A review by oleksandr
The Fortunate Fall by Raphael Carter
4.0
This is a cyberpunk SF novel, which while hasn’t got a serious attention when it was published (1996), now has an almost cult following. Additionally this is a debut novel and the author hasn’t published anything long (there was one short story) since.
Maya Tatyanichna Andreyava is a camera. This means she is a reporter with built in camera and feedback systems, so her watchers, don’t only see, but feel her emotions. Usually cameras work in tandem with a screener, a person, who monitors camera’s live-feed and edits it to exclude slippages or personal details. Maya get a new screener just when she started to tackle with a new theme: a forgotten holocaust somewhere is Kazakh steppes. Her new screener is weird, her name is Keishi Mirabara and she is clearly overqualified for the job.
The rest of the story is a usual cyberpunk, with life in a virtual reality, supersmart Ais, implants, hacking everyday equipment by shadowy figures, all the tropes. At the same time the world is unique, with true power shifted to Africa (to which standards the rest of the world desperately hoping to grew), the virtuality is called greyspace and with evolved organisms; Post police, people temporary controlled by algorithms (agent Smith’s style). All in all it creates a unique place. I think the book is on par with many major cyberpunk works and should be more widely known.
Some quotes:
She was wearing a Word: a gold cartouche on her lapel that, from time to time, would pluck a single word from her thoughts and display it. That's the fashion, too—a random, drop-by-drop exposure that always struck me as faintly obscene. At the moment it said inversion, for no reason I could think of.
***
"If you take flesh as your starting point," she said, "you're always going to find some way that silicon falls short. But there's nothing special about flesh. Look, sex wasn't invented by some loving God who wants us all to understand each other and be happy. It was made by nature, and nature doesn't give a damn whether our hearts hook up or not, just as long as our gametes do. Why should evolution get to make all the decisions? Why can't we use something that is designed to bring people together? If you turn the comparison around, and start with cabling, then love in the meat starts to look pretty shabby. Love happens in the mind, in the soul—what does the union of two sweating bodies have to do with that?"
***
There will be no whales."
"But we need them," I said.
"We need them? Is that the best reason you can come up with?" He laughed, a rasping, mechanical sound. "The kings of the ocean are gone, and what is our argument for their return? We need them? We? Their murderers? The ones that made the water bitter in their mouths, and killed the food they ate? The ones that made the ocean boil red with their blood for miles around? Men need them? Those vermin? Those stinging insects? Struggling pustulent humanity—needs them? Do you think a whale cares? You might as well need the sun to rise at midnight because you're feeling a bit chilly. Yes, of course, certainly we need them. But the question is, do we deserve them?"
***
people around the world are united by telepresence. So—"
"Ah, but not all people. Some are united, and some separated. We are pulled toward cameras, but away from people that we know in our own lives. Can you watch telepresence with your friend, your wife, your child? Not truly—you may be in the same room, but you are not together. Each is locked in his own dream, even if all are tuned to the same channel. Like movies during the binaural fad: a theater full of people wearing headphones, all hearing the same thing, but separately. And so telepresence causes the triumph of the distant over the near.
Maya Tatyanichna Andreyava is a camera. This means she is a reporter with built in camera and feedback systems, so her watchers, don’t only see, but feel her emotions. Usually cameras work in tandem with a screener, a person, who monitors camera’s live-feed and edits it to exclude slippages or personal details. Maya get a new screener just when she started to tackle with a new theme: a forgotten holocaust somewhere is Kazakh steppes. Her new screener is weird, her name is Keishi Mirabara and she is clearly overqualified for the job.
The rest of the story is a usual cyberpunk, with life in a virtual reality, supersmart Ais, implants, hacking everyday equipment by shadowy figures, all the tropes. At the same time the world is unique, with true power shifted to Africa (to which standards the rest of the world desperately hoping to grew), the virtuality is called greyspace and with evolved organisms; Post police, people temporary controlled by algorithms (agent Smith’s style). All in all it creates a unique place. I think the book is on par with many major cyberpunk works and should be more widely known.
Some quotes:
She was wearing a Word: a gold cartouche on her lapel that, from time to time, would pluck a single word from her thoughts and display it. That's the fashion, too—a random, drop-by-drop exposure that always struck me as faintly obscene. At the moment it said inversion, for no reason I could think of.
***
"If you take flesh as your starting point," she said, "you're always going to find some way that silicon falls short. But there's nothing special about flesh. Look, sex wasn't invented by some loving God who wants us all to understand each other and be happy. It was made by nature, and nature doesn't give a damn whether our hearts hook up or not, just as long as our gametes do. Why should evolution get to make all the decisions? Why can't we use something that is designed to bring people together? If you turn the comparison around, and start with cabling, then love in the meat starts to look pretty shabby. Love happens in the mind, in the soul—what does the union of two sweating bodies have to do with that?"
***
There will be no whales."
"But we need them," I said.
"We need them? Is that the best reason you can come up with?" He laughed, a rasping, mechanical sound. "The kings of the ocean are gone, and what is our argument for their return? We need them? We? Their murderers? The ones that made the water bitter in their mouths, and killed the food they ate? The ones that made the ocean boil red with their blood for miles around? Men need them? Those vermin? Those stinging insects? Struggling pustulent humanity—needs them? Do you think a whale cares? You might as well need the sun to rise at midnight because you're feeling a bit chilly. Yes, of course, certainly we need them. But the question is, do we deserve them?"
***
people around the world are united by telepresence. So—"
"Ah, but not all people. Some are united, and some separated. We are pulled toward cameras, but away from people that we know in our own lives. Can you watch telepresence with your friend, your wife, your child? Not truly—you may be in the same room, but you are not together. Each is locked in his own dream, even if all are tuned to the same channel. Like movies during the binaural fad: a theater full of people wearing headphones, all hearing the same thing, but separately. And so telepresence causes the triumph of the distant over the near.