John Lakerman, alternative current affairs journalist for donkeyWolf media, is sent to participate and report on a clinical trial for a newly developed, biopharmaceutical, antidepressant. While researching the article, and the disappearance of its lead researcher, Lakerman is drawn into a complex world of body augmentations, migrant labour, billionaires, a Virtual Reality Game and a series of fatally seductive mutations. How I Killed The Universal Man is a transhumanist noir taking place in a near future where environmental disaster and the advent of biological A.I is leading to the radical reorganisation of consciousness. A narrative about the unknown forces structuring narrative’s necessity, How I Killed The Universal Man begins from the premise that reality is always virtual. Thomas Kendall’s sentences form beautiful crystals that render the soul transparent. In How I Killed the Universal Man, (somewhat science fiction, somewhat philosophical thought experiment) Kendall imbues the rational anticipation of the near future with searing insight into what it means to be human. Mind-altering drugs, technological human enhancement, and a really cool video game lay the groundwork for explorations into consciousness that expand our empathy toward our future selves. – Charlene Elsby, author of Bedlam and The Devil Thinks I'm Pretty A moving, penetrating, dystopic meditation on autonomy, identity, and meaning. A warning from the future, but also from now. Daring and prescient. – Lindsay Lerman, author of I'm From Nowhere and What Are You Febrile, menacing, and alive with portent, with a grotesque and hyper-dense image repertoire that fuses Bosch and Cronenberg, How I Killed the Universal Man takes us deep into a near future where mind, body, and environment have merged in ways we can, from today's vantage, just barely comprehend. Kendall's nuanced and humane prose never abandons us on this journey to the end of consciousness, though neither does it offer any false consolation. Picking up where A Scanner Darkly, Strange Days, and Children of Men left off, this epic new masterwork immediately assumes its place in the cyberpunk canon. – David Leo Rice, author of The New House and The Pornme Trilogy