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Imagination Isn’t Our Limitation
MIR.EXE follows a burned-out dockworker in corporate-controlled future Alaska, who is pulled into a dangerous mission involving stolen code, old loyalties, and a chance to break a company’s grip on the world. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The setting, characters, and major themes were inspired by my work for the Pentagon in Homeland Defense. I spent time in Alaska learning about and planning ways to defend the land and the people from disasters, both natural and man-made. On one of the many long flights home from Anchorage to DC, I asked myself, “What if we fail?” and began to sketch out what became “The Alaskan Century,” which I included as an epilogue. I prefer science fiction that explores a few changes in depth as opposed to the broad, more fantastical “space operas.” So I made one change, warm super-conduction, and went from there.
The book treats technology as something intimate, painful, and almost spiritual. What were you most interested in exploring through that human-machine tension?
I was (and still am) most interested in how humans interact in a changing world. Biologically, we (modern humans) are practically identical to nomadic and cave-dwelling ancestors of 100,000 years ago. So I don’t believe that another hundred or even a thousand years will drastically change the ways in which we interact. We will still be capable of simultaneous greed and generosity, of cruelty, and sympathy. I built my characters and the technological world around this framework. We have the capacity today to do marvelous things, but imagination isn’t our limitation; scarcity, tribalism, disease, love and passion, diplomacy, and war will always draw the focus. Technology won’t save us;an that mission has always been, and will always be, a human endeavor.
In that way, I suppose it is spiritual. Imagining increasingly advanced technology allows us to explore what it means to be human.
Echo is an intriguing and well-developed character. What were some driving ideals behind the character’s development?
I wanted Echo to be as flawed and perfect as any of us. He is motivated almost entirely by love, but that is not enough to succeed. At the same time, he has agency and is not some powerless recipient of the universe’s wrath. He is trying to do the right thing, but can’t control his environment, and lashes out in frustration like anyone else. I wanted to make the reader question their understanding of good and evil. In the end, there is a strong argument that Echo made the wrong decision, and that perhaps the status quo was the best outcome for most people. At the same time, the antagonists have some very valid points.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
While I hadn’t thought about it before, I’ve had requests from readers to explore both the next chapter in Echo’s story as well as a prequel. I’m exploring the space, writing new scenes, and building from there. I’m going to stick with this universe for a little while until I’ve said all that I want to say. Keep an eye out in 2027!
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Echo Kinyata, once a child soldier and now a CrateGhost stevedore with a hacked brain, has learned to keep his head down. But when his estranged wife Lyra sends a cryptic message, he’s pulled into a conspiracy that could topple Cryosaga’s iron grip. The key: a mysterious data chip from overseas, and a virus known as Mir—capable of upending the balance of power.
Hunted by insurgents who should be allies and stalked by AIs with agendas of their own, Echo must decide who to trust in a world where loyalty is currency and every choice cuts deep. MIR.EXE is a hard‑edged cyberpunk thriller where survival means outsmarting forces that blur the line between human and machine… and between good and evil.
MIR.EXE
MIR.EXE is a cyberpunk, dystopian science fiction novel with a strong techno-thriller pulse. It follows Echo Kinyata, a burned-out dockworker in a future Alaska ruled in practice by Cryosaga, the company that turned PermaFlux into the engine of global power. When Echo’s estranged wife, Lyra, reaches out and pulls him toward a dangerous mission involving stolen code, buried loyalties, and the possibility of breaking the corporation’s grip, the book opens outward from one damaged man’s daily routine into a much bigger fight about control, surveillance, and what survives when technology gets inside the soul.
Dillenback can be abrasive, funny, ugly, and strangely beautiful sometimes all in the same page. The book has that lived-in cyberpunk grime that makes the world feel used rather than merely invented. I liked that. The future here is not sleek in a clean, showroom way. It feels bruised, patched over, and expensive to survive in. Echo’s inner life gives the novel its gravity, especially in the early sections where his work, his body, and his guilt are all tangled together so tightly that even a routine shift feels like self-harm dressed up as labor. The prose carries a lot of texture, and while some passages are undeniably dense, that density often feels earned. It reflects the weight of the world the author has built and the seriousness of the ideas underneath it. The book stays committed to its voice, and I found that commitment one of its positive qualities.
This is a novel that clearly cares about monopoly power, state violence, class resentment, and the eerie way technology can make people feel both bigger and smaller at once. The human-machine tension is not treated like a shiny abstract question. It is physical. It hurts. Echo’s conversations with Doc, and the broader fear of a corporation reaching godlike power through energy and quantum computing, give the book a real moral pressure. What kept me invested was not just the theory. It was the sadness under it. Echo is not a heroic symbol polished for effect. He is compromised, lonely, often unsure, and that makes the book’s politics land harder because they are filtered through someone who has already paid for the system with his own body.
I think MIR.EXE is the kind of book I would recommend to readers who like their science fiction rough-edged, thoughtful, and emotionally bruised rather than polished and easy. It will work best for people who enjoy cyberpunk with real political weight, readers who want a future that feels plausible and mean, and anyone who likes character-driven speculative fiction where the tech matters but the damage it does to people matters more. It’s memorable, and it has something real to say.
Pages: 288 | ASIN: B0GHH2VSLS
