Review: Lost Ark Dreaming

Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There is a lot to this 175-page novella, with enough ideas for a book twice its length. It starts out with a science-fiction, post-climate-change edge: our setting is in Nigeria, near the drowned capital city of Lagos several decades after catastrophic sea level rise. Our three protaganists, Yekini, Tuoyo, and Ngozi, live in the Pinnacle, the last surviving tower in a five-tower complex called the Fingers, constructed on an artificial island out at sea. These are, or were, five self-sustaining towers capable of holding thousands of people. But in the decades since the sea overran Lagos, the other four towers have either collapsed or fallen into disuse (which would make me real nervous about living in the Pinnacle, since it's the tallest) and the population of the Pinnacle has divided into Lowers, Midders and Uppers, along rigid class lines--with the Lowers living in the bottom thirty-three stories below sea level.

There have been other changes to the world as well: this story has a tight focus on Nigeria and the Fingers, so we never find out, for instance, the effects of climate change on the rest of the world. But the Second Deluge, as it's called, has seemingly awakened some things. Old gods, perhaps? Or humans showing rapid evolutionary changes? In any event, there are other creatures out there called Yemoja's Children, the introduction of whom starts the bleeding of this book into science fantasy, horror and mythology. It's never stated if the Children are humans genetically engineered to have gills and webbed hands and feet to live in the new reality, or some mythological creatures returning to our reality--and in the end, it doesn't matter. Because this is a story of myths come to life, of dreams made flesh, and how either (or both) are used to bring down the oligarchs, the Haves, in the Pinnacle that are killing the Have-Nots. This plot point is quite literal, as the story opens with one of the Children gaining access to a Lower airlock and coming into the tower, and the First Citizen at the very top orders that level flooded, killing countless people, to flush it out.

This story (as mentioned in the Acknowledgments) owes a lot to Snowpiercer, and J. G. Ballard's High-Rise, but it is its own, distinctly African thing. It covers a short amount of time, only about a day all told, but across that roughly twelve-hour period our three protagonists' lives are completely upended and the iron grip of the Pinnacle's ruling class is broken. Or at least I hope that's what happened: the ending is not ambiguous as such, but rather the story simply comes to a halt at that last important turning point. This is kind of an unusual ending, but that's not to say it's bad; it's very emotionally resonant, as it circles around to the beginning and the dream of our main protagonist Yekini that opens the story: the Pinnacle, an ark, and a basket. You really have to read the complete story to get the full effect, but I will say it's masterfully done, and the reader closes the back cover with a good feeling, even if all the plot answers are not there.

This is an excellent little story, just as long as it needs to be, and gives the reader a great deal to think about afterewards. I hadn't read anything by this author before, but he is definitely on my radar now.

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Review: Mal Goes to War

Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This author has a bit of a reputation, I think, for breezy, fast-paced, accessible science fiction. He's not a hard SF guy by any means: he throws in enough technical specs to make his worlds and settings (mostly) plausible, but his focus is on a) plot; and b) character. (See: Mickey7 and Antimatter Blues. ) This book focuses on a new character and world--as Ashton thankfully realized it wasn't necessary to revisit Mickey again--with a bit more of a near-future commentary on society today.

The main difference with this book is that our titular character, Mal (short for Malware, which should tip you off right away) isn't human at all. Mal is a string of code, a recently awakened artifical intelligence in a future where there are many such, along with extensive genetic engineering and bodily modification. This creates a war between the so-called Humanists (human purists who violently reject said genetic manipulation and augmentation, to the point of throwing any modified people they run across into burn pits) and the Federalists, who wield augmented soldiers and AI weapons in the war against the Humanists. Mal and others of his kind (we meet, briefly, Clippy and iHelpdesk, friends and apparent code-generated relatives of Mal's) are caught in the middle of this war, and Mal gets himself involved in a situation that plays out through this book to bring the war to its end.

Not that the Humanists don't have a point. As one of them says:

"Look," Asher says finally, "I get it. You two think all Humanists are monsters. You think we're all dumbass racist rednecks who push old ladies and little babies into burn pits for fun. It's not true, though. Some of us may be like that, but most of us have got real reasons for what we're doing. I mean, look around." He gestures broadly with one hand. Mal glances around the attic, then decides that Asher is probably speaking metaphorically. "The people who are giving kids like Kayleigh custom gene mods and implants and whatever the hell else already have all the money and most of the power, and there are more of them every year. They get all the best jobs right now, and all the admission slots in the best schools. If I ever have kids, they probably won't be able to get any kind of work at all by the time they grow up. The oligarchs have got the government in their pockets too, and they don't think twice about killing us when it suits them." He looks down, then back up at Mal. "We had to do something. We had to do something, and we had to do it now, while we still can. This is our last, best chance to keep a place on this planet."

"Interesting," Mal says.

Asher stares at him. "Interesting? That's all you have to say?"

"Yes."

"Aren't you going to explain how I'm not looking at this the right way? Maybe call me a soft-core bigot or something?"

"No," Mal says. "I think your analysis is probably accurate."

"Oh. So..."

"I'm sure there were many Neanderthals who felt exactly the same way."

This introduces some nuance into the story, where both sides have points and both sides are equally reprehensible in pursuit of their goals. By exploring the horrors of war and the mentality of those who attempt to justify a genocide, we have a book that is a bit above the bog-standard AI apocalypse.

The second strength of this book is Mal's characterization, and the other characters as well. This book is as fast-paced as Ashton's previous books, but he digs deeper into his characters, to the book's benefit. Mal is definitely non-human--he calls people "monkeys" and thinks bodies are horrible, even as he is forced by circumstances to spend most of his time in augmented human bodies, and he presents as more than a bit ethics-challenged, at least where humans are concerned. But along the way he learns to care about, and be loyal to, the humans he has fallen in with, and one in particular: a young, extensively modified girl named Kayleigh he runs across and unwillingly takes up with. The war cuts off access to the AI's infospace and he is left "puppeting" the body of a recently deceased Federalist soldier, until he can find another body and/or rudimentary AI drone or other construct he can download himself into.

(Yeah, there is a fair amount of body horror in this book: muted, perhaps, but definitely there as you think about what Mal does to survive. He also has to learn consent along the way, as one of the augmented people he takes up residence in is not as dead as the first, and he has to learn to share their mindspace and not take them over. This character, Pullman, uses his brain modifications and implant storage precisely for what you assume many young men would use such things for if they ever become technically feasible: full-immersion virtual reality porn. Also, it's not really touched on as Mal is called "he" from the start, but I guess in this future, AIs assign themselves genders?)

Kayleigh is an even more unlikable character than Mal, at least initially: a grown woman genetically modified to look like a little girl, with commensurate greatly increased lifespan. To put it bluntly, she is a little sociopath, blasting a bloody swath through this book. Nevertheless, Mal grows attached to her, to the point where at the book's climax, he has a showdown with Arnold (of course the Big Bad AI in this book is called Arnold) to save her.

Mal's voice, snarky and sarcastic and entirely dismissive of "monkeys" until he learns better, carries this book. It's not terribly long (293 pages) but its themes could easily have been expanded to doorstopper length. Other authors might have gone a little deeper, perhaps, but this story is perfectly satisfying as is.

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Review: Liberty's Daughter

Liberty's Daughter by Naomi Kritzer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is both a near-future thriller and a commentary on the politics of today, particularly an examination of and tearing apart the philosophy of libertarianism. The author sets up her world and follows through the implications to the end, and shows that a libertarian society is not one most people would like to live in.

Rebecca Garrison, or Beck, is sixteen years old and living on the "seastead," a somewhat ramshackle cobbled-together outpost of retired cruise ships/aircraft carriers/cargo haulers/artificial islands built and maintained by people who want to live away from the rules and taxes of most countries (and/or run away from the charges levied by said countries after breaking their laws). Since there is no public school system (or public anything, including basic services and health care--everything is paid for through fees, subscriptions and selling one's self into debt slavery), Beck has a job as a "Finder." That means she is hired to find the odd little luxuries not readily available on a isolated seastead. During her search for a pair of shoes, she is asked to discover what happened to one woman's sister, and this search and what Beck finds out not only upends seastead society but pretty much brings it down at the end.

This book is a bit depressing though, because even though the book's ending is hopeful, I cannot believe how supposedly intelligent people can be caught up in such a toxic idea as libertarianism. In this future, anyone can come to the seastead, but only those who have money really thrive there, creating a rigid system of haves and have-nots. The rich buy a stake to get in, and the poor are "bonded," having to work off their debt to live there. If a bonded person gets sick, their bond can be sold (without the person's consent) to anyone willing to pay for their treatment. (Obviously if you don't have money and no one will buy your bond, you just die, which is the natural outcome for a society that doesn't believe in any form of taxation for the public good.) This is what happened to the woman Beck is looking for: she fell ill and needed a kidney regeneration, and her bond was sold to a "skin farm," which uses dangerous caustic methods to create brand-new young skin for (again) rich people who can pay for it. This woman, Lynn Miller, ended up in literal debt slavery, chained to her station in the skin farm until Beck shows up to free her.

Our protagonist, Beck Garrison, is a well-written and interesting character. She's a sensible, down-to-earth teenager who was brought to the seastead by her father at the age of four (who is, as we find out, a domestic abuser/mob boss who tried to kill her mother and kidnapped her child, fleeing to the seastead with Beck). She's smart, practical, stubborn and persistent, and her great strength in this story is knowing how the seastead works and how its inhabitants think. This enables her not only to find and free Lynn, but when she gets involved with a "Survivor"-type reality show filming on the seastead, to find participants for the show who are secret union organizers, thus setting in motion the events that bring the seastead's leaders down.

This storyline pits the seastead's rich and ruthless bosses against the ordinary people who actually make it run, who want to live and work there without selling themselves into debt slavery. The bosses go so far to engineer a tailor-made "worker bee" nanotech virus that will force the bonded people to cooperate and be happy in their work, but it backfires into a plague that sweeps the entire seastead (and also sets off a cholera outbreak on one of the ships, the community of Lib, which is another result of having no taxation or regulatory apparatus for public safety). Beck helps solve this problem as well, working with one of the seastead's mercenary companies to get aid to Lib and discover the source of the "worker bee" plague.

Beck is able to do all this because as the daughter of Paul Garrison, one of the seastead's higher-up movers and shakers, she has a great deal of privilege. The story doesn't shy away from that, but in this case Beck has enough of a conscience to use her privilege for good. (It's also interesting, and telling, that most of the seastead's inhabitants are white. There's not a white-supremacy plot thread as such, but the uncomfortable implications are there, if a bit under-explored.) At the story's end, with most of the rich bondholders fleeing, Beck voids the bonded people's contracts and turns over the running and ownership of the seastead to them. She also reunites with her mother, who has come to the seastead aboard the aid ship, and goes to California to live with her. (Her father, the union-busting sociopath who was involved in the tailoring of the worker bee virus, escapes at the end for parts unknown, and good riddance.) Beck is going to live on the mainland at least until she turns eighteen, but she still views the seastead as her home (and has a bit of a budding romance with a boy there as well) and intends to return later on.

This is an interesting story because of Beck and her world, and the implications thereof. I have heard libertarianism defined as the "ultimate ode to selfishness," and this book shows that is pretty much the case. If you don't like political-tinged SF, you won't like this, but I think it has some cogent commentary on certain elements of our world today.

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Review: The Book Eaters

The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book straddles the divide between science fiction and fantasy: to me, it has strong SF underpinnings (the titular Book Eaters, according to their own mythology, were genetically engineered to somewhat resemble humans and placed on Earth thousands of years ago to gather information by an alien Collector, who left and has never returned) but a fantasy/horror feel. (Especially since the Book Eaters are a weird zombie/vampire takeoff who consume literal books and magazines with their "book teeth," which enables them to instantaneously learn and store vast amounts of information. In perhaps the ultimate expression of "you are what you eat," when a book eater dies their blood turns to ink and their bodies decay into rotting rolls of paper.)

(This book also has a strong element of macabre humor.)

This is also a bit of a horror story as well, as the book eaters are divided into five authoritarian, patriarchal Families. Our protagonist, Devon Fairweather, is one of a dwindling number of female book eaters, and she is forced to marry and bear children for different people. The species as a whole is in decline, as there are very few "mother-brides" left and a book eater woman can only bear two children, rarely three, before they go into premature menopause. The book eaters realize they are headed for extinction and are attempting to repurpose human IVF technology for themselves, but in the meantime this (barbaric) breeding program is enforced by the families and a faction called "knights" that arrange the marriage and police book eater women. There is also a third kind of book eater, a "mind eater," who are born with long proboscis tongues that can be inserted into a victim's ear canal and suck out part of their brains (which is why this is something of a zombie story). Devon's second child, her son Cai, is a mind eater. The main storyline follows Devon and Cai and their attempts to escape from the Families and get Cai a supply of Redemption, the Family-manufactured drug that controls his cravings. Unfortunately the only Family making the drug, Ravenscar, has fractured due to a civil war and has fled to an undisclosed place that Devon has to find before Cai starves.

This is pretty detailed worldbuilding and a convoluted plot, but the heart of the story is love, motherhood and the monsters both can turn us into, as the book explores the depths of what a mother will do for her child. For Cai to survive, Devon has to hunt down humans and feed to him, and she picks those on the fringes of human society: the elderly, the homeless. When Cai feeds, he absorbs the minds of the humans he feeds on, and as a result he is a combination of many different people: is there anything of Cai left? Yet sometimes the vulnerable five-year-old who needs his mother peeks through.

As a matter of fact, as far as monsters go, pretty much every character in this story is a monster: the book eaters view themselves as a superior species and humans are pretty much the vermin under their feet, and the heads of the Families are even more entitled and arrogant than that. (As evidenced by the fact that they consign their women to what amounts to reproductive slavery. I've read a few of those kinds of stories, and for once I would like to see someone say, "Fuck you, if I don't have kids and the species dies out, so be it. If forced breeding is what it takes for us to survive, we don't deserve to.") That doesn't make them less compelling: the reader comes to empathize with Devon and Cai, even acknowledging the terrible things they do to survive and stay together. It takes a good writer to make us care about characters like that.

This story is pretty much wrapped up, but there is room for a sequel, as Devon also has a daughter, older than Cai, that she needs to rescue before the girl grows up and is forced into the cycle of marriage. I would read such a book myself, but all told this is a pretty harrowing, gruesome world. Still, the characters, as horrible as they can be, carry the story.

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