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A review by thebacklistborrower
Radicalized by Cory Doctorow
4.0
This book of four novellas has a story for everyone. I was immediate gripped by the first, “Unauthorized Toast”, which tells the story of an immigrant woman who learns to hack the appliances in her subsidized housing, starting with the toaster which requires proprietary bread authorized by the manufacturer in order to function. The company going out of business, and consequently the servers failing, it stopped working. This story is as much a battle of wits against the consumer electronics that dictate her life, as it is a story of immigration and empowerment. It is available on ArsTechnica.com (with permission) so I shared it with a friend who works in computer security to get his thoughts. He said the technology used by the toaster and dishwasher manufacturer’s to protect from consumer modification is in our household electronics today, and he also reminded me of the failed (thank goodness) juice subscription company Juicero, which had a model not unlike the toasters.
The other three stories each had their own chilling foreshadowing in today’s society, especially with the Covid-19 crisis in our lives. Radicalized is about Americans with rejected health insurance claims turn to terrorism of insurance companies and the governments that support private health care. As of the end of March, I saw a statistic that 3.5 million Americans lost health care due to coronavirus layoffs. Those same people will be –somehow—expected to pay for the cost of weeks of ventilation, if required. Does the premise of Radicalized seem that far away? Speaking from Canada, I don’t think so. The last story, “Masque of the Red Death” may not be best reading if you’re already on edge about disease. For those of you familiar with the Poe story, you’ll find a disturbingly modernized tale of a bunch of rich folk sequestering in the hills to avoid a global catastrophe (including disease). Fun fact: there are actual real rich people actually sequestering away during this pandemic. In response to @10down asking if Cory Doctorow intended the story to be a How-To manual, he replied “Cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion”.
The second story, “Model Minority” is the one I was least drawn to, but mostly because the others felt so prescient. It is the story of a non-human Superman-like hero learning about privilege when he intervenes in a beat-down of a black person by police. As one who “fought for good” his whole unhuman life, the story explores the reverberations of this act on the victim, and how privilege affects us all.
These novellas grab you and keep you going. I found myself mentally jumping at the ghosts of present day that were found in the books. In so many ways it is so easy to trace the steps between today and the world of those novels, but as I describe above, rarely is it very many.
The other three stories each had their own chilling foreshadowing in today’s society, especially with the Covid-19 crisis in our lives. Radicalized is about Americans with rejected health insurance claims turn to terrorism of insurance companies and the governments that support private health care. As of the end of March, I saw a statistic that 3.5 million Americans lost health care due to coronavirus layoffs. Those same people will be –somehow—expected to pay for the cost of weeks of ventilation, if required. Does the premise of Radicalized seem that far away? Speaking from Canada, I don’t think so. The last story, “Masque of the Red Death” may not be best reading if you’re already on edge about disease. For those of you familiar with the Poe story, you’ll find a disturbingly modernized tale of a bunch of rich folk sequestering in the hills to avoid a global catastrophe (including disease). Fun fact: there are actual real rich people actually sequestering away during this pandemic. In response to @10down asking if Cory Doctorow intended the story to be a How-To manual, he replied “Cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion”.
The second story, “Model Minority” is the one I was least drawn to, but mostly because the others felt so prescient. It is the story of a non-human Superman-like hero learning about privilege when he intervenes in a beat-down of a black person by police. As one who “fought for good” his whole unhuman life, the story explores the reverberations of this act on the victim, and how privilege affects us all.
These novellas grab you and keep you going. I found myself mentally jumping at the ghosts of present day that were found in the books. In so many ways it is so easy to trace the steps between today and the world of those novels, but as I describe above, rarely is it very many.