Asma Mhalla's "Cyberpunk – Le nouveau système totalitaire" Examines Techno-Authoritarian Power

Asma Mhalla's book "Resistere in tempi oscuri (Cyberpunk – Le nouveau système totalitaire)" was published by Einaudi Maverick in 2026. The volume opens with the chapter "La distopia cyberpunk è già qui", a paraphrase of William Gibson's famous remark that the future is already here, to which the writer reportedly added years later that it is simply not evenly distributed. Mhalla's text traces the links between the power wielded by techno-oligarchs and that of increasingly authoritarian states. It draws parallels with dystopian novels of past decades that now appear to describe contemporary reality so accurately: Neuromante by Gibson himself, Philip K. Dick's "Gli androidi sognano pecore elettriche?", George Orwell's 1984, and Aldous Huxley's "Il mondo nuovo". Through these literary references, Mhalla points with unsparing clarity to the techno-fascist direction in which our society is moving. The review, published by the Italian cultural magazine Doppiozero, is by Valerio Monti and Anita Romanello and is dated Tuesday, 06/10/2026 at 03:00. The piece also notes that the techno-oligarchs cited and criticized in the book warrant closer scrutiny, though the source material does not elaborate on that point. The review frames Mhalla's work as a contribution to debates on technology, authoritarianism and the cultural imagination of dystopia.