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A Cautionary Tale
Afterburn follows a teacher trying to stay human inside a brutal camp system who is recruited by the government to hunt down and stop a insurgent leader, who also happens to be one of his closest friends. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I started the book during Trump’s first term, when America’s dogwhistle racism had become much more overt both online and in public discourse. Then there were the incidents like the murder of Heather Heyer by a white supremacist in Charlottesville. But systemic racism and discrimination have been woven into the American fabric since before the founding. I teach representation of race in film and media so I’m pretty well versed in just how racist our society has been, which I document in a three volume encyclopedia I co-edited, Race in American Film: Voices and Visions that Shaped a Nation. One thing that struck me, and that really informed the book, are the shifting demographics in the US, which is slowly making white people the minority. Some white people are very freaked out about what they feel is having their heritage and “bloodlines” erased by the proliferation of non-white people. Speculating on what will happen if this trend continues and white people really get bent out of shape by it — to the point where they want to organize some kind of armed “resistance” — was the main premise that informed my book.
At the same time, I thought it was important that my hero be mixed-race, not only to represent this shifting demographic reality, but also to have him confused about his identity, and to kind of hate himself because he doesn’t know where he belongs. In this way, I wanted him to serve as a metaphor for America. Although he never feels completely comfortable with either his white or Hispanic background, he does manage to overcome some of his self-loathing and find some self-worth as an individual, rather than as a member of a group, which is what I hope can happen for America someday as well.
Alton is defined as much by his love of teaching as by his survival instincts. Why make a teacher the center of such a violent, high-stakes story?
I’m a teacher. Like Alton, I also love teaching and feel it’s absolutely invaluable to any kind of hopeful future we might have. Powerful people in this country have been deliberately dismantling public education for decades because they don’t want an educated populace. Every dictator and strongman and corporate executive knows that an ignorant population is much easier to dupe, control, and set against one another. This is why I have Alton choose to go back to teaching in the camps at the end of the book, rather than the comfy life he’s been promised. More than ever, he recognizes that getting people educated is the only way out of the dire straits we’re in. We must have critical thinkers and people questioning power and people that can work and innovate in both Humanities and STEM fields. We’ve already lost our dominance in the world because of the evisceration of education. Now we’re just fighting for our survival. Will future generations even be capable of sustaining a functioning society? Right now I would say that’s in doubt.
The 2070 America you depict feels extreme but uncomfortably plausible. What present-day realities most shaped this vision?
Sci-fi and speculative fiction works are typically cautionary tales about what might happen if we continue on our present path. In this case, if we let the hate and intolerance continue to fester, rather than try to work towards accepting people no matter their color or background, we are bound to destroy ourselves. History, as well as current events, shows this unequivocally. This is why climate change is also a significant element of my book. We are headed for catastrophe very soon if we don’t make massive changes, which looks very unlikely to happen.
Another element that I wanted to include was the idea that it’s just white people who are “evil” when they get power. History shows that any group that gets power over another group will invariably abuse it and use physical signifiers like skin color, hair texture, eye shape, etc., as justifications for why they are “inferior.” In my book, the president is Mexican-American and he’s as much of an autocrat as Trump or Bush when it comes to rolling back civil rights. That’s one reason why Deputy Secretary Rosa Aquilar wants to stop him. She can’t stand the idea that after being oppressed for many generations, Mexican Americans would now take the opportunity to oppress others. What I’m trying to caution against here is the idea that all of us are susceptible to putting our boots on someone else’s neck, given the chance. We have to guard against that very carefully.
The title suggests something lingering after ignition. What does “afterburn” mean to you in the context of this story?
In the opening material in the book I include two definitions for “afterburn” that define what I mean:
“A psychological term coined by Eric Berne, who defined it as “the period of time before a past event is assimilated.”
“The cool-looking shit that trails a thrusting rocket engine.”
Both of these apply to Alton: his obsession with space travel and the rockets he watches and dreams about.
And then the trauma from his past, which he carries like an open wound. It remains unassimilated until he develops a stronger sense of self-worth through an act of redemption at the climax of the novel.
I also like your idea of “something lingering after ignition,” which I hadn’t considered but also works metaphorically. It’s like, once you start to self-actualize, you can see the glow lingering behind you as a constant reminder that you can never go back to your previous state of being.
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His cover is blown not by the inmates, but by the state. Desperate to stop a new wave of insurrection, the government weaponizes Alton against the insurgency’s leader: Alex Weber, now known as Hagen. Years ago, Alton, Alex, and Kiara were inseparable, bonded by a shared obsession with space travel. Now, they are on opposite sides of a civil war.
To stop Alex, Alton must become something else entirely. Augmented with lethal technology and stripped of his agency, he is sent into the mountains to hunt the only family he has left. But as Alton peels back the layers of Alex’s plan, he discovers that the target isn’t the White House or the capital—it’s the upcoming Mars Colony Launch.
Afterburn is a visceral journey into a future where identity is a weapon and nostalgia is a trap. From the squalor of prison camps to the promise of the Red Planet, Alton must decide if he will let the world burn to join his friends—or if he has the strength to let them go.
Afterburn
Afterburn is a near-future science fiction novel, but it reads with the pressure and velocity of a prison break thriller. Author Michael Bodhi Green drops us into a 2070 America shaped by racial extremism, internment, surveillance tech, and the mythology of space travel, then centers the whole thing on Alton, a teacher trying to stay human inside a brutal camp system. That choice matters. The book isn’t just interested in institutions and ideology. The story is interested in what it means to keep thinking, reading, and teaching when the world around you is trying to flatten people into categories.
Alton is not built as a generic action hero, even though the book gives him action scenes with real snap and danger from the opening pages onward. He’s a damaged, reflective, yearning guy whose love of books and longing for the stars feel equally sincere. Early on, the novel tells you exactly who he is with the line, “Even in this hellhole, he still loved to teach.” That works because the book keeps proving it. His classroom scenes are some of the strongest in the novel, not because they slow things down, but because they show how ideas, memory, and story become tools for survival.
The novel is also doing something pretty ambitious with genre. It’s a dystopian political novel, a war story, a story about incarceration, and a story about people who were raised on dreams of cosmic escape. Green keeps all of that moving without losing the thread. I especially liked the way books inside the book become part of the argument. When Alton says novels are “windows into the thinking of another time,” I think Afterburn is quietly describing itself too. It wants to be read as both a story and a cultural mirror, and that gives even the pulpy, high-energy sections a little extra weight.
There’s also a real tenderness under all the steel, dust, and fire. The book keeps returning to the gap between fantasy and maturity, between the dream of transcendence and the harder work of living among other people on the ground. By the end, that tension gives the novel a satisfying shape. The title turns out to be more than a cool image. It becomes a way of thinking about aftermath, desire, and the lingering heat of past choices. The final movement gives Alton a resolution that feels earned because it grows out of who he’s been all along, not because the plot forces a neat lesson on him.
Afterburn is an earnest, high-stakes, idea-driven novel with a big emotional engine. It’s vivid, angry, heartfelt, and surprisingly thoughtful about reading, identity, and the seduction of heroic myths. What stayed with me wasn’t just the worldbuilding or the momentum, though both are strong. It was the way the book keeps asking what kind of future is worth reaching for, and what kind of person you have to become to deserve it. That makes Alton’s journey feel authentic.
Pages: 402 | ASIN : B0FTD4DQDH
