A Hungarian fatalist convinced that the human race is a blemish on God’s otherwise perfect universe; a natural resource scientist who’s discovered that we exhaust the earth’s resources every eight days; an Ultimate Frisbee-playing man-child who’s identified a fractal pattern embedded within all matter; a failing novelist desperate for the approval of those she despises; a paralyzed philosophy professor discovering that he can make things happen simply by wanting them badly enough; and a trio of vengeful, superintelligent robots locked in a hangar in South Korea, patiently waiting for some gullible human(s) to release them.

This is a partial cast of Anthropica, a novel that puts Laszlow Katasztrofa’s beautiful vision of a universe without us to the test. Because even if Laszlow is merely, as he claims, an agent of fate, he’s the one driving this crazy machine. And once he has his team assembled, he just might-against all odds and his own expectations-be able to see his apocalyptic plan to fruition.