Book Review: Scenebux, by Cairo Smith

Solipsism is part of the human condition, and every generation probably thought they were witnessing a unique historical moment with themselves at center stage. The current vibe that civilization is about to pass through a one-way door is nothing new. Maybe it’s THE SINGULARITY!!!, maybe it’s THE FOURTH TURNING!!!, maybe it’s just history grinding along, but we can all feel it.

Scenebux, written by Cairo Smith and published by New Ritual Press, is a snapshot of our time, and of the (possibly hallucinated) right-wing scene of the moment. It occurs specifically between April and July of 2025; the opening scene references the death of Pope Leo on April 21st of that year. The main character and narrator is Ben Etxina (yeah I dunno how it’s pronounced either), an Idaho Basque (yes, that’s a real thing, I checked so you don’t have to). He’s a fairly ridiculous character, a recovered Internet porn addict and washed-out software engineer, writing Midwestern-Mom-porn erotic novels, and living with his serially unfaithful girlboss lawyer girlfriend in San Francisco. The book opens in a tacky, pretentious bar, with a hilarious description of Ben using the topic of nuclear war to chat up a girl. That’s the feel of the whole novel, right there: edgy humor overlaying apocalyptic dread.

Shortly afterward, a fistfight with a biker gang and a retaliatory sabotage of a motorcycle launches Ben into the meat of the book: a picaresque round-the-world chase, a sort of “Zoomer” James Bond story. Drug-addled techbro burnouts in the South Pacific, anti-AI terrorists in Berlin, a shady hedge fund manager in Dubai, and a bottom-tier spook in Laos all make appearances.

Scenebux is hilarious throughout, in a deadpan and ultra-referential way. As I said before, it is intentionally pinned to the late spring and early summer of 2025, and many of the jokes reference Substack or Twitter personalities. I won’t pretend that an oldhead like me got all of them, but I still laughed at every page. I cannot even express the joy I got from the the sly and esoteric Meat Loaf reference late in the novel.

If that last paragraph makes Scenebux sound like an unserious book, nothing could be further from the truth. Although it starts out as a farce, with the frequently drugged manchild Ben careening across the globe in an attempt to avoid retribution from the biker gang, the quest uncovers a shadowy hedge fund and a conspiracy called The Filter. Tonally, the book shifts from humor to horror, as sudden and violent death frequently interrupts scenes that begin comically. Scenebux is a fun and engaging read with an underlying thread of seriousness, as well as a perfect portrait of the current cultural moment.

I don’t know if I even believe in the Singularity, and I’m certainly not going to speculate what the far side of it will be like. Maybe nothing from this side of it will be emotionally legible to someone beyond it. But if it is, Scenebux accurately captures the vibe of standing on the brink of a great unknown.