Book 4 The Warehouse

 

The Warehouse by Rob Hart fulfilled the category “A Social Horror Book” for the PopSugar 2022 Reading Challenge. If this novel doesn’t speak about modern times, I don’t know what will.

The Warehouse centers on the premise that one company, one man, has completely dominated the American market, government, and society. The business, The Cloud, is not only a place to work but somewhere to live and socialize. Employees reside in the warehouses, working six days a week at a gut-wrenching pace to supply goods to the world. (I’m sure nobody heard Amazon there.)

Due to some horrible societal disasters (not COVID, but violence), people never leave their houses and must have all their goods delivered by drone from Cloud. The company has become so “essential” to American society and safety that it can influence the government. By the time the book events take place, the company owns us—heart and soul.

What a scary story!

It is so plausible. In the past two years, most Americans have been stuck in their homes, unable or afraid to venture out due to COVID-19. I’m right there with them. I have ordered more things from online retailers in the last 24 months than in my entire life. Even groceries can be delivered. I can order anything from the internet and am happy to hide in my cocoon.

This book extrapolates on our pandemic lockdown, imagining we’ve given these retailers power over our lives. The company reverts to the mining town society of the nineteenth century. Workers must live at the warehouse, use Cloud money, and because of environmental disasters, cannot leave the place. Could we end up here if we aren’t careful?

I worry with the love of capitalism in this country, we are headed down an ugly road. With these billionaires as head of many industries and people dependent on their companies for a living and supplies, are we giving them too much power?

In high school, I took a class called History of the Future. We read 1984, Brave New World, Walden 2, Foundation, and others. The Warehouse would be a perfect book for that class. Students could discuss how commercialism and fear-manipulate society and the public into something twisted and dark. It would also generate great “history” lessons on the COVID pandemic and the changes it caused.

To read the novel now with the dependence on internet shopping and billionaires hitting the 160 billion mark, it was SCARY. I recommend everyone read the novel and start a discussion about local and small business shopping and get our universe closer to where we were a few years ago.

End of rant. (Sorry.)

I give The Warehouse by Rob Hart Five Self-Aware Drones bringing you sunglasses.