A dystopia from Norway for the Sardinian Caredda

In "The Resource Guardians – The Domination of AI" by Martina Caredda, the world doesn't end with a bang, but with a click. A planned blackout brings a planet accustomed to delegating everything to machines to its knees. From that moment, the story follows two directions: at the top, the powers that be have decided to "rebuild" humanity; at the bottom, those trying to save themselves and understand what remains of humanity when technology disappears.

Zack and Emily travel north, beyond the dead cities. She is pregnant, and the life she carries becomes the measure of the central question: what does it mean to be born into a world where air, water, and energy are resources to be managed? Amidst electrical silences and decommissioned machines, the journey suggests that survival is a collective, not a technological, endeavor.

Those in power justify the darkness as a "necessary evil": here the novel reaches its most disturbing point, the belief in absolute control. No special effects are needed: language, with its jargon of protocols and procedures, is enough to convey that the catastrophe has already occurred.

The clear prose occasionally veers into journalistic reporting, the dialogues lose their edge, and the figures of power end up resembling perhaps functions rather than characters. But the book remains honest: a near-miss dystopia, where efficiency and dogma coincide, and the real question is who, tomorrow, will have the courage to turn the light back on.