Reviewstack: Andy Futuro’s Vaquera

By M. P. Fitzgerald

Reviewstack: Why you should read Andy Futuro’s Vaquera

by M. P. Fitzgerald

It’s easy to consider Andy Futuro a science fiction horror author. His stories are often unsettling, dripping with voice, and fit within a cyberpunk setting better than a sentient ramen noodle vending machine. You would not be wrong to call him this.

But I’m here to tell you that he’s a satirist.

And a masterful one.

Andy Futuro’s Vaquera is Johnathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal modernised. The audacity of this, if done by a less talented author, would make a Professor in English light her class on fire. Not only does he accomplish this, but sets off fireworks as he lands it.

A Modest Proposal is the gold standard of satire, and as a satirist myself, the idea of modernizing it furrows brows. The language within it may be archaic to a present-day reader, but by-and-large its contents still hit as hilarious and horrific, and though written for a specific historic context (a subjugated Ireland), its struggles of class and inhumane treatment of the impoverished ring true today. It hit then, and it hits now– so why modernize it?

Vaquera answers that question.

You got comfortable.

Fuck you.

Andy Futuro’s short story is disquieting from the open, only releasing tension for uncomfortable laughs, the story then sadly informs us that this is only second gear before ramping it up with nitros– the driver ignoring the road and looking back at you, never dropping eye contact, insisting you did this.

Vaquera is deceptively simple in its narration. This should have been the first warning that he cut the seatbelts. Told through a simple transcript of a corporate board teleconference, the story unfolds as the wealthy discuss their methods for gaslamping¹ the populace as they do damage control from spreading a very visible disease before pivoting to, well, A Modest Goddamn Proposal. Know that Mr. Futuro is capable of incredible prose. His other story, 11:11, showcases the poetry the man is capable of (in 2nd POV, no less); he can, if he has the inclination, write with literary style, and here he refrains from doing so.

Why?

Because I suspect he knows that the wretched actions of the wealthy, paired in their own words, indifferent to all but the bottom line of the dollar, is the most horrific malice that could be penned to page.

One does not write A Modest Proposal simply to entertain you. It is a scream from a man watching his kin dying to a bored lifeguard to please, do something, do anything! You do not write Vaquera to warn us that in the near future the rich might eat us, you write it at the top of your lungs because they have been eating us this whole time.

And you got comfortable watching them. You let them.

Andy Futuro is having none of it.

So go get uncomfortable.

1. It was never “gaslighting”, you made that up because you are crazy.

Hosted by The Literary Salon: