Cory Doctorow Writes Stories for the Times We Live In

Radicalized: Cory Doctorow (2019)

Four stories.  Four explorations of exceedingly plausible near-future realities.  Author, journalist, and all-around bad-ass Cory Doctorow’s new book, Radicalized, has written a quartet of tales that are not only timely and extremely relevant, but engrossing and entertaining.  This is a difficult feat, and the results are quite satisfying.

I first became aware of Mr. Doctorow through his superb articles for various online sites, many of which seek to shed light on aspects of our modern technological life which the normal, everyday consumer is not aware of, especially the obscured and malicious ways that technology is used by companies and governments to stick it to the average individual, oftentimes without their consent.  Through my reading of his essays and articles I became aware of his fiction work, and when I found out that Radicalized was to be released, I requested a review copy from Mr. Doctorow himself, who was kind enough to provide one. 

Science fiction, or as it is referred to these days, speculative fiction, can sometimes concern itself with ideas and themes so vast and deep that the individual human stories are left undeveloped.  This is understandable, and does not reduce the power of works such as these.  Huge, sweeping galactic stories allow a reader to expand their reality-tunnel, to include whole swaths of expansive consideration that would otherwise never occur.  Other science fiction tales revolve around the experience of one person, or a small group of people, and their day-to-day lives as affected by futuristic or speculative technology and science.  The four stories in Radicalized fall in this vein.

Unauthorized Bread, a personal story of a refugee in the near future and the increasingly labyrinthine technology that dictates what a person can or cannot do, even to the smallest detail of their life, starts things off.  Not only is it an affecting tale of honest yet desperate people seeking to make the best of life for themselves and their children, but it is a deeply cautionary tale about the dangers of extending endless “rights” to companies and technology, and removing those “rights” from individual consumers.  It resonated with me, as I rail against the ridiculous idea that companies are trying to force down our throats, that being that digital programs and items are not “owned” by the person that bought them, but “leased” from the corporation who sold it.  All the legal rights are transferred in this manner from the consumer to the producer.  This is evident in the rise of “Right-to-Repair” movements around the world.  In 1960, if you bought a TV, it was yours to fix, alter, customize, etc. because you purchased the item.  If you could not fix it, you could find a clever person, or a certified repairman, who could.  In 2019, if you buy an Apple product, and you choose to try and repair it yourself, the law does not protect you.  It protects Apple and essentially creates a monopoly where they control all access to their machines, repair services, software, etc.  HORROR.  They can essentially force you to purchase new items, and of course those new items will come with even stricter user contracts and restrictions.

Model Minority explores what happens when a superhero wakes up, and begins to understand that he is a tool of a corrupt system.  All it takes is deciding to swoop in and stop a group of policemen who are severely beating an older black man.  The hero’s involvement sets off a chain of events that would be very familiar to anyone who has ever studied what happens when one person, even an exceedingly GOOD person, decides to fight a system that has the ability to control how people see things, and which will lie with impunity to protect its status quo.  It also sheds light on the manner by which people actively ignore the ugly shit around them, as long as it doesn’t happen to them.  People are willing to overlook the most horrible things as long as they feel free to do so.

Radicalized is a story that would resonate with anyone who has lived with or through a loved one’s chronic illness, and had to deal with faceless corporate insurance companies whose job is to make money for their shareholders by withholding expensive treatments from the very people who pay outrageous amounts of their monthly paycheck for Health Insurance.  The rage, the feeling of impotence in the face of corporate anonymity, drives a group on an online forum for survivors to what, to them, is the logical end result.  It is a very gripping story, and sadly all-too familiar.

The Masque of the Red Death, the final story, presents us with a powerful, successful, cut-throat capitalist as he arranges plans for him and a select group of people to hole up and survive what he refers to as “The Event,” meaning the financial and social collapse of the United States.  The story does a great job of presenting the actual thoughts and reasoning behind this man’s decision making, and they shine a bright light on the qualities and traits that are sought and rewarded in the world of finance, a world where no product is created, no service is provided, and the only thing that matters is taking rich people’s money and making more money with it, while taking a fat cut for the broker.  It is a bleak tale, and will hopefully have readers thinking deeply about what truly matters in life.

This has been a good couple of months for me on the science fiction front.  I have found several new writers whose work I will explore, and whose careers I plan on following because their stories are so great.  I look forward to digging into Cory Doctorow’s previous work, and seeing where his ideas take me in the future.  I highly recommend this book.

(This book is available for purchase here: AMAZON )

Borges' stories are indeed like labyrinths constructed out of words.

Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings – Jorge Luis Borges (1964)

           

There are a few giants in the world of short-story writing.  Edgar Allan Poe is one of the first, having essentially created both the modern detective story and the modern horror story through his demented tales.  Poe’s stories are not in the vein of the gross-out, blood-filled, carnage-laden tales which are seen as horror these days.  They instead were more of the meditative, eerie, unnerving type of story.  These are the kind of tale that pull you in and haunt your thoughts afterwards, if done right.  Jorge Luis Borges is just such an author.  He made his name with short stories, poetry, and essays, and in doing so changed the world of literature. 

            Borges’ stories are like minimalist puzzles. They are the epitome of the old short-story writing axiom that nothing should be in the story that does not propel the story forward.  While novels allow the author countless pages to explore motivations, digressions, and setting, short stories, especially Borges’ very concise stories, need to get their point across as fast as possible, without feeling like pure plotting with no emotional connection for the reader.  Using a rich vocabulary gleamed from his far-ranging and esoteric reading Jorge Luis Borges writes short stories that feel almost holographic, as if all parts contained the whole.  His work feels like stepping into an alternate reality where the wisdom of the ancients is meshed with the troubles of the modern world.  They are not quite mathematical, as much as rigorously constructed.

            Borges wrote in Spanish, and while I can read Spanish I do not have the education in Spanish needed to understand Borges’ writing without constantly interrupting myself to check a word in the dictionary.  Therefore, I have read him in translation.  This collection, Labyrinths, has made me appreciate Borges’ mind and his ability to aggregate the wisdom he encounters in his readings into his stories.  Borges was, like me, someone who preferred to read the fringes of literature, seeking and studying ancient writings, near-forgotten philosophers, and the classics of ancient antiquity.  He sought to explore the world of the Gnostics, of the Greek Idealists, of the Persian scientists, etc.  I too seek out old books and old ideas to read, and to see what wisdom or entertainment may be found within.  I enjoy learning for learning’s sake, something else I share with Borges.

            Jorge Luis Borges went blind around age 47 and never learned to read Braille.  What a horror for someone whose whole life was about the joy found in reading.  I can imagine that he found it pointless to do so, as the books and literature he sought was of a type not to be found in Braille editions, which are usually just the classic canon and more modern fare.  Losing that connection to the ancient world that literature gave Borges must have been quite rough.  Someday, if my Spanish gets better, I will attempt to read him in our native tongue.  Until then, I am glad that good people took the time to translate these cool stories for me.

(To read Borges' Labyrinths in PDF format, click here: 
https://wizchan.org/hob/src/1449201237263-0.pdf )

There is nothing more fun that finding new writers to read!

The Best of Henry Kuttner – Henry Kuttner (1975)

            In my search for stories to read I tend to stick to certain genre fiction, mainly science fiction, because it merges my science obsession with my love of a good story.  Most of what I do read is not fiction however, and while I find it highly entertaining to flood my mind with data, sometimes I want to be transported to a whole new world and nothing does that better than a great science fiction tale.

            Having read works by the sci-fi masters (my favorites being Asimov and Clarke) I soon progressed to the stories from the cyberpunk era.  In that sub-genre I loved Greg Bear and Rudy Rucker most of all, (the supposed master of cyberpunk, William Gibson, I find tedious and dull).  While exploring the writers that these cyberpunk authors admired I would come across names that have been forgotten by mainstream science fiction over the years.  One of these is Alfred Bester who I have reviewed before, and another is Henry Kuttner.  I had never heard of Mr. Kuttner before, as he had passed away decades before I was born.

            Kuttner wrote novels and short stories.  Reading these stories today is a great reminder of how we tend to wrongly assign a generic literary “voice” to writers from a particular era.  Kuttner’s stories do not fit in line with the mainstream sci-fi of the 40’s and 50’s.  They are brash, witty, and irreverent in a manner that seems much more in line with the cyberpunk authors I mentioned earlier.  While his work is not as directly comedic as someone like Terry Pratchett, it contains much more humor and verve than the “Hard” sci-fi that was in vogue at the time.

Kuttner could have made up a whole story about this dude.

             In the introduction to this volume, Ray Bradbury (one of the “great” sci-fi writers who I also happen to find interminably boring) describes the pure inventiveness of Henry Kuttner and how he never wrote for a specific genre.  His works were pure imaginative fiction and in many ways stepped outside the bounds of traditional science fiction writing.  I do love any writer/musician/artist that is deemed “un-classifiable.”  That to me is a sign of an exploratory mind.  It is indeed a shame that Mr. Kuttner died so young, aged 42 years, and that the world was not granted more output from this man.  An odd bit of trivia about Mr. Kuttner is that much of his work was written in tandem with his wife, C. L. Moore, under Kuttner’s name as well as several pseudonyms.  After Kuttner’s heart attack, she continued to teach his English course at USC, but never wrote fiction again. 

            As a fan of H.P. Lovecraft’s weird works, it was cool to see that Henry Kuttner was one of the writers in the “Lovecraft circle.”  This was a group of Lovecraft admirers that shared correspondence with the author.  Kuttner also wrote several “Cthulhu Mythos” stories set in the weird world that Lovecraft had created.  I am going to have to dig them fools up and check them out!  There is always someone new to discover.  Those who think they have read or seen or heard it all are no longer trying to discover anything new.  Their brains are slowly petrifying, and after a certain point it may be irreversible.  

(To read a story by Henry Kuttner titled The Dark World, click here: http://www.digital-eel.com/blog/library/The_Dark_World.pdf )

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )

Short Stories about Math? YES!

Fantasia Mathematica – Clifton Fadiman, Ed. (1958)

            Having just finished a dense and rigorous philosophical treatise, I needed something which would spark my imagination and my intellect.  I found this collection of math-based and math-referencing stories, most of them under 10 pages long, and proceeded to escape into science fiction.

            Clifton Fadiman, the editor of this collection, was inspired to collect this anthology after reading a few short stories that used mathematics as either a plot point or as a crucial element of the characterization.  In 1958 the genre of science fiction was still obscure and marginalized.  Because of this, many of these stories were published once in pulp magazines and then forgotten.  Some of them are from the very masters of the genre, such as Heinlein, Clarke or Bradbury, while others are from writers that have faded into obscurity.

            I remember picking this book up maybe 20 years ago and not finding it interesting enough to finish.  I guess in the intervening decades I have either picked up more mathematical knowledge or I have grown more adult and capable of enjoying a story purely for the intellectual curiosity of it.  Most of these short stories are great fun, and many illustrate mathematical points which are still explored by today’s mathematicians.  Topics range from topology, to extra-dimensional geometry, to geometric proofs.  There is even a back section which contains mathematical poems, limericks, and other such things.

            My favorite story of the bunch involves a mathematician making a bet with the Devil, all dependent on the Devil answering properly whether Fermat’s Last Theorem is true or not.  This conjecture was unsolved for centuries until a lone-wolf mathematician provided a suitable proof.  I have no idea what the math used was, but then again, neither does 99.999% of the population!  At the end of the tale, the Devil sits befuddled, beaten, and sad.  He spent his time learning all the highly complex math required to even tackle Fermat’s Last Theorem, and was not able to comprehend how to go about solving it.  Math wins.

(To read A Subway Named Mobius, one of the short stories from this volume, please click here: http://westongeometry.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/61244911/SubwayNamedMobius.pdf )

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )