“The Sky is Yours”: A Twisted Future Consumed by Consumption

Chandler Klang Smith’s first published novel, “The Sky is Yours,” defies description. Striding confidently across genres—post-apocalyptic thriller, science-fictional critique of a consumerist zeitgeist, spiritual musing—Smith has crafted a singular piece of fiction. The author switches between points of view to expand the world and advance the narrative, which provide the reader glimpses of the past as the future unfolds before them. Time is almost a character in this story, a presence unseen but always felt. Set in what seems to be New York City several hundred years in the future, “The Sky is Yours” does not follow the traditional narrative arc expected of its ilk. Beginning in typical science fiction style, the story quickly expands into other forms, evolving into a chimaera of genre. The greatest difference between “The Sky is Yours” and other books which attempt to tackle the same topics—consumerism, coming-of-age, and the ugliness of the human experience—is in its ultimate focus. Though the narration follows an array of interesting and complicated characters—some more sympathetic than others—the underlying story is clearly that of the city itself.

The focus on the city is well-deserved. Ravaged by the excesses of late capitalism and the two beasts which circle above it—constantly setting fires to a city which long ago exhausted its capacity to fight them—the city seems to be a lumbering dinosaur crumpling under its own weight. The middle class has been hewn out by both of these forces, leaving only the incredibly wealthy and the destitute. Both mad in their own way, these communities inevitably clash. Everything in the story emphasizes the age of the city, like the city-block sized homes of the upper-upper class built up to mythical proportions. Every word hums with the weight of time. The origins of the city as a simple grouping of people have been lost, as the city takes on its own identity. There is a distinct sense that the characters whose adventure unfolds over the pages of the novel are utterly insignificant outside their relationship to the built environment in which they exist. It is a humbling thing.

The conflict between the two remaining socioeconomic groups disturbs the two main characters’ comfortable lives. There’s reality star Duncan Humphrey Ripple V, the scion of the metropolis’ last dynasty, a zillionaire teenager on the cusp of adulthood who’s been spoiled beyond repair. There is his bride-to-be, Baroness Swan Lenore Dahlberg, who suffers from a strange condition which causes her to keep growing teeth. This ailment is perhaps one of the novel’s many metaphoric nods towards the central critique of consumption and the gnawing, insatiable hunger of greed. Not everyone in this story lives in city-block sized mansions. Their comfortable lives of privilege and hedonism are disrupted by Abby—a feral girl who saves Duncan after he crash lands on her man-made island of garbage on which she has lived completely alone all her life—and Eisenhower Sharkey, a maker and purveyor of a psychedelic mixture of moss-like plants, drugs, and flavorings called “chaw.“ Sharkey’s ability to predict where the dragons will strike next gives him an almost mythical status among the denizens of Torchtown, a penal colony set up in the poor districts of the city before the dragons arrived.

Each character plays a role in the world Smith has crafted. Though they shift and grow over the course of the novel, their core inadequacies and flaws remain. It’s a refreshing, if somewhat unsettling, perspective on the strange mixture of flexibility and rigidity which characterizes the human spirit. These characters, at times, seem less like people than mythical figures, archetypes playing out some cosmic narrative, another entry in the history of the city. Singular and memorable, yet still utterly insignificant in the face of the concrete city, each character reminds the reader that something is deeply wrong in this imagined future.

The narrative, though at times difficult to follow, is a pleasure to read. Smith paints a highly detailed, if disturbing, caricature of a potential future with witty prose and impressive style. Time takes on an ephemeral quality, the incredible age of the city making years and decades seem to blend together and mix with the present. “The Sky is Yours” captures perfectly a sense of what it means to be young in a world which is incomprehensibly old. There is an ever-present wrongness to the city which is the result of a truly skillful wielding of storytelling technique and a carefully calculated flow which keeps the reader off-balance. This transforms the novel from narrative to experience.

It is in the mixing of things—of genre, of classes, of fantasy, and of gritty imagined-reality—that Smith’s work shines. It is not a particularly incredible post-apocalyptic narrative. It is not a great work of science fiction. It is not an amazing coming-of-age story. But it is a highly competent and enjoyable mixture of all of them and then some.

—Staff Writer Noah Houghton can be reached at noah.houghton@thecrimson.com