Velocity Blues

April 19, 2021
With this energetic sophomore outing, Johns (Walking Shadow) introduces readers to a near-future society divided between the speedy and the slow. Sixteen-year-old Zip is an Energy. He was among a group of children who were given experimental genetic treatments to make them smarter, stronger, faster—and who now struggle with these dubious gifts. The treatments left subjects with anxiety, depleted attention spans, and a driving compulsion to be moving at all times at a speed much faster than normal humans, or “Slugs,” can access. Zip’s existence is tenuous—he makes his money as a courier for a local hoodlum, utilizing his extreme speed and finely honed parkour skills to deliver packages. Things go horribly awry during one job when what started as a simple delivery ends with a fellow Energy being sapped of her abilities, leaving her all but dead. The incident sparks conflict between the Energy and the Slugs—with a possible cure, one which would allow the Energy to live more normal lives, on the line. Johns has a keen eye for worldbuilding and captures Zip’s thought processes in frenetic, almost stream-of-conscious prose that perfectly mirrors his mental state. Readers are in for a ripping, deceptively philosophical ride.

In Johns' YA SF novel, a genetically modified youth vies with others to retain possession of a mystery package. The author envisions a near-future Chicago in which ambitious parents employed new drugs and DNA manipulations to produce fast-thinking, high-achieving progeny but instead birthed a misfit generation of "Energy" kids, also known as "E's" or "Fleas." These young adults indeed have above-average reaction times, muscular coordination, and agility but also suffer from attention deficits, mood disorders, sleep deprivation, sterility, and sociopathic tendencies, and they take special nutritional supplements and medication. The loose community of E youth are outcasts, shunned by the rest of society, whom they refer to as "Slugs"; however, some manage to eke out livings as couriers for criminal types. In Chicago, Zane, who goes by the nickname "Zip," is tasked by gangsters to deliver a seemingly ordinary package, but some hostile force reaches Bolt, the intended recipient, first and threatens Zip, who flees. Zip is left with a very hot item and endless questions about whom to trust as well as intrusive thoughts about math problems, names for cats, the economics of the lumber industry, and whatever else intrudes on his mind. Such excessive rumination could have made the material a chore to read, but Johns keeps things under firm control with a largely chase-based plotline that stays fairly straightforward until the introduction of an array of last-act betrayals and twists. The story also features a love interest who seems hopelessly treacherous; this suits the prose, which also feels like something out of a hard-boiled detective story: "Ratchet winced when I mentioned Jbird. The sound of her neck breaking would be with us for a while." The notion that heartless helicopter parenting brought on these superkids is a potent one, and it will give the material some cred with YA readers. Meanwhile, the swearing and sexuality stay in the PG-13 range. A gritty thriller that puts the downside of superpowers into bracingly relatable terms.

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