Three Eight One starts in 2314. Archivist Rowena Savalas, a curator of the 21st-century internet—including, I assume, all the porn—comes across a story published on the net in 2024. The novel-length piece (which takes up the bulk of Three Eight One) tells the tale of Fairly, a member of a walled community that sends their youth out into the world to walk the mysterious Horned Road. Fairly’s narrative, which changes from third person to second person to first person depending on Fairly finding and activating a silver box with a red button, is broken up into bite-sized chunks, each consisting of three hundred and eight one words. We learn this factoid from Rowena, whose over 80 footnotes pepper the text.

Three Eight One is a novel of discovery—both literal and figurative. Literal in that Fairly has no idea as to what she might find as she travels down the Horned Road. Figurative in that both Fairly and Rowena are on a journey of the self that pushes against their society’s conventions. The fact they come full circle, ending up where they started, isn’t a sign of failure but one of growth. They came back with a perspective, a vision, informed by experience.

I know how academic and dry all that sounds, but Whiteley seems to be having fun playing with our expectations, situating Fairly in strange, unexpected environments—including outer space. There’s the lurking breathing man, always one step behind Fairly, and the enigmatic CHA, who may or may not be sentient pigs. And, of course, there’s Rowena’s footnotes—funny and naive,* but also curious and passionate.

Three Eight One is precisely the sort of genre work—not exactly science fiction, not strictly fantasy—that, like the work of Nina Alan, Lavie Tidhar, Adam Roberts and recently Alex Pheby, gives me hope that there’s still life in contemporary speculative fiction.

*Rowena has little to no conception of fiction, making for some amusing observations.