Review of 1986 Trilogy by Jesper Ersgård

I have recently purchased and listened to all the audiobooks of the ‘1986’ trilogy. Finding the subject interesting and the way the narrative flows through it, I thought I might write a book review. With this, I don’t intend to spoil the reader or listener from the fun produced by a captivating narrative, only to comment on the overall subject.  

The author sets most of his novel in Sweden, specifically around Stockholm, but his central theme has broader implications. Jesper touches on a critique of Artificial Intelligence coming from weaknesses seen in human mentality. Apparently, we are ready to give up our freedoms of choice and movement for the sake of feeling good and protection.

In his novels, reality is modelled as existing all at once; time being an illusion. The creation exists simultaneously, and what humans conceive as chronology and causation are in fact chains or rather, threads of dependencies between people. One depends on his or her parents existing in that creation. In the world depicted in the narrative, one could travel in time by swapping physical bodies. That aspect is discovered by understanding how to unify quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.   

The first novel introduces Elias Werner as the main character shortly before the assassination of Olaf Palmer in Sweden in February 1986. He is dragged into the story passively and has no choice but to follow a prearranged plan that involves dangerous actions, during which bots and humans push him along. He must find an engine named a ‘Veilo tree’ to travel in time before being caught by the police on charge of murdering his estranged wife, which he did not do.    

In the second novel, Elias Werner learns of his nature. He discovers his humanity through body-swapping across various periods of Swedish history, where the machine seeks to alter events. He chooses to act on his will and love rather than on the rational minds of the bots that seem to pop up to push or block him. After a failed attempt to save his parents, who were murdered in his childhood, he learns that he is a human-machine hybrid trained by bots in the body of a dead child with fake memories.  

The confrontation becomes inevitable in the third novel after Elias, for a short time in a remote future, experiences living a pampered human life at the hands of Artificial Intelligence. What would it be like to experience happiness in a dysfunctional human body with projected images and sounds in a mostly artificial mind? He hates that and chooses humanity and Maia. The bots become his enemies, but he finds human love and companionship by returning to the past. The machine’s grip is tightening, further killing his physical self and Maia.

The third novel brings Elias face-to-face with his artificial maker after learning he is the next version of the Artificial Intelligence.

The story ends with an act of his free will to end the machine, by finding a proper chain of events back in 1986 that prevents his mind from ever returning to the machine.