In the mid-21st-century United States, mass shootings have been monetized. An exodus of the young and educated, combined with climate catastrophe, has created a country of cruel, terrified, mostly white and elderly people. In this grim future, the media network ONT (Our Nation's Truth) has turned mass shootings into reality TV.
Robert Jackson Bennett (Foundryside; the Divine Cities trilogy) imagines the NRA's dream future: a gun, or more than one, for every man, woman and child. As a way to encourage its citizens to remain armed and afraid, ONT, with the support of the gun manufacturers and other businesses that own the government, hosts Vigilance--an irregular TV event that locks down a surprise location and lets multiple pre-selected shooters, armed with camera drones and guns, go on killing sprees. Civilians who kill shooters, or shooters who kill all their targets, can win millions of dollars. The small print on every public building declaring all entrants subject to Vigilance makes the legalities of such slaughter a nonissue. As the latest shooting unfolds, Bennett shifts between its cynical producer at studio headquarters and a waitress who witnesses her fellow citizens at their worst.
Vigilance is a savage satire of American gun lust and media obsession taken to their most obscene extremes. Bennett has created a short but powerful parable that would feel outrageously unbelievable were it not for the United States' constant crisis. This novella successfully combines spectacle and substance into a satisfying whole. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer