Minus One
Mark Kolody
Library and Archives Canada (2025)
ISBN: 978-1738115631
Reviewed by Paul Knobloch for Reader Views (11/2025)
The central conflict is revealed early on in Minus One, Mark Kolody’s compelling techno-thriller about the complexities of the approaching transhuman epoch. In the first chapter, we meet Mathis, the developer of something he calls “wetware.” Mathis finds out that his company is moving in a very shady direction.
Under the influence of the notorious Aiden Frost, Mathis’s company, Hikari International, will take his groundbreaking tech and engineer an AI backdoor that allows them, as Mathis states, “to turn every wetware user into a Manchurian Candidate.” Frost clearly illustrates why, with our unjust system of wealth distribution and a heavily centralized nexus of hierarchical power, AI will do what AI is designed to do, and when it’s designed by greedy and power-mad humans, we had better start worrying, because the cynicism, and these types of single-minded, pathological people pushing for this brave new hell, well, they’re as real as Frost. This is a fairly undeniable fact for anyone who has remained conscious during the last decade in America, and Frost’s words to Mathis bear repeating:
You can either wait for China to finish ripping off your work and mass-produce wetware with their backdoors in place, or you can work with the good guys and be part of the winning team. And speaking of teams, your developers will be replaced with my guys.
Spoken like one of our bought and paid-for congressional representatives, or maybe a Big Tech maven. The rest of the novel also sparkles with tight prose like this, tough, realistic dialogue, and great world-building that takes place across the globe, from Japan to Toronto to the Philippines.
When Mathis, a staunchly ethical human being, asks that the company subsidize poor developing nations that can’t afford the tech, Frost answers, “Think smaller.” This is humanity’s problem in a nutshell: a complete and utter lack of concern for others in our ruthless pursuit of profit and power. Again, AI will not destroy us; we will destroy ourselves.
Later, we’ll meet Rei, who bails her yakuza-connected Dad out of Jail, and her sister, Miya, who is part of Minus One and is stalking Mathis. She actually confronts him about the changes to the tech he has been making. The transhumanism theme and the dangers of AI are now front and center in the narrative.
Another big player, Amrita, is brought into the fold in the fourth chapter, and she works for the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. Curiously, Amrita has just been told by her higher-ups to lay off any investigation into the notorious Mr. Frost. The roots of corruption form a tangled and complex web that stretches across both the private capital sector and the world of big government and NGOs.
I have spelled out about all I can spell out without spoiling the story, but we are clearly in the world of the high-stakes techno thriller, full of tech savants, venture capitalists, and people who have visions of the future that are diametrically opposed.
It is a fairly faithful representation of the quagmire that we find ourselves in today, swimming in a sea of too much information, tracked by surveillance technology and marketing algorithms, and sensing an almost palpable fear that things are slipping away from us – that we are losing the ability, as a species, to ensure that we live in a moral and just world, a world where economic equality and real democracy are more than pipe dreams. This future is, in fact, as this novel illustrates, quickly slipping away due to the nefarious union of human greed and a technology far too complex to be administered by a bunch of wet-brained monkeys on a rock hurtling through space.
An unfortunate truth is highlighted toward the end of the novel when a man named Ogawa reminds Mathis of a timely truth about the nature of power and rulers: “Frost is merely the general of a conquering army, and conquerors never make good occupiers. Once his use is fulfilled, he’ll be put to pasture.”
Will we combat this mentality, will we forge a new reality and an ethical future with AI, or will we indulge our greed and lust, and permit technology to dehumanize us? Will we actively confront this status quo? There are no more important questions facing the species right now, and Kolody’s fine new book, Minus One, is not afraid to ask the right ones.