Jack 49 is a drone repairman, working on units downed by the feral aliens that have taken over earth and sucked the oceans dry. The Empire State Building is buried in dust up to the viewing platform. This site in Jack’s sector haunts him, and brings up memories. He, and his teammate, a demanding red head who never comes down from their tower habitat, are the ‘cleanup crew’. They are clearing the non eradiated area that was once New York before they join the rest of humanity’s refugee population on Titan.

When something crash lands in his sector, Jack 49 begins to wonder about his memories; memories that he knows have been erased to facilitate his mission focus; memories that have driven him to collect books and seemingly trivial tokens. The best narrative device in Oblivion is the fact that the leading man is remotely controlled by a woman on a video link, and her subordinate accomplice, who happens to be his nagging wife, who essentially lives in an ivory [safety-glass is the new ivory] tower.

An alien menace, a drone scoured planet, and contact with only two humans, both compliance demanding, and one nothing but a video image, leave Jack wondering about a passage he read in Lays of Ancient Rome, concerning Horatius at the Bridge, and the concept of a ‘better’ death. The exploration of memory as identity really works in this post-apocalyptic setting.