Ada Palmer - Too Like The Lightning (2016)

July also saw my review of Ada Palmer's 'Too Like The Lightning' at Fantasy Faction. Palmer is a historian, and her eye for sociological detail and political intrigue runs through this fascinating and unique science fiction novel, which explores a new age of Enlightenment in the Twenty-Fifth Century. Her fascination with how people could build a better world, coupled with a realisation of how fragile a better world could be and how much could go wrong, makes this an ambigious utopia comparable to Samuel R. Delany's 'Triton' or Ursula Le Guin's 'The Left Hand Of Darkness'. However Palmer very much has her own distinctive voice. I find myself very much looking forward to the sequel. Read more through at the link.

Peter Tieryas - United States Of Japan (2016)

"Every great empire has a mountain of corpses underneath it as a foundation. The Romans, the Chinese - even the Americans wiped out millions of Indians and enslaved the African natives. No one remembers those who were sacrificed. Its like our earthquakes that wipe away the glories of the past. We've used the atomic torpedo on the Americans three times and they were all launched on the same day. There's still fierce debate about whether it was even necessary. The Americans were ready to surrender."

'United States Of Japan' is an alternate history that manages to bring something fresh to the well-mined 'Axis wins World War II and rules the USA' seam whilst asking probing and pertinent questions about Imperialism, censorship and torture. Directly in dialogue with 'The Man In The High Castle', Philip K. Dick's iconic novel with a similar premise, where Dick imagines a relatively benign Japanese occupied West Coast in comparison to the Nazi occupied East, author Peter Tieryas is more keenly aware of the downsides of the Hirohito Japanese Empire, from its rigid social hierarchy to its war crimes, as well as the horrors suffered by Japanese Americans during the war. He also has a keener understanding than Dick of Japanese pop culture. The end result is a book that is both an exciting, pulpy adventure full of action, violence and giant mecha fights and a thoughtful and disturbing dissection of the tactics by which world powers are forged and maintained.
   Captain Beniko Ishimura is a video game censor. Infamous for turning in his parents as traitors when he was still a child, now he is a layabout and womaniser, overlooked for promotion by his superiors because of his attitude. His life changes when Agent Akiko Tsukino of the Tokubetsu Koto Keisatsu, the Japanese secret police, enlists his help in tracking down General Mutsuraga, whom Beniko served under in San Diego. Mutsuraga is suspected of being behind 'United States Of America', the subversive but highly popular new video game that imagines a world in which the Americans won the war, which the George Washingtons, a desperate band of American rebels, are using as their latest propaganda tactic. Their journey to the heart of San Diego is an exploration of the seedy underbelly of the Empire, the limits of Akiko's conviction in her beliefs, and the ghosts of Beniko's past.
   'United States Of Japan' opens with the Japanese armed forces in America liberating the Japanese Americans from the internment camps. The spirit of victory and jubilation among the prisoners is soon shattered by the soldiers unceremoniously killing a woman for insulting the Emperor. This is Tieryas' approach in microcosm; in-depth knowledge of the horrors of World War II are used to show the sinister flipside to life in the United States of Japan. Each of these things in turn tells us something about our reality. The world in 'United States Of Japan', by the lat 80's, has advances in biotechnology far outstripping our own, with complex human-machine interfaces, cures for most cancers, and work being done on limb regeneration. But then Tieryas makes it clear where all these medical advances have come from by invoking Unit 731, the Japanese army's biological and chemical warfare department that carried out lethal human experimentation, which in this alternate universe is still going strong. The impressive life-saving medical advances have been built on human suffering and death. This in turn reminds the reader that modern research on hypothermia and phosphene gas has referenced the Nazi deathcamp experiments, and that the members of Unit 731 were never brought to trial in return for giving the Americans access to their research on bio-weapons. Similarly, the USJ is in possession of technology far more advanced than our own, with mobile personal computers and a rudimentary form of internet already in widespread use, not to mention the giant mechas. But again this technological advancement has been achieved and driven through years of war providing the funding and inclination, in much the same way that the American space programme was built on the rocket science of the Nazis. Thus the book, through the remove of its alternate history conceit, reminds us how many of our modern day creature comforts are tainted by the horrific legacy of the genocides of World War II.
   However 'United States Of Japan' isn't only concerned with the legacy of the past. Indeed any worthwhile alternate history doesn't only provide an engaging answer to the question, "What if?", it should also use that different perspective to shed new light on aspects of our own world. The book is also very much about the biggest anxieties facing the United States of America today: surveillance, torture, terrorism, and racism as a fallout of colonialism. The USJ is a surveillance state worthy of Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'. Beniko's turning in of his parents even echoes a plot point from that book. The people live in fear of the secret police, and live in a world of censorship where history is rewritten. Echoing Winston's job rewriting old newspapers, Beniko works as a censor regulating video games. This demonstrates how Tieryas updates Orwell's paranoia for the digital age; part of Beniko's job as a games censor is monitoring people's choice of games and their choices within the game to root out subversive thought. Rather than betray themselves by seditious writing, the modern day potential revolutionary is more likely to be given away by their browser history. This ties into our current fears that the government could be tracking us via our internet profiles and IP addresses. Indeed, there is thematic significance in the George Washingtons spreading their revolutionary message via video game, the internet acting both as a tool for control but also as a space where subversive messages can be spread and insurrection can happen. It's also a powerful argument for video games being an artform in their own right, one where conversations about politics and how to build a better world can happen.
   One of the major themes of the book is the dehumanising nature of torture. Tieryas is correct in portraying torture not as a useful tool for garnering intelligence information, which it isn't, but as a tool used by brutal regimes for imposing fear, humiliation and control over victims. Part of Akiko's job in the Tokko is administering torture to suspects; the goal is rarely to get information but usually to frighten or punish those that the Tokko has already deemed guilty. Over the course of the book she finds herself subjected to her own methods when she is first captured by the George Washingtons and later framed by her own superiors. Despite the presence of SFnal forms of torture, like genetically engineered viruses designed to kill prisoners in the maximum amount of pain, many of the tortures portrayed in the book are more grounded, from 'excrement torture' to flesh eating ants to the interrogation techniques used by the agents. Tieryas excels in portraying torture deglamourised, in all its horror. It is the domain of the secret police not because of its value as an information gathering tool, but because it is part of the general architecture of fear and paranoia that powers a police state. As Akiko suffers through the pain and humiliation she inflicted on others, she comes to have a new found respect and empathy for her victims which makes her question her fanatical belief in the Emperor.
   'United States Of Japan' explores the West's fear of home-grown terrorism, and how this relates to the USA's and the United Kingdom's legacy of colonialism and imperialism. The George Washingtons are violent murderous insurgents, but Tieryas takes the time to show us where they are coming from. They are rebelling against an oppressive system of invading rulers who have overwritten their history and their culture and have imposed a racially segregated hierarchy upon them in which they are second class citizens. This is a direct reflection of the USA's and Britain's colonial past, the conflict engineered by the USJ in San Diego echoing these countries' abysmal record in the third world. Tieryas explores how the fallout from a racist and oppressive system can only be violence, the kicking back of people forced into impossible situations. It is this complexity that makes the book so compelling.
   All of which suggests that 'United States Of Japan' is heavy going; the impressive thing is that it manages to cover all this thematic ground in an enjoyable, pulpy action adventure. Tieryas takes us on a tour of the underbelly of USJ society, a trek through the grime and gunge of strip malls inhabited by sushi restaurants and hookers through to yakuza-run offshore video game tournaments. The books takes an infectious joy in showing the weird, wonderful and terrifying subcultures and characters that manage to thrive beneath the cracks of an oppressive dystopia. Like Dick's 'The Man In The High Castle', 'United States Of Japan' is interested in how people live in an intrinsically corrupt world. Nowhere is this more clear than in the struggles of its two main characters. Akiko's journey is one towards redemption; as she sees more of the hypocrisy of her own government and the secret police, and understands more of the pain and suffering she has been inflicting on people. she learns to question the things she has accepted all her life as the truth. Beniko's story is no less compelling; learning that he turned in his parents is the kind of thing that immediately distances a protagonist from the reader. However the more we get to learn about him and his history, the more we learn that much of what he shows the world is a front, and that underneath is someone who does actually have an admirable moral code. The final section of the book recontextualises his actions in a way that is both surprising and finally brings the character into clearer focus, ensuring that the characters as well as the world stay with the reader long after the book is finished.


 
 
 

Lauren Beukes - Moxyland (2008)

"'What, like the kids' games? That Moxyland shit? Murder and mayhem. Training them to be savage, don't you think? It's not about making friends with kids all over the world, it's about getting ahead, getting one over.'
"'But don't you think it's appropriate? Considering.'"

'Moxyland' is a brutally cynical yet frighteningly believable look at state surveillance and viral marketing, and how digital technology's utopian potential can be co-opted by forces of social control. Set in a vividly realised near future Cape Town, and shot through with future slang, it follows its four young, frequently unsympathetic protagonists as they struggle to express their individuality in an increasingly corporate-sponsored world, and find out, in no certain terms, who really holds all the power. Lauren Beukes deftly evokes a dystopian near future, a divided society living in fear, still suffering from the after effects of apartheid. She uses her characters' differing backgrounds to explore the diversity of different peoples living in the city. Through the ambitions, fears, prejudices and viewpoints of her characters, Beukes expertly dissects the attitudes, disparities and jealously-guarded privileges that have shaped their society.
   The plot is kicked off when Kendra, an up and coming photographer, is injected with a nanobot tattoo by the makers of the soft drink Ghost as part of an underground marketing campaign. She soon finds herself caught up in the schemes of Toby, a smug, arrogant trust-funded blogger, Tendeka, a homosexual would-be revolutionary trying to balance his anti-corporate ethics with the need to secure funding for his programmes to improve the lives of Cape Town's streetkids, and Lerato, an AIDS orphan who has been put through education by corporate funding and now works for Communique in a high powered corporate position that she hopes to advance from by selling company secrets. As all four of them fight for their own autonomy against the government and corporate forces that control their lives, the full nature of that control is revealed, along with the awful trade-off that both the characters and their society has made of their rights for the illusion of comfort and safety.
   'Moxyland' presents a chilling portrait of a government which, hand in glove with the corporations that prop it up, has gone to war with its citizens in the name of protecting them. This is a government that uses the threat of terrorism to justify releasing bio-engineered Marburg virus on a subway full of people, that uses fake identities over the internet to lure would-be dissidents out of the woodwork, then uses those dissidents to justify greater power for itself. Beukes draws out the similarities between the totalitarian government and the corporations that prop it up; both are self-serving institutions that are nominally meant to have the interests of the people at heart, but both place their own bottom lines above human rights, and even human lives. The book is darkly cynical about the idea of any person maintaining their own agency in such an atmosphere. All of the characters believe they are acting in their own interests and to further their own agendas, but in the end all of them are revealed to have been manipulated by government and corporate forces to serve ends other than their own.
   Beukes asks some very interesting and pertinent questions about digital technology and internet culture, especially about their utopian intent verses their use as tools for government surveillance, corporate spying, and even the petty and vindictive use that people frequently put them to. The book takes its name from a children's game in the novel, a massive multiplayer online role playing game in which the rules are enforced by a cute monster character called Moxy. Tony plays it in order to earn some quick cash, and observes that the game doesn't encourage children from all over the world to play and interact with each other, but rewards those who form gangs and bully those weaker than them, which is cynically pointed out as being good practice for the real world. It's also echoed in what the government in the book is doing in its plan to entrap terrorists, hiding behind fake identities and sock puppets, the standard operating procedures of your standard internet troll, and it foreshadows Lerato's ultimate recruitment into the government's secret internet security force, after training in the playgrounds of petty corporate theft.
   It also goes some way to explaining the selfish, narcissistic outlook of the characters, who are very much products of their society. The characters are all compelling and well developed, and the book explores how their various flaws stem from the intersection of their personalities and their social positions. Lerato's ruthless ambition partially arises from her upbringing as an AIDS orphan with very little in the way of future prospects if she didn't get a very comparative corporate sponsorship. Tony is intelligent, witty and charming, but because he is a pampered, spoiled rich kid who has never had to do a day's work in his life, he is sickeningly self-obsessed and self-absorbed, with almost a sociopathic lack of empathy. His obsession with digital technology and live-blogging everything through the cameras in his jacket contrast him with the more down-to-earth Kendra, who has an abiding interest in analogue technology, reflecting her more grounded perspective before she is corrupted by selling her soul to a corporation. At the beginning, Tendeka does genuinely seem to care for the streetkids that he looks after, however his preciousness over his ideals, which lead to him not accepting corporate sponsorship for his streetkids project, winds up stopping him from helping them, unlike his lover Ashraf who is just as idealistic but a lot more practical. Tendeka has his family's money to fall back on, which allows him to be picky about where he gets his money from, but Ashfar, who comes from a poorer working class background, doesn't have that luxury, and realises the importance in actually getting the work done. Tendeka's own high ideals and his desperation ultimately make him an easy pawn for the government, and he winds up causing much more damage than he does helping people, despite his good intentions.
   'Moxyland' shows science fiction at its best, examining in unflinching detail our interface with technology and how this is changing both our society and ourselves. It does so with a diverse range of well-developed and believable characters, and with powerful, succinct prose. It ranks as one of the most disturbing and haunting dystopias in recent history. The end result is a stark warning that has only become more pertinent in the years since it was published.
 

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - Hard To Be A God (1973)

"How I'd like to let out some of the hatred that's accumulated over the past twenty-four hours, but it looks like I'll have no luck. Let us remain humane, forgive everyone, and be calm like the gods. Let them slaughter and desecrate, we'll be calm like the gods. The gods need not hurry, they have eternity ahead."

In 'Hard To Be A God', Arkady and Boris Strugatsky explore the rise of totalitarianism, and the inadequacies of theories of history to deal with actual history unfolding. The story is set on a planet with medieval level technology, where the kingdom of Arkanar is undergoing a power shift as the king's minister, in a flurry of anti-intellectual paranoia, is creating a pervasive and controlling state based on fear and oppression. The main character, Anton, is a historian from a utopian Earth of the future, sent to study the unfolding of history on an alien planet, is bound by a rule of non-interference similar to the Prime Directive in Star Trek; he does what he can to save the lives of the intellectuals hounded by Don Reba's storm troopers, but he is not allowed to interfere with the natural unfolding of history. As the situation in Arkanar grows more and more violent and out of control, Anton finds himself increasingly at odds with his superiors, who insist that, as their theory of history does not allow for the development of totalitarianism out of a medieval society, the situation cannot be as desperate as he paints it.
   'Hard To Be A God' deals with the key theme that runs through much of the Strugatsky's work, censorship and the artist's struggle against it. As in 'Definitely Maybe', the novel features artists who come up against powerful forces wishing to silence them, in this case Don Reba's storm troopers, and, as they would in that later novel, the Strugatsky brothers explore the different ways in which different people respond to censorship and state-sponsored oppression. The Strugatskys quite rightly identify censorship of ideas as a key sign that something has gone deeply wrong with a society. Arkanar is being manipulated by Don Reba into fearing and distrusting new ideas and perspectives, vilifying and persecuting the very people who are capable of dragging them out of the middle ages, something that can only lead to its stagnation. Anton tries desparately to save the artists and scientists of Arkanar, some of whom are stripped of honour and property and beaten, imprisoned, executed, or else compromise their art and integrity by pandering to the strictures set out by the state.
   The book's setting allows it to mingle the tropes of science fiction and Fantasy, and to subvert the standard middle ages setting of much Fantasy in interesting ways. Because we experience the world through the eyes of Anton, in the guise of Don Rumata, the well-connected noble he pretends to be in  Arkanar, we see it through a perspective closer to our own than those who live in it. Anton is disgusted by both the social injustices of the rigidly feudal system and the technological backwardness of the people who live in it. By pointing out how bad the people smell because of the lack of modern hygiene makes the medieval setting, which could be overly familiar to readers of genre fiction, especially vivid and resonant for the reader. This allows the Strugatskys to humourously satirise the upper classes, who strut around assuming their natural superiority whilst appearing to Anton and the reader as drunken buffoons. It's also part of how the Strugatskys subvert the general tropes and expectations of the book's medieval, Fantasy-esque setting. 'Hard To Be A God' deconstructs the idea of chivalrous noblemen as brutally as George R. R. Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire, with the Strugatskys portraying them as self-interested, aggressive, drunken boors. Similarly, the book plays with Fantasy mythology. There's an excellent passage where the authors describe the legends and myths that have built up around the Hiccup Forest, before revealing that they have been put in place there and exaggerated to hide the Earth people's secret base.
   'Hard To Be A God' is thoroughly cynical about human nature. While it features, on its periphery, a utopian society on Earth, it is fully aware of the horrors of history that humanity has had to go through to get to its current state of enlightenment. Don Reba's name is derived from Lavrenty Beria, Stalin's brutal secret police chief, and his horrific methods and brutality echo those of his real life basis. His betrayal and destruction of his own storm troopers when they get too powerful echoes Hitler and Himmler's destruction of Ernst Rohm and the SA, and his torture chambers are reminiscent of the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. The Strugatskys acknowledge the violence and suffering which have shaped human history, but also the pettiness of human nature that drives much of history. The noblemen make ludicrous decisions because they're permanently drunk, which makes them particularly easy for Reba to manipulate. The feudal rights of the Barons Pampa wind up having to be fought for each generation in a wasteful, expensive and unnecessary war which always has the same outcome, all for silver mines which cost less than the war does and laughably trivial privileges for the Barons. The Stugatskys have a hope for what humanity can become, but despair at its violence, cruelty and idiocy. This despair ultimately overtakes poor Anton, as circumstances get to the stage where he is no longer able to stand by dispassionately. He reaches the point where whatever he does he winds up with blood on his hands, but his decisive action only causes more death and destruction.

Anne Charnock - A Calculated Life (2013)

"Our emotions kid us that life is better than the sum of its unremarkable parts... Our delusions are our best defense."

Anne Charnock's 'A Calculated Life' is a coming of age story, in which Jayna, a Simulant - a biologically and technologically enhanced human created to work for corporations, realises that her worldview and perspective are limited by her routine life, and goes in search of new experiences that open up the world to her. Much of the power of 'A Calculated Life' comes from its strong focus on character and setting, allowing the reader to fully inhabit Jayna's everyday life and the fine details of the near-future Manchester she inhabits. The book also uses its central conceit to ask pertinent questions about the interface between humanity and technology, with rare and admirable depth.
   Simulants join a long line of augmented, post-humans and artificial humans in SF literature, film and TV which have been used to explore what it means to be human. However a number of things make 'A Calculated Life' stand out from previous treatments of this idea. The Simulants in Charnock's Manchester aren't used as weapons or for dangerous space mining missions, but their increased intelligence and focus makes them popular as office workers in corporations. Jayna works for a company that analyses data to predict global trends, and much of the book describes her normal routine as she works at her office job, has meals with her friends in the housing accommodation for Simulants, or visits colleagues' houses. Charnock's focus on the everyday allows us to experience first hand the texture and shades of Jayna's life, making it easy to empathise with her. It also shows how the SFnal elements of the story - the Simulants, the genetic enhancements and biological implants - fit into the normal world we recognise and understand. This makes the world of 'A Calculated Life' all the more believable.
   Charnock doesn't just make sure that the Simulants work in the fabric of everyday life; she also demonstrates how they would fit in to the wider political and socio-economic environment. The advent of enhanced humans results in a recodifying of class structures. The best jobs are only available to people with biological enhancements and a clean genetic background, whilst those unable to afford implants or with genetic quirks in their family background are relegated to the underclass, only allowed the most menial jobs and never allowed to rise above a fixed pay grade, and sent out to live in the enclaves. The Simulants themselves, while guaranteed jobs and free from worries of food or accommodation, are essentially slaves, owned by the corporations that bought them. For all their incredible intellect and problem solving powers, they essentially have very little in the way of rights. They can be recalled by the company that makes and sells them for glitches such as taking a passionate interest in anything other than work, or developing personal relationships, in which case they will have their memories erased, be reconditioned and sold to a different company under a different name. For all this, their guaranteed jobs makes them a natural target of resentment.
   It is as a character study of Jayna that 'A Calculated Life' is most emotionally affecting. The effect of randomness on her forecasts cause Jayna to start on a journey of self-discovery. Charnock does an excellent job of describing how Jayna's worldview expands as she interacts with more different people and experiences what life is like for others. Jayna's experience of visiting Dave's house in the enclaves teaches her far more about what life is like for the people living there than her statistics ever could. The book doesn't shy away from exploring the tragic aspects of the Simulants' condition. Jayna visits her boss's house, and her simple fascination with her colleague's family speaks volumes. Jayna has never had a childhood or a family; she has never experienced feeling loved or cared for. Most of the Simulants' glitches manifest in tragically mundane ways - an office affair, visiting a restaurant to find out what curry tastes like, singing passionately at a karaoke contest. It is the simple pleasures that the Simulants are denied; the simple things that give shape and flavour to our lives. Charnock forces us to consider how cruel it would be to deny people theses things. It's also a very nice touch that none of the Simulants' glitches are violent or destructive.
   Despite its dystopian tenor and tragic ending, 'A Calculated Life' is not without hope. The defining relationship in the novel is between Janya and Dave, an unaugmented worker from the enclaves. Despite the differences between them in terms of biology and technology, they are still able to form a meaningful relationship. The book shows optimism that, despite whatever technological or biological enhancements people may have in the future, they will retain a core of humanity that will not be lost, and in a more general sense that there is a sense of common humanity we retain and share across any and all divides. 'A Calculated Life' also shows that it is possible to escape the corporate rat race, and that analytical intelligence can be intensely useful in practical situations if applied sensibly, as, (spoiler alert), Dave and Sunjin, another one of the Simulants from Jayna's accommodation, manage to escape the recallers and make a living for themselves farming. The book also retains hope that humanity can never be completely erased or suppressed, as the end hints that Jayna's mindwipe was not completely effective.

Octavia E. Butler - Parable Of The Sower (1993)

"In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn."

Octavia E. Butler's 'Parable Of The Sower' is a chilling look at an all too believable dystopian future. Set in the 2020s, it portrays a USA brought to its knees by economic and social collapse. Unchecked climate change has led to massive crop failures, causing the price of food to skyrocket. Shortsighted and self-serving social policies passed by the government have led to rampant poverty, debt slavery, starvation and drug abuse, whilst the rich and ever-dwindling middle class hide in gated communities from the increasingly disaffected and disenfranchised poor. 'Sower' is such an unsettling read today because these issues that Butler was writing about in the 1990s are only becoming more relevant with each passing day. As the destruction of our environment for profit continues apace, the gap between the haves and have-nots widens, and events of the past year demonstrate just how thoroughly broken the US justice system is, Butler's novel serves as a timely reminder of the endgame for the path we are currently on. Yet for all that it is a stern warning, Butler retains hope that there is a better way, and that we can build a fairer, wiser, more just, more sustainable existence.
   'Parable Of The Sower' tells the story of Lauren Olamina, a preacher's daughter who lives in a gated community, one of the few remaining enclaves of the middle class in southern California. Lauren's community is not rich, but it can just about support itself, which is enough to make it the target of envy and attacks by the increasing numbers of street poor, those living in utter poverty outside the walls of the compound who must resort to thievery and worse to survive. Lauren realises that it is only a matter of time before their community will fall to thieves or arsonists, and tries to prepare as best she can for life outside the walls by reading and learning important skills, whilst those around her live in denial. She also begins to develop a new religion, Earthseed, based only on what she knows herself to be true and useful, around the central idea that God, the only constant, is change, and that while change is inevitable how we react to it is our choice. Her family and her community is destroyed in a fire, and she begins her dangerous journey through the wreckage of California to the relative safety of the mountains in the north, building a new Earthseed community as she goes.
   The story is told through Lauren's journal articles, so it is primarily through her eyes that we experience the world of 'Sower'. In some ways, 'Sower' is a cousin to another disturbingly prescient 1993 dystopian novel told through the journal of an adolescent girl, Jack Womack's 'Random Acts Of Senseless Violence'. Both Lauren and Womack's Lola Hart lose their family to violence, and must adjust to their new life on the street. But while Lola Hart descends into brutality and becomes alienated from everybody she knows, Lauren has, thanks to Earthseed, a much stronger moral compass, and so while she has to make harsh and difficult decisions in order to survive in her new environment, she never loses her essential humanity in the process, and as her journey continues and she grows as a person, she realises that she can help more people and is able to reach out and connect with others.
   Butler manages to convey information about her world almost entirely without exposition, instead exploring her characters in depth and using their attitudes and approaches to delineate the world they live in. While Lauren is the central viewpoint character, because she is an astute observer of people and a devoted chronicler, we also get to see the views of a variety of different characters. We get our first glimpse of life outside the compound from Lauren's brother, Keith, who runs away from home to make a living for himself outside. Keith falls for the dark glamour of a life lived outside of the rules of society and, more crucially, the rules of his father. He makes his money from stealing and dealing with drug dealers, addicts and gangs, and ultimately is horrifically tortured and killed for reasons that are never revealed. Telling details about the world are evoked through the differences in perspective of the older and younger characters, with Bankole and Lauren's father still having an instinctive trust of authority figures like the police and the government that Lauren and her generation find baffling.
   Butler's other works, notably 'Kindred' and the Patternist series demonstrate that she has a keen understanding of the horrific ways in which people have historically used and abused each other, and her knowledge and understanding of this inform the horrors of the future she imagines in 'Sower'. The debt slavery legalised by President Donner is explored in all its horror. Butler shows how the government's scheme to remove minimum wage and environmental and worker protection legislation results in a situation where the workers have absolutely no rights, can be sucked into debt for the company and bought and sold at the company's whim, with children inheriting their parents' debt on their death. Butler also explores the extremes that those living on the streets are frequently reduced to to earn the next meal. Many women are forced into prostitution to feed themselves and their children, and the threat of murder, violence and rape is never far away.
   However, while Butler explores with her usual brutal honesty the absolute worst that humanity is capable of doing, what makes 'Sower' stand out among post-apocalyptic dystopias is that it also shows humanity at its best. Which is quite a thing to be able to say about a book that includes pregnant teen cannibals. While the destruction of Lauren's old community is tragic, it does lead to her forming her own community, one built around more important guidelines than material wealth. Lauren's new Earthseed community is pleasingly diverse, as she joins up first with Harry, one of the white boys from her compound, and Zahra, one of the wives of a rich man form the compound who bought her off the streets, and then with a range of people she encounters on the road, from Jill and Allie, two white sisters they rescue form the ruins of their house to Emery, a half Japanese, half African American escaped slave on the run with her son, to Travis and Natividad, an African American and Mexican couple. The only conditions for joining are that they won't steal and that they will help and protect each other. The horror of all that Lauren and her friends encounter on the road is contrasted with how this disparate group of individuals learns to care and understand each other, and becomes willing to start a new community together built around their shared values. Lauren's Earthseed philosophy suggests that, when working together to improve each other's lives and in balance with nature, the stars themselves are the limit. The timely moral of Butler's story is that we can build a better world and achieve great things, but only if we think long and hard about the path we're on and make the appropriate changes.
 
 

Ken MacLeod - Intrusion (2012)

"'The neoclassical... uh, the standard model of a truly free market assumes that everyone in the market has perfect information. They must know what choices they're making, otherwise it isn't a free and rational choice, right?' He raised a didactic finger, half-smiling in acknowledgement that he was about to forestall a sensible but predictable objection. 'Now obviously,' he went on, 'this doesn't actually obtain in the real world. Nobody really has perfect information. In fact, even if we make it a bit more realistic, they don't have all or even most of the relevant information. So for the market to be really free, it has to work as if everyone involved had perfect information, or at least as if they had all the relevant information. This is where the social side comes from - the state, of course along with civil society, the unions and campaigns and so on, steps in to allow people to make the choices they would have made if they'd had that information. Because these are the really free choices.'"

Ken MacLeod's 'Intrusion' is a thoroughly unsettling dystopia, not least because of its immediate relevance. Whereas many classics of dystopian fiction take a troubling aspect of their current society and turn it up to eleven, 'Intrusion' points out how many of the standard tropes of dystopian fiction are simply an accepted part of our every day lives. The world in this book, with its state surveillance through CCTV and data mining, its government-sanctioned torture and police stop and search powers, is not terrifying because it's a hitherto-unseen endgame on the path we're taking; it's terrifying because it's so damn familiar. The other thing that sets 'Intrusion' apart is that it portrays a democratic dystopia. The atrocities are not carried out by a brutal dictator crushing resistance to maintain his grip on power; they are carried out by a democratically elected government that genuinely believes it is acting for the safety and best interests of the people. Ken MacLeod achieved all of this without resorting to hysteria or soapbox preaching, with a tight plot and well drawn characters.
   In the near future, a pill has been developed that prevents birth defects by rewriting the infant's genetic code in the womb. Islington mother Hope Morrison refuses to take the pill, and finds herself under increasing pressure from health workers, her peers, and ultimately the government. Not taking the pill hasn't yet been made illegal, and Hope has no religious or moral motivations for refusing to take it. Objections to Hope's decision are framed in terms of 'what's best for the child', a frequent fall back for governments and institutions that want to regulate what a woman does to her body. And so Hope's personal decision becomes the concern of child welfare services and puts her on the terrorist watch list. Geena Fernandez, a social scientist, and her activist friend Maya, take an interest in Hope's case and find a potential way out for her: her husband Hugh and her son have a gene, a mutation of rhodopsin which detects tachyons and so allows them to see the future.
   'Intrusion' has some moments where it slyly pokes fun of academia, with the meta-meta-scientist winning a prize for coming to the conclusion that the only person his recursive studies benefit is himself, but at the same time it makes a serious point about how the very tools that should allow us to challenge and deconstruct hegemony can also be used to prop it up. After Geena is tortured by the police as a result of racial profiling and targeted entrapment, she turns to her academic supervisor, who as a published critic of the establishment she expects to be outraged, but he merely points out that the purpose of all his left-wing rhetoric is not to change the system but to perpetuate the system as it is, and tells her she is better off not kicking off a fuss about these things. In a direct shout out to my favourite scene in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Geena says to him, "They got to you, too!", and he replies, "They got to me a long time ago." I like this because it made me grin, but also because the two characters' positions reflect Winston and O'Brien's in Orwell's book whilst pointing out the differences between the dystopias in the two books. Geena's naivety has resulted in her being betrayed by her mentor, but not because he's working for the thought police, rather that his whole intellectual outlook is merely rhetorical.
   The society in 'Intrusion' only works because it has the popular support of the people who live under it. Much of what makes the book so chilling is that the tech is so instantly recognisable, both in its shape - people use mobile phones, tablets and electronic glasses - and in the way that the presence of gadgets that track and log your every move is so internalised in the characters. Once Hope and Hugh are on the terrorist watch list it is of course very easy for the government to compile information from the security cameras Hugh himself placed in their London flat, their mobiles and their gadgets, to get a comprehensive picture of not just where they are or what they are doing but what they were doing and talking about in the lead up to their run to Lewis. Similarly police profiling, interrogation and torture is simply accepted as part of daily life. Out of the major characters, Geena and her colleague were tortured due to racial profiling, Maya was tortured because she's an activist, and Hugh is tortured on terrorist charges because he was carrying an air gun when he went on the run with his family. The police have the power to hold someone in custody for sixty four days without charging them, and once you are suspected of being a terrorist you can be disappeared. The government justifies this by saying it is protecting the safety of its citizens and preventing terrorism. Both Hope and Hugh reflect that, once they are caught, it doesn't really matter what they're being accused of or if legally they are entirely innocent. And, as Orwell pointed out in Nineteen Eighty-Four, you don't torture people to get information out of them, you do it to break them. Hugh and Hope are only released in the end, and their son Nick returned to them, because the discovery of the genetic ability to perceive the future, and Hugh and Nick's ability to enter and return from this future place, is more useful to the government than making an example of them would be.
   And what of the Naxals, the vandals at the gate, the terrorists who have no fixed ideology but just want to  burn civilisation to the ground? These are the ultimate bogeymen of the twenty first century, a convenient tool to keep the populace frightened, a name to invoke in the House of Commons in order to pass more and more intrusive laws. It's not made explicit in the novel whether or not they actually exist. However Hugh and Nick's vision of the future is of a return to barbarism, people living after a technological apocalypse. The Naxals are the ultimate negation; they are against modern technology, modern society, and the modern way of life. And ultimately oppressive regimes tend to have their own half life built into them because people don't like being treated like shit at the end of the day. Torturing innocent people breeds anger and resentment. By the end of the book Hugh has figured out how the Naxals would have to achieve their goals, and while before his experience being tortured by the authorities he would have reported it like a good citizen, after his treatment by them he has no intention of doing so.
 
 

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - Definitely Maybe (1976)

"Well then, buddy, how do you expect to explain fantastic events without a fantastic hypothesis?"

Dmitri Malianov is on the verge of a major breakthrough, a discovery that will recontextualise the entire field of astrophysics, Nobel prize winning stuff. So he's sent his wife and kid away so he can concentrate. Unfortunately poor Dmitri can't get a break. First a delivery arrives with crates of vodka and caviar, then a ludicrously attractive woman turns up in a short skirt. And when he still refuses to be put off his work, that's when the government heavies turn up threatening him. Speaking to his friends, he finds out that they too have been on the verge of great discoveries in their own quite disparate fields before becoming similarly distracted. Someone, or perhaps something, really doesn't want them to make these discoveries.
   In 'Definitely Maybe' the Strugatsky brothers examine what happens when the human spirit is faced with an immovable force that cannot be reasoned with. It is a chilling work of intense paranoia, made all the more powerful for being rooted in the Strugatskies' real life experiences writing science fiction in soviet Russia, where they frequently faced censorship. In the afterword Boris Strugatsky explains the difficulty they faced at every turn publishing this very book itself. There is an undercurrent of bitterness and frustration evident in 'Definitely Maybe' that gives its satirical humour a real bite.
   The Strugatskies are masters of tight plotting. Despite its short length, 'Definitely Maybe' is perfectly formed. The creeping sense of inescapable dread is expertly built up, culminating in a pile up of unlikely reveals, each designed only to further obfuscate and misdirect the protagonist. While he and his friends desperately try to come up with some plausible explanation to explain their circumstance, poor Dmitri is constantly having the rug pulled from under him. The explanation of a jealous supercivilisation determined to stop humanity from developing to a level where it could compete with them only makes sense to these characters because they are clutching at straws, hoping against all available sense and evidence that they are up against something that can be understood or reasoned with. Dmitri's learned friend Vecherovsky comes up with the theory that it is not another civilisation bringing humanity's brightest and best minds to a screeching halt, it is a natural force that exists to limit the extent to which a civilisation can progress. This idea is rather more interesting than the concept of malicious alien intelligence precisely because a force of nature is something physical and absolute that cannot be argued or reasoned with, like gravity. It's a potent metaphor for the force that cannot be grappled with, because it both appeals to our sense of knowledge and science, in that there are natural limits on any animal population which of course includes human, as well as invoking an almost Lovecraftian horror of a vast and indifferent cosmos next to which we will always be insignificant.
   But what 'Definitely Maybe' is really interested in is how people react in the face of such a force. The Strugatsky brothers write knowing full well that everyone has their price. If a force you cannot fight offers you everything you could possibly want with one hand and threatens to annihilate you and everyone you care about with the other, what choice do you have? Is it possible for a person still to have integrity in a system where the cards are so comprehensively stacked against you? These are the big questions 'Definitely Maybe' wrestles with. Dmitri sees his friends reduced to spineless cowards who, while they have everything they desire, will never achieve anything with their lives. However, because he has a wife and child and would be putting them in danger otherwise, he too capitulates and gives up his life's work and his shot at greatness. However, his friend Vecherovsky, who has no family ties, takes it on himself to collect Dmitri's and all the others' work so that he can work on it and preserve it for future generations to work on. The story ends on a hopeful note, albeit ambiguously. Humanity can still struggle on against such forces, because concepts such as science and the truth are important.
 

Jack Womack – Random Acts Of Senseless Violence (1993)

“Lookabout people. Beef me overlong and I groundbound you express. Down down down you go down and I be bottomed out set to catch. Snatch your whispers and tape what plays then hit rewind and scream you to sleep, siren you ass and then ex you proper. Lookabout all you. Spec your mirror and there I be. Crazy evilness be my design if that’s what needs wearing. All people herebound be evil-souled heartside, no ho they sweet talk. Shove do push and push do shove and everybody in this world leave lovelost hereafter. Lookabout. Chase me if you want. Funnyface me if you keen but mark this when I go chasing I go catching. Eye cautious when you step out people cause I be running streetwild come nightside and nobody safes when I ride. I bite. Can’t cut me now. Can’t fuck me now. Can’t hurt me now. No more. No more.”

‘Random Acts Of Senseless Violence’ is the most brutal, the most disturbingly prescient and the downright best work of dystopian fiction I’ve read in a while. It’s a great piece of writing, imbued with enjoyable future slang. It’s also a reminder of what a powerful tool SF can be to engage with issues in the real world. Although it was written in the 90s and is clearly – vividly – set in a pre-gentrification New York, its setting of a world where capitalism in hyperdrive has lead to economic and social collapse is distressingly familiar.    

   Our viewpoint into this world is Lola Hart, a smart and level-headed 12 year old girl in a lower middle class family who receives a diary for her birthday. Due to an increased difficulty in finding jobs in their own field and escalating debt, her family is forced to move from their nice middle class house to a poorer area. What follows is a process of education and transformation, as Lola discovers just how sheltered her life has been up until this point, and that she needs to adapt to her new surroundings in order to survive. News events previously confined to the TV screen, such as mass riots, feral gangs roaming the neighbourhood or the army occupying the streets, has become an unavoidable part of her daily life. Five presidents are assassinated in one year, the economic recession becomes so bad the government decides to print new denominations of money, and Lola’s parents are hopeless at saving money and supporting their children. While her father works himself to an early grave, her mother sedates herself and her sister withdraws, Lola adapts and survives.

   Womack uses the framing device of Lola’s diary very well. It’s a great way to really get inside the protagonist’s head, and you can mark her progress as her voice mutates from standard English bursting with enthusiasm and grammatical errors as you might expect from a child, to the hard future slang she learns off the street with her new friends. The future slang is so good I almost wish the whole book was written like this, in the manner of A Clockwork Orange or Riddley Walker, but the cumulative effect of experiencing the change is worth Womack opening the book normally. Too the point, choppy and violent, with a lot of plausible-deniability-providing passives for verbs, the slang actually tells you a fair bit about the people who use it, and is just a whole lot of fun. However the emotional range Womack is able to convey, with and without the slang, is what is truly impressive. By the book’s devastating ending, Lola sounds heartbreakingly world-weary for anyone, let alone a child of 12.

   ‘Random Acts Of Senseless Violence’ is also noticeable for its natural and positive portrayal of the lesbian relationship between Lola and her friend Izzy, and Izzy’s relationship with Jude. Izzy and Jude are African American girls around Lola’s age whose gang she falls in with when her family moves. Their friendship and relationship is never portrayed as anything other than loving and supportive, and they are engaging and well-rounded characters in their own right. Womack also deftly subverts any snobbery, having them reveal just how smart and ambitious they are in a game of make believe that echoes one played with Lola’s public school friends at the beginning of the novel. Lola’s old friends come off as petty, pampered and narrow-minded by comparison.

   It is impossible to talk about this book without mentioning Womack’s Manhattan. The city is evoked as vividly and as graphically as Delany’s Bellona, yet any mythic allure is utterly seeped in griminess and seediness. I cannot think of any other novel, let alone SF novel, that so intentionally drags the reader down the roughest of back alleys to expose the heart of corruption. This is beautifully reflected in the world of politics, the conniving politicians, and the implied arranged assassinations. The sleaze of late Rome is conjured up by how the succession of forgettable presidents, king for a day, step up to power and profess to be sorry about the death of their predecessor and exert ever more insane and draconian laws, like so many rival gangsters in The Pit.

   Lola needs to be adaptable in order to survive the book. Over the course of the narrative Womack really puts her through the shredder. Her father dies, cutting off the family’s main source of income to boot, her mother becomes increasingly ill, her sister is put into the care of her horrid, snobby aunt Chrissie and Lola’s increasingly erratic behaviour drives Izzy away from her and back into Jude’s arms. As she says, “The world brutalizes however you live it whatever you do.” Her adaptability allows her to continue to survive despite all this, but at the cost of her previous identity. Ultimately there has to be a line somewhere. Jude and Izzy understand this because they grew up with the street, Lola is new to it so she has a harder time appreciating it. Hence how the ‘random senselessness’ comes into it; Jude and Izzy are frequently violent, but always for a reason. They steal but they dupe rather than bludgeon the victim, they take revenge for transgressions against them but it has to be personal and the other person has to understand why it is you are doing this to them. To be more than the dreaded DCons, the bogey men of this world, you have to be able to rationalise your actions. In times of chaos that line is even more important, and Lola crosses it when she brutally murders her dad’s old boss. Womack plays a nice sleight of hand here, because the boss really is an odious little shit and you are gunning for Lola to take her revenge, but when her friends call her out for it you realise basically they’re right. Lola has broken the code of the street, so she must become an outcast. The book ends where it does because she recognises this and actively casts off her diary, the last vestige of her old personality. 

Yasutaka Tsutsui - The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (1967)

Listen: Kazuko Yoshiyama has come unstuck in time. Kazuko is exposed to a strange chemical while cleaning up the school lab with her friends Goro and Kazuo. Which winds up being fortunate. The next day, an earthquake and a fire wind up making Kazuko and Goro late for school and in their hurry they get hit by a truck. Just before the impact, Kazuko wakes up in her bed two mornings earlier. Kazuko has to convince herself and her friends that she really did travel through time, prevent the accident from occurring  and stop herself from travelling through time. Will she manage? Spoilers to follow!

Yasutaka Tsutsui is a Japanese SF author who I was initially familiar with through his short story collection 'Salmonella Men On Planet Porno'. This is an excellent collection of bizarre, sardonic and somewhat Ballardian dissections of modern culture in an SF framework. Most feature unpleasant or unreliable protagonists and a sadistic twist at the end. 'The Girl Who Leapt Through Time' could not be more different in tone. It's a sweet, nostalgic YA novella with a bittersweet ending, both breezily engaging and moving. However, bubbling underneath is just enough of a sinister undercurrent to remind you that this is Tsutsui we're dealing with.

The story's short length means that it moves along at a good pace. When faced with evidence, rather than sitting around hand-wringing, Kazuko's friends and teacher opt to believe her and help her find the solution to the problem. She manages to leap back in time to just before she encountered the chemical in the lab, where she finds out that all this was caused by Kazuo, who is actually a time traveler from the far future trying to get home. He confesses that he has developed feelings for her, but has to return to his own time. Kazuko loses the ability to time travel, Kazuo erases everyone's memories of him, and he returns to the future, promising that they will meet again some day, but that she won't remember who he is.

There's a lot to like about how this all plays out. On the surface, you have a deceptively simple story arc - two young people just realise they have feelings for each other when circumstances force them apart - which is both poignant and relatable. The mechanics of the time travel is never explained, but it all works out in an intuitive and pleasing way that doesn't leave any unstable time loops or contradictions. The story is told simply, elegantly and straightforwardly, with no narrative flab.

However, there's a little more going on here than meets the eye. Kazuo winds up being a thoroughly ambiguous and mysterious character. He provides us with the big chunk of exposition towards the end which explains what's going on, but we only have his word for it. The future he describes is subtly dystopian. Tsutsui very neatly avoids any hysteria in describing it, but there are some nice parallels with Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World' thrown into the central conceit. Kazuo hints that a violent war is looming, and the spectres of overpopulation, poor people exiled to colonies on Mars and the Moon and computerised ice-schools all rear their ugly heads. While Kazuo suggests that things do eventually improve, again we only have his word to go on, and he admits that he prefers Kazuko's present to his future, perhaps because in this time he is able to make friends and connect with people in a way that's no longer possible in the future.

And of course, there's the whole memory wipe. Kazuo created a false identity and implanted false memories of himself into all his classmates and teachers, as well as the childless old couple who are supposed to pass as his parents. He then proceeds to erase everyone's memories of him without a qualm, to save himself from being arrested by the temporal police when he returns to his present. This is both creepy and manipulative, however believable his arguments that this will be the safest course of action for everyone may be. It is this sinister undercurrent, part of the narrative but wisely left uncommented on by the author, that gives 'The Girl Who Leapt Through Time' both shade and depth as a story.

The Alma Books translation, which I have, also appends another Tsutsui YA novella, 'The Stuff That Nightmares Are Made Of', which is a welcome addition. While it is less haunting than 'The Girl Who Leapt Through Time' and has no SF trappings, 'Nightmares' is perhaps more in the vein of the 'Salmonella Men' short stories, with its vivid, horrifying and somewhat Freudian dream imagery. Its story, about a young girl overcoming her fears, is perhaps more typical YA fare, but the reveal at the end, with its trauma-induced amnesia, is typical Tsutsui territory, albeit with a more optimistic and uplifting outcome than is typical in 'Salmonella Men'.

Frank Herbert - Hellstrom's Hive (1973)

"The words of Nils Hellstrom Unlike man, whose physical limitations are dictated from the moment of his birth, the insect is born with the ability to actually improve upon his body. When the insect reaches the limits of his capability, he miraculously transforms into an entirely new being. In this metamorphosis, I find the most basic pattern for my understanding of the Hive. To me, the Hive is a cocoon from which the new human will emerge."
 
Fan fiction is much maligned these days, understandably when bad slash fic of an already poorly written tale of a Mary Sue and her abusive dead boyfriend can top the bestseller list. However, there are examples of works of fiction that constructively take older works and recontextualise some of their elements in a way that the original creator would never have imagined. 

In the early 70s, 'The Hellstrom Chronicle' was a documentary about insects that became a surprise blockbuster hit. In order to encourage people to see a film that might otherwise be something of a niche interest, the film makers marketed it in the manner of a sci-fi thriller, and stitched together the (very fine) footage of insect life with footage of an actor pretending to be one Dr. Nils Hellstrom, an obsessive entomologist who, somewhat smugly and sardonically, informs the audience that insects have been around long before humans, and because they are better adapted to their surroundings, they will be here long after us as well. His admiration, and one suspects his sympathies, lie with the insects. 

Frank Herbert's 1973 novel 'Hellstrom's Hive' lifts the character of Dr. Hellstrom wholesale. Lines adapted from the film are used as introductions to most of the chapters. Readers of Herbert's 'Dune' series will be familiar with his technique of using quotations from fictional in-world reference works to create an added sense of depth and lived-in history to his world building, but tying his text so closely to a real world documentary brings the world of 'Hellstrom's Hive' closer to our reality. And as most of the words belong to Dr. Hellstrom himself, they allow us to spend more time inside his head, which is essential for the novel to work as well as it does. For Herbert's Dr. Hellstrom is not just obsessed with insects, he and his people use the insect as the blueprint to create their perfect society.

Mad scientists are ten a penny in SF, and insect people with a hive mind have been used as villains in the genre, usually rather tiresomely as stand-ins for Communism and the Red Threat in golden age SF, so on the surface it looks like there's nothing new here. Nor is there a simple subversion of the same old symbols - Dr. Hellstrom is definitely the villain, although arguably a villain protagonist. What's intriguing about Herbert's take on all this is that he uses this as an opportunity to reflect on human societies, utopias and dystopias. The Hive is interesting because it genuinely appears as a Utopia to all the people within it, but all the outside viewers see it as horrific. In 'Chronicle', the original Hellstrom muses both on  how individuals in a hive will altruistically lay down their life for their brethren,and how the insect is adapted to its surrounding ecology rather than destroying its surroundings to better suit it like man. In 'Hive', these are among the aspects that Hellstrom and his people consider most important to their society. They genuinely find the Hive a safe and caring place. Herbert gets a lot of mileage out of contrasting this with Outside, where America has become a police state and various corrupt government agencies vie with each other to get their hands on Dr. Hellstrom's mysterious Project 40, not out of any public interest but because it smells like big money and everyone wants a piece of it for themselves. 

However, just when the balance of sympathy is swinging towards Dr. Hellstrom and the Hive, Herbert takes savage glee in subverting it and reminding us that they really are villains. Everyone in the Hive is chemically manipulated by pheromones, hormones and compounds regulated in their food. Old or useless workers, or indeed captured outsiders, are sent to the vats, where they are turned into said food. The Hive runs an incredibly creepy breeding programme (as if there's any other kind) where they select desirable characteristics for future generations of workers, and then there's the whole thing with the 'reproductive stumps', which is truly shudder-worthy. And Dr. Hellstrom himself has the bizarre charisma of a cult leader, for which he is mistaken several times. 

In the end, the government agencies realise what the good Doctor is really up to, but just when they are about to unleash the full might of the US military, the Hive's scientists reveal their secret weapon, which of course is what Project 40 was all along, and hold the world to ransom. In the end, in a brutal parody of the Cold War, both sides achieve an uneasy truce, with both sides claiming victory to their own people whilst secretly gearing up for more confrontations further down the line. It's a particularly cynical and bleak ending. As in 'Dune', Herbert is not shy about mincing important characters, but due to this book's shorter length he has to achieve a lot more destruction in a shorter period of time. 'Hive' quickly builds to a deadly momentum and feels like it is careering out of control as the body count piles up, but behind it all the deft hand of the author is in strict control. In this it reminds me of Thomas M. Disch's 'The Genocides', though that book is even bleaker and more cynical. And although Herbert will always be remembered for the 'Dune' series, it is arguable that Dr. Nils Hellstrom is his most fully developed and compelling character. One of the biggest problems of the original 'Dune' is that the Harkonnens are little more than pantomime villains. In 'Hellstrom's Hive' Herbert proves he can write a well-developed, convincing and compelling villainous character. As for Dr. Hellstrom himself, even his temporary victory over the Outside forces is bittersweet. For he knows, deep down inside, that his charisma and intelligence, his very character, that allowed him to defeat the hostile forces, is what will eventually make him obsolete in his own Hive.  

Kurt Vonnegut - Player Piano (1952)

N.B.: This one is from the archives, but I feel it's worth preserving here, at least until I get round to putting up more reviews.

Player Piano was Vonnegut's first novel, and if this shows in a certain roughness of style, the author's voice was extraordinarily well developed, showing off his trademark mix of sardonic humour and good natured cynicism to good effect. In the book, the second industrial revolution has occured, so most manual labour is carried out by machines. Thus, the working class have been put out of jobs. People's worth to society is measured by machines which sort them according to IQ. Those smart enough get to join the elite, becoming engineers and managers. Those who aren't are sent off to join the army or the Reclamation and Reconstruction Corps, which is about as much fun as it sounds. They are bundled into nasty council houses, given wide-screen TVs to placate them and then forgotten by the rest of society. The engineers and managers justify themselves by saying that they've raised these people's quality of living, but the people have been robbed of the dignity of labour and feel ignored and marginalised by society. Basically, the book questions that all scientific progress is a good thing, saying that we should take the time to stop and ask ourselves if all this new technology is actually making people any happier. The novel warns against a society in which all a man's work, and, more saliently, all a man's THINKING, is done by machines instead of himself. In this day and age, I think these points resonate quite strongly. 

The book is not perfect, by any means. It came out in 1952, so naturally the science fiction side of it has dated quite badly, the machines are all miles and miles of wires, vaccum tubes and flasing lights. However, once you get past this, in it's own way it's actually quite salient in a number of ways, certainly I think a lot of the issues it raises are still relevant. And, before you accuse the book of simply espoucing Luddite-ism in the face of scientific advancement, it's worth reading through to the end because this aspect is actually dealt with quite nicely at the end. The novel's protagonist goes up against the system, but, unlike Alan Moore's V for Vendetta, which leaves the ending open, in Player Piano, there is a really good day-after-the-revolution sequence. Vonnegut sweeps you up in revolutionary fevour only to hit you with the punch-line at the end. Like the novel version of A Clockwork Orange, the focus of the book sweeps out to say something about human nature and the way society works. It's both funny and very affecting. Thus, whilst Player Piano is certainly one of the better 'Man vs Machine' science fiction novels, its central focus is on humanity, and is both cynical and hopeful. Many of the themes and ideas would be expanded upon and developed more succesfully in Vonnegut's later novels, but Player Piano has plenty to reccomend it on its own terms. It certainly reminded me where my intense dislike of those self-service checkout machines at Tesco comes from.