The Last Good Man Shows Us the Future of Warfare Through the Eye of a Drone

In the near future, Private Military Corporations (PMCs) are the face of warfare across much of the globe, the Blackwaters and KBRs of today exploded in power and scope. The world’s superpowers still have standing armies and wield military force, but it is the use of PMCs, often with official, if not tacit, sanction, that defines war in the mid-21st century. There are even conventions and rules of warfare the organizations follow as they carry out numerous brushfire conflicts across the globe. The patchwork of countries and regions under no official control mean there is plenty of work for PMCs, be it to deal with a rival, to rescue a hostage held by a terrorist group, or to act as proxies for larger powers. It’s the medieval Italian tradition of condottieri reimagined for the 21st century.
Meanwhile, warfare has continued to evolve through the use of drones and autonomous weapons. Evolved from the RQ-11 and Reapers of today, drones and Unarmed aerial vehicles (UAVs) are an essential part of warfare in this future. No PMC—no regular army—would dream of going into the field without drones to scout the terrain and watch for and counter threats. Increasingly, these machines are full partners in combat, as important to taking out the enemy as much as the actual soldiers—or, perhaps, much more important.
When the aftermath of a  tricky rescue operation in the Middle East’s pursues her back to the United States, True Brighton, an Army veteran and now member of PMC Requisite Operations, is confronted with the future of autonomous warfare and the cost of pursuing the truth—especially when that truth is a gun pointed into her own past, at what she always believed to be true. It is a truth that may put her at odds with the company she works for and believes in. The Last Good Man is her story.
An emphasis on military operations and thrilling pacing makes this more of an white-knuckle action read than Nagata’s earlier novels. This is, to employ a catchall phrase, much more of an airport novel than her award-winning works of science fiction. But if you want a novel with pulse-pounding action, in which soldiers square off against the futuristic machines—a novel that you won’t be able to put down once the action heats up—it delivers with the precision and firepower of a tactical missile.

Even for the action-heavy feel, the depth of the characters and the questions raised about the future of warfare—and particularly about what it means for those in the Third World—make it far more than a simple thrill ride. The book contemplates what it means when weapons become separated and separate from those who wield them. Nagata’s Red trilogy explored military officers in a world where combat was complicated by the emergence of an artificial intelligence that believed itself to be acting in the best interests of those who programmed it. The Last Good Man takes a couple steps further away from the SFnal, instead asking its questions through a techno-thriller filter—what happens when our battlefields are dominated by people tens or thousands of miles away, flying by joystick, or, even more scarily, when there is no human operator at all?
With the invention of gunpowder, war changed forever; no longer did one need to look enemies in the eye to end their lives. Today, when the U.S. launches Tomahawk missiles into Syria, North Dakota courts would-be trainees in UAVs, and ISIS uses drones of their own, The Last Good Man is not only a cracking good read, it is a novel driving first, and fast, down the road we are seemingly already set upon.
The Last Good Man is available June 20.