Not A Blog™

A while back, I mentioned that I was going to read something by Cory Doctorow, I just hadn’t gotten around to it. Now I finally have. In an effort to “catch up”, as it were, on contemporary science fiction, I’m actively seeking out authors of today to find out what’s happened over the past few years where I pretty much stopped reading sci fi altogether. Doctorow was on The List, mostly because I read BoingBoing and he was plugging his books there, so they were on my radar.

Overclocked is a collection of short stories, loosely based around information technology themes. This isn’t surprising considering Doctorow himself was a sysadmin at one point in his career. His story, When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth, was a fun take on the post-apocalyptic scenario from the standpoint of a systems administrator. I dare say it was not all that far-fetched, either, with the admins hiding out in their data centers—a logical decision, considering the scrubbers on the HVAC systems would keep out chemical and biological weapons. In any case, it’s practically a given that all sci fi writers try their hand at post-apocalypse at one point or another—regardless of whether or not they admit it—so to give it a personal spin in this way is laudable. At the very least, it got me thinking about writing my own post-apocalyptic scenario from the standpoint of my job: having renegade camera crews run around documenting the horrors, and posting clips on (what’s left) of the internet to inspire people to action. Hm. Come to think of it, it would probably have to be a some manner of pastiche.

In the vein of pastiche, the story Anda’s Game is somewhat related to Ender’s Game on a superficial level. It’s about a girl who joins an a girls-only guild in some MMORPG that’s known for being the best of the best at getting quests done. She goes around killing a bunch of people before coming to the realization that she’s killing gold farmers in third world countries who go hungry in the real world when their in-game characters don’t meet their digital manufacturing quotas.

Okay, so it’s not much like Ender’s Game from a deep-level standpoint—like I said: superficial. (It’s not really a pastiche, either; just the title is borrowed.) Had I not read the explanatory blurb at the beginning that said this sort of thing has recently started happening in real life, I would have been thinking that it’s not terribly science “fiction”; it sounds like the sort of thing that would happen in real life. Well, turns out it is, Q.E.D. But from what I understand, Doctorow wrote it before real-world slave-labor gold farms, so kudos on the prediction.

The one thing that bugged me about the story is that it seemed to take a very long time to get where it was going. Upon finishing, I thought it could have gotten to the point a bit faster. I understand the world building (since most of it takes place in a computer game: meta-world-building?) and the need to show development in the character, but it seemed like Doctorow spent an inordinate amount of time describing battles that happen in-game. After the first few I get the point: she’s really good, the stakes keep getting higher, the weapons are huge, great, okay. But it just keeps going. Reading about other people playing computer games in a book is even worse than watching someone play a computer game in real life. It’s pretty dull. It doesn’t help that the main character is so good she never loses. Temporary setbacks, yes. But you can’t really lose in a game like this. She wins, wins, wins. I get it. As it turns out, this is not the only story that drags its feet.

The first story in the book, Print Crime is svelt: literally, it spans two leaves of the book. For me, this set the tone that all the stories in the book would be so succinct. They aren’t.

His story, I, Robot, is an exploration of the idea that it doesn’t make much sense to have a society where there’s only one type of robot. That would be the quintessential, “three laws” model, for those of you keep score at home. To limit AI in this manner—well, you might as well call it DRM for AI. You might as well use it as a metaphor for real-life DRM. Dang, I should have thought of that.

The story combines elements of Asimov’s world in I, Robot, as well as some ideas from Orwell’s 1984. As much as I enjoy 1984, I couldn’t help but get a feeling like Doctorow was peeking out from behind the curtain whispering, “see! Remixing is good! Look what I’m doing! I’m taking cues from both I, Robot and 1984 and making this new, derivative work. And it’s so representative of our time—so pertinent! Would you ban my book because it ‘infringes copyright’? Remixing is a legit mode of discourse! Free information!”

I’m not trying to make fun of him; I agree with the sentiment. But the 1984 elements felt forced. I liked it; I wish I could be less cynical about the whole thing. But there are too many levels of meta going on here, and I just can’t take it at face value. Maybe he’s just paying homage to Orwell. Maybe, truly, the story could not have been told any other way. Maybe. It won a Locus, so to People Who Matter, it’s a good one. It just felt like it was trying too hard.

Speaking of trying too hard, I thought the next story, I, Row-Boat, was definitely trying too hard in the title department. I honestly thought it was going to be a cheesy send-up of the whole three-laws and Asimovian robotics and everything. With a title like that, I was prepared for a bit of parody. This, the story was not. In fact, it was actually a very good, mostly serious story. It was one part philosophical musing on the nature of consciousness, one part post-singularity, and one-part metaphysical enlightenment ramification—which combined to form a surprisingly coherent whole. I’ll admit: it sounds cheesy enough when I describe it this way, but it was pretty good. So why the goofy title then? I don’t get it. I suppose it was like a pun too clever to resist. The main character of the story is a row-boat with some advanced AI which engages in quite a bit of introspection, so it makes sense in context. But it’s just, well… dumb. Don’t get me wrong, I like puns as much as the next guy, but there’s a time and place. Here, the quality of the story is far higher than the title would have you believe. It deserves better.

The final story in the book, entitled After The Siege continues with the information technology theme, although in a very roundabout way. It centers around a girl living in a city which comes under siege, requiring all the denizens to fight, dig trenches, dispose of corpses, ration food, and whatever else people have to do during a siege. In the process of doing this, the girl meets someone known only as the Wizard who is able to do all sorts of things that the technology in the city cannot. This isn’t elaborated on until close to the end, but the reason seems to be that the software running the machines in the city has all succumbed to various viruses and worms and were rendered inoperative. The lines between a biological and a digital virus are blurred somewhat—near the end of the story some of the characters enter a hardened, air-locked bunker where functioning technology still exists, protected from the environment. Either there’s ubiquitous wifi to the point where even light bulbs get spammed, or the destructive logic is transmitted by small, autonomous motes. This is never fully explained.

Anyway, the main character has hearing aids which record everything she hears—a very useful gadget that, I believe, will happen soon enough. Indeed, the technology exists to do this now, it’s just not as small as it could potentially be; in this story it’s nigh invisible. What ends up happening is that the hearing aids die, evidently the result of some biological/digital virus that “crashed” them. When she visits the Wizard, he repairs them; he gives her hardened logic—stuff that’s not vulnerable to the pervasive danger in the air. With this, she ultimately brings an end to the siege.

If you, like I, were annoyed by the slower pace of Anda’s Game, you, like I, will be ready to throw this story out the window well prior to its conclusion. There are some really great ideas, here. There are intriguing themes to be dissected, consequences to evaluate, technologies to explore. It’s an interesting world. You don’t get to read about it. No, looks at the technology and its ramifications are handed out less frequently than the food rations acquired by the characters in the story. Huge tracts of text describe in glorious gory detail what it’s like to throw a 250 pound body out a ten story window, or the joys of stabbing a would-be rapist multiple times in the kidneys, or hitting the deck to avoid incoming bombs, only to find yourself inches from someone’s severed finger.

These are the horrors of war. I don’t think they should be sugar coated. However, these things don’t do anything for the story. The story doesn’t move forward because of them. Worst of all, the main character changes not a dram from encountering these things. She reacts on one level—groaning, staggering, crying—all those great heart-rending verbs. But as far as personality—of actually getting anything useful out of these experiences or growing and learning in some way—it’s not there.

What bothers me about this story is twofold: one, it takes forever to get where it’s going. Like I mentioned before, I think this story could have been tightened significantly. A lot of things happen, but only once every five pages or so does something happen which actually matters in the context of the plot. Two, the terrible things that happen in the story appear to be there for juvenile reasons. This is a delicate matter because anyone defending this is going to come back with, “that’s how war is! You just don’t want to face the truth! Why should we censor ourselves to fit your sensibilities?”

I do not have a problem with the story being bloody and violent. I have a problem with the violence being a thing in itself. It becomes fetishized—not unlike A Clockwork Orange—because it’s visceral. It’s emotional. It’s a way of charging the story and making it “gripping” without really having to think that much as a writer. It’s sort of like the plot version of a Guy Number Two. (I’ve mentioned the Guy Number Two before, but a quick recap: it’s that character that comes in for no other reason than so the main character can have a conversation with him to reveal some important plot point.) You can write about blood and guts and people shitting themselves all the day long and you’re guaranteed an audience because plenty of people want that and nothing more.

But, Cory Doctorow, you have something more to give here! All this stuff is going on, but it’s not affecting the story in any meaningful way. It’s just pandering. But more importantly, it gets in the way of the actual story. As I said, there are some cool sci fi things going on here, and they’re relegated to the last ten pages of the story so the other seventy-five pages can discuss what splattering entrails look like. It wasn’t so noticeable in Anda’s Game because those were digital gibs, but the same violence fixation popped up there—and in I, Robot to a certain extent—and it’s unfortunate because the story is so much more than this.

Ultimately, that’s my biggest complaint with the book: the stories are interesting, but fat. I think Doctorow has a really great thing going on here—if he can stick to the meaty themes and leave out the filler. I enjoyed the book and I wouldn’t mind reading more. But it’s a big literary world out there, so now that I’ve got Doctorow checked off the list, I don’t feel the need to run out and grab the rest of his oeuvre. As Barney in Half Life says, “I’ll see ya when I see ya.”

But don’t take my word for it. The whole thing is available online for free, if you’re so inclined. Although you might not want to read an eighty-five pager on a computer screen, you should take a few minutes to read Print Crime. You could do worse with that time.

-Ted

Next Page »