Seen one way, The Great Undoing is a pretty straight apocalypse thriller – something like an Australian Station Eleven. A series of pandemics, state failures and communications breakdowns leads to much of the world’s population becoming dependent on BloodTalk: first developed as immunity technology, then used to track identities, locations and bank accounts, with a predictably coercive effect on border surveillance and policing.
Historian/truth-teller Scarlet Friday is researching in London when the system crashes in a global blackout and society falls into violent chaos. Her friend and mentor, David, leads the pair on Children of Men-style break for it. His ambitious hope is to get them back undetected to a locked-down Australia, where (with an arch nod to both this country’s colonial history and its contemporary Covid politics) the BloodTalk tech was designed and distributed – and where David seems to have a vague plan to sort things out.
