A Review of Apastoral: A Mistopia by Lee Thompson

*SPOILER ALERT* This review contains plot details of Apastoral: A Mistopia.

Published on July 15, 2024 by corona/samizdat.

Apastoral: A Mistopia by Lee Thompson is hilarious and horrifying from stem to stern, a wildly imaginative meditation on the absurd nature of incarceration. As stark as that may sound, Thompson subverts the subject matter with magical scenarios and rhythmic language that resolves like a fable. Apastoral is gritty and harsh, at its heart is a violent crime and a very violent State, but it also contains love, loyalty, and the innocence of friendship. Thompson weaves impressionistic prose into the narrative, creating an existential point of view for a pantheon of characters. The result is a story that feels lived, rather than recorded.

In Apastoral, particularly pernicious criminals, are no longer locked in small concrete cells. State authorities have decided that the most dangerous among us are better relegated to the bodies of livestock, literally. The Constock Program (convict + livestock) transplants the eyes and brains of unlucky defendants into pigs, cows, goats, and chickens. Rather than wallow in grey dungeons, convicts roam vast, fortified farmlands—trapped still, but placated by their docile existence and environment.

The casual cruelty of the Constock program is buttressed by absurd bureaucracy and mad, giggling bureaucrats. Far from any innocent intent, the program has evolved and is fitted with uproarious live broadcast show trials, elaborate psychoanalysis/change-of-life counseling, and a civilian population making bets on convict fates—hungry for the grim entertainment of it all.

It is within this context that we are introduced to Apastoral’s protagonist, Bones, whose participation in a badly botched jewel heist has damned him to life as a wooly sheep. “You’re a wobbly table in a pub, Bones, accept it.” This observation from Bones’ Constock program psychologist represents the State’s attempt to help Bones (and society as a whole) reckon with what they plan to do to him. The extreme psychological and medical conditioning, the experimental surgery, and trapping a human mind in a farm animal are all warranted—excused—because Bones is hopeless.

Thompson roundly calls out all sides of the conflict; the brutal system’s hypocrisy and depravity are laid bare for the reader, and society’s passive and active participation in the farcical show makes the madness even more realistic—some froth at the mouth for news of the next convict transplant, while others vow to burn the whole horrifying system down. PETABBY, an ineffectual anti-Constock resistance group, provides a flawed but ethical reckoning for the program with direct action in the form of clumsy prisoner rescues.

Through PETABBY and characters imprisoned by the Constock program, Thompson illustrates the tragedy of resistance against overwhelming forces, namely that if good people/animals allow it, resistance will become the monster it sought to destroy. “…activists, they’re boring. They just spew what everyone’s been telling them. They’re no different from the lawyers and bankers and cops they make fun of.” The inmates and society as a whole are formed and affected by the Constock program: the inmates parrot the authoritarianism that imprisoned them by devolving into petty dictatorships, and the free citizenry gleefully take up their charge as deputized guards and judges.

There are no sedentary characters in Apastoral; human and post-human-livestock alike are vibrant, even when their time in focus is short. The present and recent past are skillfully intertwined throughout the tale, expanding the world and conflict without blurting out the important parts prematurely. When the reader finally gets a peek at the cause of all the trouble (Bones’ life, friends, and especially his crime), it lands as a gift, necessary at just that moment. The book’s excellent pacing is to blame.

Simply calling Apastoral dystopian is lazy. It is dystopian, of course, but it also reflects a dire reality: plenty of people already live in an absurd carceral system. You may even recognize a few elements of Constock that feel close to home. These systems vary widely at every border but are unfailingly designed to pick up certain people and leave the really big criminals for public office. Within Apastoral’s blooming myriad of moral quandaries, it murmurs from the rafters, be on guard, the absurd becomes the maniacal with a slip of the pen.