrow, next Wednesday — Geologically speaking it’s all the same millisecond. The gentle rustle of armies crawling the planet like ants. Anybody with any sense knows what’s coming.”
It’s typical of Veselka’s characters to be full of such clear-eyed resentment. They’re people who want everything from other people who want nothing to do with them. Take Cyril, prime mover of the events in Veselka’s latest novel, The Great Offshore Grounds. After starting out as a software entrepreneur and importer/exporter of Tibetan souvenirs, he eventually “transcended goods and services almost entirely, diversifying into multiple shell companies, replicating and mirroring, acquiring and sloughing off; unmoored from states of reality — like warehouses and people — to become an algorithmic superstructure of predatory capital, ever moving, ever present, unfixable in space and time.”
As the novel begins, Cyril invites
