Realistic Science Fiction

What is this story about?

Set in a near-future Europe, this novel follows an ordinary man navigating a world where artificial intelligence, social media surveillance, and algorithmic living have quietly redefined human relationships. Privacy has become a luxury. Connection has become performance. And the line between the digital self and the real self has all but disappeared.

Through sharp, realistic prose, Van Huijstee explores what happens when technology designed to bring people together instead deepens their loneliness — and what one man's quiet resistance reveals about the enduring need for genuine human contact.

This is not a story of robots or dystopian collapse. It is a story about right now, seen just slightly ahead of where we already are — and it is uncomfortably recognisable.