The Cloud Intern - by David Greenwood (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"Greenwood debuts with an acerbic near-future tale of tech and the desire for connection...[He] offers surprisingly moving insights...This appealing satire has plenty of bite." -- Publishers Weekly

While social and environmental woes roil the world below, Chris Curtis, lesser cofounder of tech giant eddy, spends his days afloat, cloud watching and chatting with an emulation of his not really dead father on the luxury blimp serving as eddy's corporate campus. As it approaches a last-gasp summit of world powers, Chris is forced from the swimming pool into the forbidding shoes of his revered, and really dead, cofounder.

At least his new intern appreciates the sunrises, so maddeningly ignored by his colleagues, and also doesn't seem to be of the entitled intern class, even if it becomes hard to ignore that her motives aboard are less peaceable than resume building. Her name is Zoraida, and her closest friend is an emulation of her former self.

Together, they become embroiled in a mass protest movement, revealing that underneath Zoraida's desire to change the world and Chris's desire to withdraw from it lies the collective loneliness of a society in which the deepest human connection has become a commodity, and deepest human weirdness may be our best hope.

Review Quotes

"...surprisingly moving . . .This appealing satire has plenty of bite."
-- Publishers Weekly

"How can this wildly inventive and brilliantly astute novel be a debut? David Greenwood writes like the mad love child of Donald Barthelme and Clarice Lispector."
-- Jenny Offill, author of Weather and Dept. of Speculation

"The Cloud Intern is a wild ride that balances the awe and loneliness of a not-so-brave new world where tech bros literally hide in the clouds. This wise, fun, expertly built debut introduces a much-needed voice in a world that desperately needs wonder."
-- Marie-Helene Bertino, author of Beautyland

"In The Cloud Intern, David Greenwood posits a dark potential future that offers us the opportunity to reflect on our current moment. An evocation of surveillance and start-up culture run amok, this book is a clear-eyed look at the forces destined to shape our planet. Absurd, subversive, and piercingly insightful, The Cloud Intern oscillates between nihilism and idealism, between manifesto and joke. I love this courageous debut."
-- Helen Phillips, author of Hum

"Desperate times call for comic fiction, and The Cloud Intern is exactly the novel we want (and need) right now. It's smart, bonkers, absurd--a wonder. Come for the billionaires' folly, stay for the wide-eyed humanism."
-- Ryan Chapman, author of The Audacity

About the Author

David Greenwood's stories have appeared in Electric Literature, Fence, Tin House online, and elsewhere. He has an MFA from Brooklyn College, where he won the Himan Brown award for fiction, and a computer science degree from Boston University. His ongoing micro-novels project, The Bubble Cannon, can be found on Substack.