Cover image of "Panacea Genesis," a novel about the Metaverse

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced he will split the company in two. This will leave Facebook itself to throw off a gusher of cash dividends every year while he funds Meta Platforms out of the disproportionate share he receives. Meta Platforms, of course, is Zuckerberg’s pet project, representing his belief that the future of the Internet lies in Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). Many of his employees think it’s a pipe dream. But there are plenty of industry visionaries who agree with Zuckerberg. And author L. Ana Ellis portrays the world their vision might produce in her debut in science fiction, Panacea Genesis, a novel about the Metaverse.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

No headsets required for this novel about the Metaverse

It’s 2115 in the United States. Most citizens are “chipped” as infants, with microprocessors embedded through an incision in the back of the neck. This allows them to access a virtual world that is immeasurably more luxurious and flattering than anything they can enjoy in the “solid world.” Chips also give them instant access by thought alone to the boundless resources of the “soup,” the successor to the cloud. A much smaller number of people who are “unchipped” can’t access either VR or the soup. And they invariably find themselves at a disadvantage at school, at work, and in social situations. They’re effectively second-class citizens.


Panacea Genesis (Panacea #1 of 3) by L. Ana Ellis (2022) 472 pages ★★★☆☆


Painting of a woman with a virtual reality headset
Today, we can immerse ourselves in Virtual Reality through devices such as the headset depicted in this illustration. In Panacea Genesis, the port of entry is an embedded computer chip. Image: Great.gov.uk – Tech & Learning

One company is dominant in this novel about the Metaverse

Mariela Stafford is the Vice President of Connectivity for Panacea, the world’s wealthiest and most powerful company. Panacea produces the chips and software that enable access to VR, and the company has a near-monopoly through its proprietary VR world, Panacea. Mariela’s great-great-grandfather founded the corporation a century ago, early in the 21st century, and her father served until recently as its CEO. But tragedy has struck. Her father’s chip suddenly failed, making it impossible for him to continue at the helm of the company. The board has named as his successor a sleazy and deceitful man who wants to eliminate the Stafford family from control of Panacea. And, to compound the problem, he has created a clone of himself—a “ghost,” a virtual being endowed with all his knowledge and experiences. The ghost’s mission is to learn everything Mariela knows and replace her.

A mission resembling a quest in an online video game

Mariela will have to resist, of course. But instead she sets out to organize a seemingly unrelated mission. Gathering together a small group of people she trusts, she sends them off to a hidden site in the desert called Area 52 where Panacea’s backup servers are located. While Mariela grapples with the abusive “ghost” of the new CEO, the group sets off on a trek that greatly resembles a quest in an online video game.

Area 52 is a huge tract of land in the western United States where a community of 60,000 people settled decades ago. They’ve built five cities under an enormous dome in the wilderness and are living lives hidden from the outside world, protected by a tesseract that misdirects anyone who stumbles across the few entry portals. They reject the use of any technology beginning with the iPhone. And they teach their young that the Five Cities are all that’s left of the world after a nuclear holocaust wiped out civilization. But Mariela’s group succeeds in gaining entrance to the secretive enclave . . . and then stuff happens.

What happens reflects the flaws in this debut novel. There are simply too many coincidences for the author to explain away easily. And truth to tell, I’m no fan of online video games. (The only game I play on electronic devices is solitaire.) So, I’m not thrilled by the central axis of the action in this novel. The story has its strong points, in its horrific portrayal of VR in the future. (Millions are flocking to “pod warehouses” where they confine themselves to coffins for decades on end, experiencing only VR.) But in the end I was left frustrated. The plot is overly contrived and ultimately lame. And it ends inconclusively. I expected better given the novel’s strong start.

About the author

Photo of L. Ana Ellis, author of this novel about the Metaverse
L. Ana Ellis. Image: Bookish Beyond

L. Ana Ellis writes about herself on her Amazon author page as follows: “L. Ana Ellis, a sleep-deprived government worker by day, lets her imagination roam free while writing science fiction late into the night. After spending her days toiling over spreadsheets in a windowless cubicle with fluorescent lighting, and unbeknownst to her coworkers who think she spends her evenings watching cat videos, she spends her nights creating worlds that are more of a commentary on the present than an accurate prediction of the future.

“Speculating about how societies will change in the future fascinates her; she is undeterred that so far she has been wrong 100% of the time. When she’s not pondering how societies operate or writing about alternate realities, she enjoys Ren Faires, Cons, and, as her coworkers suspect, watching cat videos.

“She lives in the Washington, DC area with her husband, two cats, and the occasional foster kitty.”

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