"TRANSHUMANISM INC." by Victor Pelevin, summary

"TRANSHUMANISM INC." is a novel by Viktor Pelevin, published in 2021. It is the author’s eighteenth novel and his first novel in short stories: several independent stories, yet connected by a single world and shared characters. The action takes place in the distant future, where the planet’s wealthiest people have transformed their brains into immortal objects stored in special underground containers — called "bankers" — while the rest of humanity lives above ground under the control of the corporation "TRANSHUMANISM INC." and the Open Brain Foundation.

The novel was shortlisted for the 2022 New Horizons Prize.

The world of the future

Civilization exists after the "carbon wars" — an era of environmental disasters and military conflicts that left abandoned mines, bunkers, and windmills across Eurasia. The country is governed by the "Good State," led by a "bro-curator" — a ruler whose brain is stored in the eighth tier of the jar-like world order. Society is divided: at the top are the "bankers" with immortal brains in underground vaults, while at the bottom are living people with neural implants in their skulls and "cuckoos" around their necks. A cuckoo is a tracking collar that reads the QQ codes of objects around them and transmits them to an implant that chemically regulates a person’s perception: making rich people more attractive, advertised products more desirable, and taboo topics repulsive.

Manya and her banker father

The protagonist of the first and most detailed story is eighteen-year-old Manya, the daughter of the "banker" of the second tier. Her father’s brain is stored in an underground bunker in Nevada, in two life-support buildings — one operational, one backup. The banker needs a living family not out of love, but for tax reasons: brain holders receive significant discounts if they support a wife and children in the real world.

Manya is celebrating the New Year of 206 at her aunt’s farm in Siberia. Chipless buffoons — marginalized individuals living at the very bottom of society — come there and sing "The Lament of Goldenstern": a quasi-folkloric anti-Semitic epic in which a certain Goldenstern lured the rulers of all countries into banks and reigned over the world. It’s a ritual exchange: the buffoons deliberately utter the forbidden "GS-word," their masters demonstratively chase them away and boost their social standing in the kukukh. Manya breaks the rule — instead of the expected outrage, she begins to speak to the point, uttering the forbidden word three times herself, and lowering her standing.

Returning to Moscow, Manya attends a lyceum class called "The Three Branches of Transhumanism" and learns the history of how humanity arrived at cupped immortality: from the first attempts to isolate the head from the body to sustaining life in brain slices, then in the entire brain, and finally to the complete replacement of all sensory signals with artificial impulses from the neural networks of "TRANSHUMANISM INC." The second branch is a social neuroimplant that enhances perception with hormones for the benefit of those who pay for it.

Conversations with Dad

In phone conversations with her father, Manya learns how the entire system works. Dad explains: the cuckoo reads the QQ codes of objects and people around her, and the implant responds with neurotransmitters — this is "social backlighting." Some topics aren’t forbidden, they’re simply unauthorized, and therefore seem obscure. Thoughts aren’t read — they’re written. Manya perceives this as instruction, not revelation, and is proud of her father.

Meanwhile, she discovers that her mother has installed a surveillance bug in her room. Manya finds it through a pirated app, hacks her mother’s email account, and obtains the access code to the bug. While her mother sleeps in a cryo-chamber, she orders a second identical bug and installs it in her mother’s bedroom. Now Manya watches her mother, just as her mother watches her.

Curator and secret of "TRANSHUMANISM INC."

On a parallel line, the bro curator is conferring with Generals Shkuro and Sudoplatonov. Sudoplatonov reports a sensational financial intelligence finding: the real owner of TRANSHUMANISM INC. and the Open Brain Foundation is not Goldenstern — the corporation’s public face — but a certain Rosencrantz, the second founder, who allegedly retired three centuries ago. Almost nothing is known about Rosencrantz: neither his origins nor his appearance. All rights and voting rights in the company currently belong to him.

Goldenstern - All

The ending of the first story reveals the meaning of its title: "Goldenstern Everything." Manya, kidnapped and thrown into that very abandoned mine near her aunt’s farm — with Goldenstern’s aluminum suitcase-brain in her hands — realizes, as she falls in slow motion, that Goldenstern has connected to her implant from within. He tells her that his "religion" is to dive into the human world as a full-fledged simulation, live other people’s lives, and then wake up and experience the impossible joy of self-recognition.

As she plummets to the bottom of the mine, Manya stops resisting — and suddenly realizes she is Goldenstern. Aton Goldenstern completes another "descent into the human world": he’s pretended to be Manya, her friend Ofa, his father, his aunt, the buffoons, his high school friends, a drunken brain in a suitcase, and strangled chickens. They’ve all been him. Waking, he soars through the dome of his personal jar-shaped sky, spreads six fiery wings, and for a second reaches the summit — the "golden star" beneath the dome. There, an inscription in an ancient language reminds him who he is and why he exists. The happiness he sought is achieved — and then vanishes, as always.