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In this science-fiction revision of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Kalivas lives in solitude on the Farallon Islands, off the San Francisco Bay, until the Master and his daughter M colonize his lonely realm.
Kalivas, the last free-range human, is pressed into completing dangerous and menial tasks on the Master's behalf. The new regime is disrupted when a great storm brings more cyborg mainlanders to the island shores. Can Kalivas finally break free and reclaim his islands, or will his affection for M keep him tied to the Master forever?
Kalivas! Or, Another Tempest reframes the drama as an anticolonial fantasia through futuristic gizmos, a broken continent, and a one-act play invoking the theater of the absurd. Told by the Bard's least civilized and most human creation, Nick Mamatas crafts a micro-epic for the modern era.
"Any year—no matter how miserable—that sees the release of a novel by Nick Mamatas is worth celebrating. His work reminds us, however fleeting, that the world is still capable of creativity and magic." —Locus Magazine
"Dripping with slippery decadence, dark humor, and drones, Kalivas! is the version of Shakespeare we need as an antidote to the ascendency of the tech bros. Like what might happen if you crossed Gene Wolfe with William Gibson, forced the resulting hybrid to sit in a series of tech product launches, and asked it to predict the future." —Brian Evenson, author of Last Days
"An inventive, invigorating science fiction romp. This is the nanobot Shakespeare our dystopian lives demand." —Silvia Moreno-Garcia, author of Mexican Gothic
"Kalivas! is not only a hilariously self-aware reworking of The Tempest but a vertiginously deep dive into the monstrous id of the techno-oligarchs of our own day, and the catastrophic futures they would call their dreams." —Vajra Chandrasekera, author of The Saint of Bright Doors and Rakesfall
"Mamatas's bold, masterful voice comes through once again, in notes both harsh and heartbreaking, making us see familiar things strangely and strange things as intimately relatable as our own skin. Anyone not reading his work is only hurting themselves." —Catherynne M. Valente, author of Space Opera and the Fairyland series
"A sci-fi novel of ideas, part game theory, part theater, Kalivas! is deep, funny, and wild. From its reversals of fortune to its grand completion, it is a song of resistance to the absurd notion that some are meant to rule while others meant to serve." —Vanessa Vaselka, author of Zazen and The Great Offshore Grounds