Review: Clear
San Francisco, 2052. It's a run down world but nobody cares. Everyone is connected to the net, information transmitted directly into their brains. If you want to see things a different way, you simply choose a 'veil' - an augmented reality filter - that transforms your surroundings into something more to your liking.
Some choose to live in a beautiful paradise, a glamorous hallucination, or an exciting world of adventure... But not private detective Sam Dunes. He chooses Clear, a veil that shows things exactly as they are.
A routine case turns up links to the trade in 'black' veils, those which show the user forbidden content, "veils you buy when you don't want anyone to know what you're seeing"... and worse, shared veils, those which can be accessed by more than one person simultaneously. These are even more dangerous because shared delusions cause chaos...
Clear by writer Scott Snyder and artist Francis Manapul is a cyberpunk thriller in which our perceptions of reality and truth are detached from any kind of objectivity. As topical now as it ever has been, the central theme is the eternal human proclivity for self-deception. You don't want to see the inconvenient truths around you? Just veil them. You don't want to know about the real world and your responsibilities as a part of society? You don't have to. You can veil everything....for a price, of course.
Dunes uncovers disturbing hints that organised crime lords have connections with the Department of Connectivity, which exists to regulate the use of veils and ensure the mental and social safety of their use. Worse, his wife, who recently committed suicide, was also involved. The story takes a darker turn as Dunes begins to question what is real, what is a lie and how to find his way out of the nightmare that has taken over everything he thought he knew.
Manapul's art bursts with inventive energy, delighting in the many and varied facets of fantasy that are a key element of the story. This journey plays joyfully with one of sci-fi's most central tropes; the rug pulled out from under the feet of the protagonist when the scales fall from his eyes; that golden 'not in Kansas anymore' moment when everything is flipped.
Like Neo in The Matrix, taking the red pill is the decision to tear away all illusions, no matter how comforting, to risk being exposed to the raw, unfiltered horror of reality at its most grim. Dunes chooses to take the plunge, to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. He is determined to uncover the truth, even if it destroys him.
Zak Webber
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