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Radicalized
If you want a better future tomorrow, you're going to have to fight for it today. Here are four urgent stories from author and activist Cory Doctorow, four social, technological and economic visions of the world today and its near – all too near – future. ' Unauthorized Bread ' is a tale of immigration, toxic economic stratification and a young woman's perilously illegal quest to fix a broken toaster. In ' Model Minority ' a superhero finds himself way out his depth when he confronts the corruption of the police and justice system. ' Radicalized ' is the story of a desperate husband, a darknet forum and the birth of a violent uprising against the US health care system. The final story, ' The Masque of the Red Death ', tracks an uber-wealthy survivalist and his followers as they hole up and attempt to ride out the collapse of society. 'Cory Doctorow is one of our most important science fiction writers' KIM STANLEY ROBINSON.
295 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 19, 2019
About the author
Cory Doctorow
225 books5,458 followersCory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, and young adult novels like Homeland, Pirate Cinema, and
Little Brother
and novels for adults like
Rapture Of The Nerds
and Makers. He is a Fellow for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,137 reviews
July 27, 2019
Four wry and not-so-subtle 'fuck you' tales about oppression, capitalism, racism, immigration, and other pressing social issues of the 21st century. Doctorow uses alternate realities and imagined near futures to remind us about the very real happenings that people are experiencing today. As someone privileged to not experience them too directly in real life, these stories feel juxtaposed in its farawayness and its nearness. It forces me to focus my attention and think about them while simultaneously going about my daily life unencumbered by any of it.
1) Unauthorized Bread - as a Singaporean who's partaking in a growing national discourse on inequality, this especially resonates with me. We follow Salima through her journey as a refugee from the refugee camp to her new apartment in a swanky building and her determined fight against capitalist kitchen appliances. The story really makes her story real - her feelings and struggles as a refugee. I love how the concept (myth) of choice (ie. "poor people make bad choices") is nicely demonstrated here.
2) Model Minority - I found it symbolic that the superhero fighting against systematic racism is neither black or white, rather, he's literally an alien. However, by virtue of his status, the man he was trying to help criticised him for not seeing that he's white-passing. A thought-provoking piece on the anti-racist movement, and how an ally should (or in this case, should not) help, and how the system strives to keep itself in power.
3) Radicalized - this really did not help my existential crisis. A very depressing piece on the healthcare struggles of Americans. While healthcare and other public services in Singapore do also hinge a lot on how much you can pay, it isn't so bad as America. However it still made me feel scared about the prospects of my own access to healthcare, and outraged that this is happening.
4) The Masque of the Red Death- I enjoyed this. It was satisfying in that it paints a rather unflattering and satirical picture of the uber-rich and their determined bid for immortality through sweet, sweet cash. It's an apocalyptic story though, so you can imagine how money would fare against that.
Overall, I really enjoyed this.
1) Unauthorized Bread - as a Singaporean who's partaking in a growing national discourse on inequality, this especially resonates with me. We follow Salima through her journey as a refugee from the refugee camp to her new apartment in a swanky building and her determined fight against capitalist kitchen appliances. The story really makes her story real - her feelings and struggles as a refugee. I love how the concept (myth) of choice (ie. "poor people make bad choices") is nicely demonstrated here.
2) Model Minority - I found it symbolic that the superhero fighting against systematic racism is neither black or white, rather, he's literally an alien. However, by virtue of his status, the man he was trying to help criticised him for not seeing that he's white-passing. A thought-provoking piece on the anti-racist movement, and how an ally should (or in this case, should not) help, and how the system strives to keep itself in power.
3) Radicalized - this really did not help my existential crisis. A very depressing piece on the healthcare struggles of Americans. While healthcare and other public services in Singapore do also hinge a lot on how much you can pay, it isn't so bad as America. However it still made me feel scared about the prospects of my own access to healthcare, and outraged that this is happening.
4) The Masque of the Red Death- I enjoyed this. It was satisfying in that it paints a rather unflattering and satirical picture of the uber-rich and their determined bid for immortality through sweet, sweet cash. It's an apocalyptic story though, so you can imagine how money would fare against that.
Overall, I really enjoyed this.
May 10, 2019
holy SHIT
September 27, 2019
It's fun, quick read, politics are too the left, Doctorow-ly.
1. Poor people jail-breaking their appliances.
2. Someone tells a superhero alien that he isn't white or human, not entirely unlike "The Boys".
3. Healthcare terrorist group coalesces on a support group web site for relatives of cancer patients.
4. A plausible outcome for a wealthy survivalist compound post-disaster, but it has a little bird song of hope as well.
1. Poor people jail-breaking their appliances.
2. Someone tells a superhero alien that he isn't white or human, not entirely unlike "The Boys".
3. Healthcare terrorist group coalesces on a support group web site for relatives of cancer patients.
4. A plausible outcome for a wealthy survivalist compound post-disaster, but it has a little bird song of hope as well.
February 1, 2020
I didn't like this.
It was heavy handed which I expected.
I liked Unauthorized Bread though it was somewhat slow.
Model Minority and Radicalized together ironically support white supremacy. Even Unauthorized Bread does as it encourages POC immigrants to quietly and peacefully circumvent a system that is using them for unpaid labor.
In Model Minority we have white guilt ahistorically explaining how siding with Black people against white supremacy causes their whiteness to be called into question.
John Brown proves this is bullshit.
Brown killed white men in defense of Black and in a bid to end slavery.
His whiteness was never, ever questioned.
So no, that's not how the construct of race works.
White men don't get involved even when they know it's wrong because they appreciate what white supremacy gives them and they don't wish to see that challenged. Oh they dress this desire up but it remains the main reason white men don't challenge racism. Not just white men either.
53% of white women voted for chump against their own interests. Why?
To protect white supremacy.
It's unpalatable but also facts.
The other unpalatable aspect of this story is it's attachment to violence against the Black body. He reinforces that the victim of police brutality is 'the Black man' until it grated on my fucking nerves. Meanwhile after establishing that the cops brutalizing the victim were white, he never mentions it again. They are just cops brutalizing 'the Black man'. It's cringey as fuck🙄
After Wilbur 'the Black man' is maimed for life the same officer who maimed him then sucker punches him. Emmett Till is invoked without the mention of Carolyn Bryant the lying racist bitch that told a lie that resulted in the torture of a fucking child.
No one ever did any time for this unspeakably heinous crime and that nasty bitch is alive and has admitted she lied.
No Emmett Till is invoked to remind us that only our sacrifice of our beloved children to the torture of rabid racists while we stay calm and peaceful under all of that pressure is worthy.
Reinforced repeatedly in this story is that white men realize white supremacy exists and ruins the lives of Black and other POC. They collectively would like to help but it threatens their whiteness, so🤷🏽♀️
Quickly followed by Radicalized in which a white guy frustrated with the healthcare system in which they were already privileged to even have healthcare, in a system which is tailormade for their bodies and their illnesses, uses terrorism to deal with being shafted by a system he is already given priority in.
If a white man is in anyway frustrated, it's perfectly ok for him to be angry and blow shit up.
Furthermore the anger and terrorism of these white men results in a more fair healthcare system for all.🙃
These white terrorists are humanized to the nth degree. Their sob stories told in way more details than Wilbur's entire life story in Model Minority or most of the major side characters in Unauthorized Bread.
Their precious and precocious white kids deserving lifesaving treatment or to not lose a parent, etc. Blah blah blah.
This is also ahistorical.
Rights are gained for white people by the sacrifice of Black and other POC.
Are you able to openly be pagan at work? Or Mormon, etc?
Thank MLK Jr and the Civil Rights Movement as a whole.
Those kids in SNCC earned your white ass privileges.
Can you be openly gay anywhere?
Is Pride openly celebrated in your city?
Thank Marsha, a Black trans woman who died poor.
We make the change often at great consequence to ourselves and our families.
Feel like Affirmative Action was unfair?
What if I told you it helped more white women than POC combined.
White men historically become terrorists when their right to be white supremacists is challenged.
That's it.
Otherwise they wait until our lives have been sacrificed and they show up for the party.
This shit is so blatant that Pride was segregated in Metro Detroit. Because white people insisted on police presence. Lol.
They don't even fucking know the history of the event.
Cause they only show up to party.
Ferguson Uprising lasted 14 months.
If white people had let go of their racism and joined us we'd have been like France. White people only ever do that for themselves though.
So this is annoying on every fucking level and ahistorical.
Yet a white man who loses a family member when he discovers his white privilege is capped by his income level is allowed to be angry and become a terrorist. Which results in change for everyone.
Yet a Black man who is brutalized by police like his father and grandfather before him.
Who will have his son and grandson after him ALSO brutalized must instead also offer up his jaw to be sucker punched.
He must be willing to sacrifice in peace.
An immigrant of color must be willing to be a fucking indentured servant and subvert the system peacefully, quietly depending on a white savior.🙄
No example about how Blacks and POC stood up to fight racism using any means necessary and laws changed to accommodate their needs.
Oh no see the POC must remain peaceful until white men get around to freeing them.
Once they finally feel more attached to their rage than their own white supremacy.
Yikes.
This is a complete fucking FAIL
It was heavy handed which I expected.
I liked Unauthorized Bread though it was somewhat slow.
Model Minority and Radicalized together ironically support white supremacy. Even Unauthorized Bread does as it encourages POC immigrants to quietly and peacefully circumvent a system that is using them for unpaid labor.
In Model Minority we have white guilt ahistorically explaining how siding with Black people against white supremacy causes their whiteness to be called into question.
John Brown proves this is bullshit.
Brown killed white men in defense of Black and in a bid to end slavery.
His whiteness was never, ever questioned.
So no, that's not how the construct of race works.
White men don't get involved even when they know it's wrong because they appreciate what white supremacy gives them and they don't wish to see that challenged. Oh they dress this desire up but it remains the main reason white men don't challenge racism. Not just white men either.
53% of white women voted for chump against their own interests. Why?
To protect white supremacy.
It's unpalatable but also facts.
The other unpalatable aspect of this story is it's attachment to violence against the Black body. He reinforces that the victim of police brutality is 'the Black man' until it grated on my fucking nerves. Meanwhile after establishing that the cops brutalizing the victim were white, he never mentions it again. They are just cops brutalizing 'the Black man'. It's cringey as fuck🙄
After Wilbur 'the Black man' is maimed for life the same officer who maimed him then sucker punches him. Emmett Till is invoked without the mention of Carolyn Bryant the lying racist bitch that told a lie that resulted in the torture of a fucking child.
No one ever did any time for this unspeakably heinous crime and that nasty bitch is alive and has admitted she lied.
No Emmett Till is invoked to remind us that only our sacrifice of our beloved children to the torture of rabid racists while we stay calm and peaceful under all of that pressure is worthy.
Reinforced repeatedly in this story is that white men realize white supremacy exists and ruins the lives of Black and other POC. They collectively would like to help but it threatens their whiteness, so🤷🏽♀️
Quickly followed by Radicalized in which a white guy frustrated with the healthcare system in which they were already privileged to even have healthcare, in a system which is tailormade for their bodies and their illnesses, uses terrorism to deal with being shafted by a system he is already given priority in.
If a white man is in anyway frustrated, it's perfectly ok for him to be angry and blow shit up.
Furthermore the anger and terrorism of these white men results in a more fair healthcare system for all.🙃
These white terrorists are humanized to the nth degree. Their sob stories told in way more details than Wilbur's entire life story in Model Minority or most of the major side characters in Unauthorized Bread.
Their precious and precocious white kids deserving lifesaving treatment or to not lose a parent, etc. Blah blah blah.
This is also ahistorical.
Rights are gained for white people by the sacrifice of Black and other POC.
Are you able to openly be pagan at work? Or Mormon, etc?
Thank MLK Jr and the Civil Rights Movement as a whole.
Those kids in SNCC earned your white ass privileges.
Can you be openly gay anywhere?
Is Pride openly celebrated in your city?
Thank Marsha, a Black trans woman who died poor.
We make the change often at great consequence to ourselves and our families.
Feel like Affirmative Action was unfair?
What if I told you it helped more white women than POC combined.
White men historically become terrorists when their right to be white supremacists is challenged.
That's it.
Otherwise they wait until our lives have been sacrificed and they show up for the party.
This shit is so blatant that Pride was segregated in Metro Detroit. Because white people insisted on police presence. Lol.
They don't even fucking know the history of the event.
Cause they only show up to party.
Ferguson Uprising lasted 14 months.
If white people had let go of their racism and joined us we'd have been like France. White people only ever do that for themselves though.
So this is annoying on every fucking level and ahistorical.
Yet a white man who loses a family member when he discovers his white privilege is capped by his income level is allowed to be angry and become a terrorist. Which results in change for everyone.
Yet a Black man who is brutalized by police like his father and grandfather before him.
Who will have his son and grandson after him ALSO brutalized must instead also offer up his jaw to be sucker punched.
He must be willing to sacrifice in peace.
An immigrant of color must be willing to be a fucking indentured servant and subvert the system peacefully, quietly depending on a white savior.🙄
No example about how Blacks and POC stood up to fight racism using any means necessary and laws changed to accommodate their needs.
Oh no see the POC must remain peaceful until white men get around to freeing them.
Once they finally feel more attached to their rage than their own white supremacy.
Yikes.
This is a complete fucking FAIL
Read
April 26, 2023Me resulta tremendamente perturbador que, de entre todos los libros que he leído, el que mejor retrata la sociedad estadounidense actual es, literalmente, un libro de cuatro RELATOS DISTÓPICOS.
- PAN NO AUTORIZADO es la historia de una refugiada que trata de abrirse paso en mundo que, con los inmigrantes, es solo un poco más cruel que el actual. Habla de la dependencia tecnológica a la que nos somete el sistema y del enriquecimiento ilícito de ciertas empresas. Ejem.
- UNA MINORÍA MODÉLICA es un relato sobre la brutalidad policial, el salvaje sistema carcelario de USA y la culpa blanca. Un Superman (literalmente) harto del sistema al que lleva décadas defendiendo, decide plantarse ante una injusticia. Y esto le hará pasar de héroe a villano.
-RADICALIZADO (mi favorito) habla de las maldades maquiavélicas del sistema sanitario de USA, así como del proceso de radicalización (conspiranoica, violenta...) de algunos individuos en determinados foros anónimos de internet. Cuenta la historia de un hombre cuya esposa enferma de cáncer.
- LA MÁSCARA DE LA MUERTE ROJA habla de un millonario preparacionista que crea un refugio para cuando la sociedad colapse. Tras este relato posapocalítico se esconde una reflexión sobre el neoliberalismo salvaje, el individualismo y la proliferación de armas en USA.
Como digo, este libro me ha parecido trepidante, originalísimo y de una gran capacidad de análisis y observación. Lo recomiendo a cualquiera que disfrutase (o sufriese) las series «Black mirror» o «Years and years», así como a quien ame esos libros que no puedes soltar.
- PAN NO AUTORIZADO es la historia de una refugiada que trata de abrirse paso en mundo que, con los inmigrantes, es solo un poco más cruel que el actual. Habla de la dependencia tecnológica a la que nos somete el sistema y del enriquecimiento ilícito de ciertas empresas. Ejem.
- UNA MINORÍA MODÉLICA es un relato sobre la brutalidad policial, el salvaje sistema carcelario de USA y la culpa blanca. Un Superman (literalmente) harto del sistema al que lleva décadas defendiendo, decide plantarse ante una injusticia. Y esto le hará pasar de héroe a villano.
-RADICALIZADO (mi favorito) habla de las maldades maquiavélicas del sistema sanitario de USA, así como del proceso de radicalización (conspiranoica, violenta...) de algunos individuos en determinados foros anónimos de internet. Cuenta la historia de un hombre cuya esposa enferma de cáncer.
- LA MÁSCARA DE LA MUERTE ROJA habla de un millonario preparacionista que crea un refugio para cuando la sociedad colapse. Tras este relato posapocalítico se esconde una reflexión sobre el neoliberalismo salvaje, el individualismo y la proliferación de armas en USA.
Como digo, este libro me ha parecido trepidante, originalísimo y de una gran capacidad de análisis y observación. Lo recomiendo a cualquiera que disfrutase (o sufriese) las series «Black mirror» o «Years and years», así como a quien ame esos libros que no puedes soltar.
May 2, 2021
“Some things, America would tolerate, but other things, it would never, ever forgive.”
This was my first Cory Doctorow book, and I think it goes without saying that this guy is extremely smart and has a very keen understanding of how the world works, and how people can get pushed around by said world. This collection of four contemporary dystopias was published in 2019, and two of them are so eerily prescient that I cringed almost the entire time I read them. But I bet that doesn’t make Mr. Doctorow feel smug; I’m sure he’s just a little sad that his speculative fiction hit reality on the nose so accurately.
“Unauthorized Bread” is a story of immigration and predatory capitalism that ties together the struggle of one refugee to make a stable and safe place for herself in the United-States, after an endless and convoluted process of immigration, only to find herself held hostage by her... toaster? I suspect the inspiration here is those coffee machines that only accept pods of their own brands and essentially hold their customer base in a bit of a stranglehold, because without their specific product, their machine is a very expensive and useless brick.
“Model Minority” is a thinly (read: barely) disguised Superman story, the one I’ve wanted to read for a long time, because honestly, those superheroes’ obliviousness about social problems gets a little weird sometimes. I get that Lex Luthor needs his ass kicked, but what about the cops who more or less openly murder people on the street with little to no consequences? I read this story a week or so after Derek Chauvin got convicted, and even now, I hardly dare to be cautiously optimistic. That’s exactly the feeling this story captures: one instance of police going too far made a cause celebre, but at what price?
The title story, “Radicalized”, is about the inhumanity inherent to not having universal health coverage, and making life-saving treatments and medication so expensive that people are left with very little choice but to die. Joe’s wife survived her cancer, but it was nothing short of miraculous. When he thought she was dying, he had joined an online forum that served as a support group for him and other men who had lost a loved one because insurance had refused to cover the cost of a treatment that might have saved their lives. Joe soon realizes that instead of soothing those grieving men and helping them heal, this forum pushed them deeper into their rage and resentment, until the only viable outlet for any of them is to blow up the insurance companies who they hold responsible for their loss. Full disclosure, I work for a Canadian insurance company, and it is a little more complicated than Doctorow writes it, but I am also keenly aware that people who’s claims are denied don’t care that 99% of people who work for an insurance company are ordinary people just trying to do their job and get by, just like everyone else. All they know is that their claims are denied and they are pissed. And I get it. I have zero problem believing that there are people out there who feel exactly the way Doctorow’s characters feel, and that sooner or later, one of them might snap. I don’t think this one is speculative fiction.
Finally, “The Masque of the Red Death” is the 2020 version of Poe’s famous story, where a rich asshole decides to hole up and wait out an “Event” with a few cherry-picked companions, fancy scotch and lots of guns. But here’s the thing about rich douchebags: they don’t actually understand survival because it has never been a real concern for them. They think they are smarter because they have resources, but some things don’t respond to bribes or bullets. This one actually uses the word “pandemic”. I’m a week away from my COVID shot, but seeing that word in so-called fiction written two years ago makes me grind my teeth. But this story also made me think of this brilliant song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz4fP...
Doctorow’s writing is clean, without frills, but full of compassion and humanity. Despite the upsetting themes he chose to write about, he believes in people. If you are interested in his ideas, add this book to your shelf, but maybe wait a few months before reading it. It hits a little close to home... I’ll be looking for more of his work.
This was my first Cory Doctorow book, and I think it goes without saying that this guy is extremely smart and has a very keen understanding of how the world works, and how people can get pushed around by said world. This collection of four contemporary dystopias was published in 2019, and two of them are so eerily prescient that I cringed almost the entire time I read them. But I bet that doesn’t make Mr. Doctorow feel smug; I’m sure he’s just a little sad that his speculative fiction hit reality on the nose so accurately.
“Unauthorized Bread” is a story of immigration and predatory capitalism that ties together the struggle of one refugee to make a stable and safe place for herself in the United-States, after an endless and convoluted process of immigration, only to find herself held hostage by her... toaster? I suspect the inspiration here is those coffee machines that only accept pods of their own brands and essentially hold their customer base in a bit of a stranglehold, because without their specific product, their machine is a very expensive and useless brick.
“Model Minority” is a thinly (read: barely) disguised Superman story, the one I’ve wanted to read for a long time, because honestly, those superheroes’ obliviousness about social problems gets a little weird sometimes. I get that Lex Luthor needs his ass kicked, but what about the cops who more or less openly murder people on the street with little to no consequences? I read this story a week or so after Derek Chauvin got convicted, and even now, I hardly dare to be cautiously optimistic. That’s exactly the feeling this story captures: one instance of police going too far made a cause celebre, but at what price?
The title story, “Radicalized”, is about the inhumanity inherent to not having universal health coverage, and making life-saving treatments and medication so expensive that people are left with very little choice but to die. Joe’s wife survived her cancer, but it was nothing short of miraculous. When he thought she was dying, he had joined an online forum that served as a support group for him and other men who had lost a loved one because insurance had refused to cover the cost of a treatment that might have saved their lives. Joe soon realizes that instead of soothing those grieving men and helping them heal, this forum pushed them deeper into their rage and resentment, until the only viable outlet for any of them is to blow up the insurance companies who they hold responsible for their loss. Full disclosure, I work for a Canadian insurance company, and it is a little more complicated than Doctorow writes it, but I am also keenly aware that people who’s claims are denied don’t care that 99% of people who work for an insurance company are ordinary people just trying to do their job and get by, just like everyone else. All they know is that their claims are denied and they are pissed. And I get it. I have zero problem believing that there are people out there who feel exactly the way Doctorow’s characters feel, and that sooner or later, one of them might snap. I don’t think this one is speculative fiction.
Finally, “The Masque of the Red Death” is the 2020 version of Poe’s famous story, where a rich asshole decides to hole up and wait out an “Event” with a few cherry-picked companions, fancy scotch and lots of guns. But here’s the thing about rich douchebags: they don’t actually understand survival because it has never been a real concern for them. They think they are smarter because they have resources, but some things don’t respond to bribes or bullets. This one actually uses the word “pandemic”. I’m a week away from my COVID shot, but seeing that word in so-called fiction written two years ago makes me grind my teeth. But this story also made me think of this brilliant song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz4fP...
Doctorow’s writing is clean, without frills, but full of compassion and humanity. Despite the upsetting themes he chose to write about, he believes in people. If you are interested in his ideas, add this book to your shelf, but maybe wait a few months before reading it. It hits a little close to home... I’ll be looking for more of his work.
June 10, 2024
“Radical”: Going to the Roots…
The Good:
--It’s rare for every short-story in a complication to click for me, but here I went 4-for-4. I enjoyed this compilation more than Doctorow’s 2017 novel Walkaway, despite somewhat similar (political) substance. Such is fiction, where so much is placed on style (story-telling).
--These stories explore how individuals are:
i) confronted with structural contradictions/crises
ii) their prior coping mechanisms (to normalize the status quo; social consent) start to fail (The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture)
iii) thus, prompted to dig deeper to the root issues (since fiction is limited in structural analysis, I'll fill in with nonfiction references)
iv) envision and build alternatives: this is in its infancy, but the kindling is there for further social organizing to build expectations/confidence/bargaining power.
1) “Unauthorized Bread”:
--My favourite, wish this was a novel; both style and substance just clicked for me.
--On hacktivism (to force transparency onto the powerful and privacy for the many; currently reversed; Free Assange!):
--Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet
-This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information
--On today’s capitalism relying on rent-seeking:
-Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism
-Why Can't You Afford a Home?
--If this was stretched to novel-length, it should explore migration in the context:
i) Finance Capitalism (FIRE: Finance, Insurance, Real Estate): finance can traverse the globe in nanoseconds, whereas labour can never keep up given human needs and militarized borders… so much for “free market”, where “freedom” was defined for property-owning males. This is the reactionary scapegoating trap, blaming “immigrants” to perpetuate capitalism’s wealth-creating dispossession:
-Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
-Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
-The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump
ii) Climate/ecological crises (see later): Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis
--On contradictions/range of potentials (between consent vs. radical rebellion) of the “middle-class”, I’m reminded of Graeber (Direct Action: An Ethnography) describing the pattern of radical change with the convergence of two groups:
i) Lower-class gaining upward mobility: ex. peasants/working class who gain some formal education
ii) Middle-class receiving downward mobility: ex. higher education students who enter a labour market devaluing their education. Student debt/precarious service jobs/unaffordable housing/worsening climate crisis/electoral exclusion (Bernie Sanders/Corbyn) in Finance Capitalism seem like quite a gamble for preserving social consent.
…Besides from historical examples, this is the composition I see in local grassroots activism.
…During crises, the middle-class can be swayed in the opposite direction (see the reactionary scapegoating references above).
…During most of the time, the middle-class serves as the buffer preserving social consent for the status quo. I like to distinguish between “default liberals” vs. “devoted liberals”, where the latter are insufferable; from the story:
2) “Model Minority”:
--While the style here took a bit to click, the substance on the contradictions of “super-heroes” is something I’ve considered. The libertarian-billionaire Batman “fighting crime” without questioning capitalism’s dispossession has always bothered me. Indeed, Graeber has an essay on this: “On Batman and the Problem of Constituent Power” in The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy.
--On “model minorities”, see Prashad’s The Karma of Brown Folk
3) “Radicalized”:
--The most brutal, on the rent-seeking health insurance industry. I try to start with big picture structures (related: Goldacre’s Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients); the challenge is how to connect this to meaningful stories: see Goldacre’s “Empathy’s Failures”, an article in I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That, which ends with:
4) “Masque of the Red Death”:
--A neat inversion to finish off, taking the reactionary direction of fend-for-yourself hide-in-your-bunker approach to crises and running with it, in contrast with the mutual aid/cooperation approach (Doctorow’s later novel references A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster as an inspiration).
-“She’d learned that rebuilding, caring, and fixing kept the sudden terrors and the creeping tears away.”
The Missing:
--Once again, Doctorow reminds me of KSR’s writing style, but I have to give KSR bonus praise for bringing the climate crisis to life in his novels, which is somehow missing in Doctorow’s 4 stories. KSR’s climate novels:
-2017 New York 2140
-2020 The Ministry for the Future
--Amitav Ghosh (The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable) considers how fiction has become dominated by individual characters, whereas the climate crisis is so structural/abstract; how can novelists step up to the challenge of bringing this topic to life? Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures
-Will the Flower Slip Through the Asphalt: Writers Respond to Capitalist Climate Change
-The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions
--A related topic is nuclear war/disaster: how was public pressure mobilized, and how did this dwindle with the end of the “Cold War”?
-Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe
-The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
The Good:
--It’s rare for every short-story in a complication to click for me, but here I went 4-for-4. I enjoyed this compilation more than Doctorow’s 2017 novel Walkaway, despite somewhat similar (political) substance. Such is fiction, where so much is placed on style (story-telling).
--These stories explore how individuals are:
i) confronted with structural contradictions/crises
ii) their prior coping mechanisms (to normalize the status quo; social consent) start to fail (The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture)
iii) thus, prompted to dig deeper to the root issues (since fiction is limited in structural analysis, I'll fill in with nonfiction references)
iv) envision and build alternatives: this is in its infancy, but the kindling is there for further social organizing to build expectations/confidence/bargaining power.
1) “Unauthorized Bread”:
--My favourite, wish this was a novel; both style and substance just clicked for me.
--On hacktivism (to force transparency onto the powerful and privacy for the many; currently reversed; Free Assange!):
--Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet
-This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information
--On today’s capitalism relying on rent-seeking:
-Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism
-Why Can't You Afford a Home?
--If this was stretched to novel-length, it should explore migration in the context:
i) Finance Capitalism (FIRE: Finance, Insurance, Real Estate): finance can traverse the globe in nanoseconds, whereas labour can never keep up given human needs and militarized borders… so much for “free market”, where “freedom” was defined for property-owning males. This is the reactionary scapegoating trap, blaming “immigrants” to perpetuate capitalism’s wealth-creating dispossession:
-Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
-Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
-The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump
ii) Climate/ecological crises (see later): Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis
--On contradictions/range of potentials (between consent vs. radical rebellion) of the “middle-class”, I’m reminded of Graeber (Direct Action: An Ethnography) describing the pattern of radical change with the convergence of two groups:
i) Lower-class gaining upward mobility: ex. peasants/working class who gain some formal education
ii) Middle-class receiving downward mobility: ex. higher education students who enter a labour market devaluing their education. Student debt/precarious service jobs/unaffordable housing/worsening climate crisis/electoral exclusion (Bernie Sanders/Corbyn) in Finance Capitalism seem like quite a gamble for preserving social consent.
…Besides from historical examples, this is the composition I see in local grassroots activism.
…During crises, the middle-class can be swayed in the opposite direction (see the reactionary scapegoating references above).
…During most of the time, the middle-class serves as the buffer preserving social consent for the status quo. I like to distinguish between “default liberals” vs. “devoted liberals”, where the latter are insufferable; from the story:
“We want to help you people, let you get more out of your lives, give you more choices.”
What about the choice to jailbreak my things? She didn’t ask it.
“Honestly, I can’t understand your decision here.”
Choice is good, so long as I don’t choose not to help you? She didn’t say it.
“Can’t you see we want to help you?”
I can see that you want me to help you get more money from “people like me.”
She still didn’t say it.
2) “Model Minority”:
--While the style here took a bit to click, the substance on the contradictions of “super-heroes” is something I’ve considered. The libertarian-billionaire Batman “fighting crime” without questioning capitalism’s dispossession has always bothered me. Indeed, Graeber has an essay on this: “On Batman and the Problem of Constituent Power” in The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy.
--On “model minorities”, see Prashad’s The Karma of Brown Folk
3) “Radicalized”:
--The most brutal, on the rent-seeking health insurance industry. I try to start with big picture structures (related: Goldacre’s Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients); the challenge is how to connect this to meaningful stories: see Goldacre’s “Empathy’s Failures”, an article in I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That, which ends with:
This [personal] story always makes me cry a little bit. Two million people die of Aids every year. It never has the same effect.”…Doctorow’s story is a start.
4) “Masque of the Red Death”:
--A neat inversion to finish off, taking the reactionary direction of fend-for-yourself hide-in-your-bunker approach to crises and running with it, in contrast with the mutual aid/cooperation approach (Doctorow’s later novel references A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster as an inspiration).
-“She’d learned that rebuilding, caring, and fixing kept the sudden terrors and the creeping tears away.”
The Missing:
--Once again, Doctorow reminds me of KSR’s writing style, but I have to give KSR bonus praise for bringing the climate crisis to life in his novels, which is somehow missing in Doctorow’s 4 stories. KSR’s climate novels:
-2017 New York 2140
-2020 The Ministry for the Future
--Amitav Ghosh (The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable) considers how fiction has become dominated by individual characters, whereas the climate crisis is so structural/abstract; how can novelists step up to the challenge of bringing this topic to life? Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures
-Will the Flower Slip Through the Asphalt: Writers Respond to Capitalist Climate Change
-The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions
--A related topic is nuclear war/disaster: how was public pressure mobilized, and how did this dwindle with the end of the “Cold War”?
-Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe
-The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
April 1, 2020
RADICALIZED by Cory Doctorow is the second book shortlisted for Canada READS 2020 that I have read. Four short stories or novellas make up RADICALIZED.
UNAUTHORIZED BREAD, the first novella,
is the longest and also my favourite. It was easy to become engaged in the story of main characters Salima, Nadifa and Abdirahim.
We follow Salima through the years as she struggles against the "system" to move from the refugee camp and finally to an apartment in a luxury high rise tower in Boston. The apartment is equipped with "smart" appliances requiring special (expensive) products in order to work. Salima learns how to hack the systems and shares this knowledge with her refugee neighbours. Then she realizes that her actions has exposed herself and the others to a possibility of decades in prison. What does she do?
MODEL MINORITY, the second novella, is about racism, police brutality, corruption and oppression. How badly is the system corrupted? What will it take to have true equality and justice for all?
RADICALIZED, the third novella, shows failures of the American health system, health insurances and the power of social media. Joe Gorman's life changes when his wife is diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. On the internet he finds a group with members in a similar situation - cancer and possible cures that are(were) unattainable because of exorbitant costs. When the discussion group becomes radicalized and there is talk of bombs, it moves to the "dark web". What should Joe do?
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH is the fourth novella. It follows Martin, a smart multibillionaire, and his followers as they hole up and attempt to ride out the collapse of society. Martin has thought of and prepared for everything. What could possibly go wrong?
Each of these self contained stories of our immediate future are brilliant and thought provoking. 4 stars ⭐️️⭐️️⭐️️⭐️️
UNAUTHORIZED BREAD, the first novella,
is the longest and also my favourite. It was easy to become engaged in the story of main characters Salima, Nadifa and Abdirahim.
We follow Salima through the years as she struggles against the "system" to move from the refugee camp and finally to an apartment in a luxury high rise tower in Boston. The apartment is equipped with "smart" appliances requiring special (expensive) products in order to work. Salima learns how to hack the systems and shares this knowledge with her refugee neighbours. Then she realizes that her actions has exposed herself and the others to a possibility of decades in prison. What does she do?
MODEL MINORITY, the second novella, is about racism, police brutality, corruption and oppression. How badly is the system corrupted? What will it take to have true equality and justice for all?
RADICALIZED, the third novella, shows failures of the American health system, health insurances and the power of social media. Joe Gorman's life changes when his wife is diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. On the internet he finds a group with members in a similar situation - cancer and possible cures that are(were) unattainable because of exorbitant costs. When the discussion group becomes radicalized and there is talk of bombs, it moves to the "dark web". What should Joe do?
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH is the fourth novella. It follows Martin, a smart multibillionaire, and his followers as they hole up and attempt to ride out the collapse of society. Martin has thought of and prepared for everything. What could possibly go wrong?
Each of these self contained stories of our immediate future are brilliant and thought provoking. 4 stars ⭐️️⭐️️⭐️️⭐️️
March 10, 2020
The cops announced that LisasDad1990 had used Tor Browser extensively and had left behind no browser breadcrumbs, nor any records at AT&T's data centres. Inevitably, this set off a whole witch hunt over the “darkweb” and everyone wondering where the mystery man from the video had been “radicalized.”
I picked up Radicalized because it's on the shortlist for this year's Canada Reads program – an annual “battle of the books” run by our national broadcaster, meant to encourage Canadians to read and debate Canadian books – and while I've never read Cory Doctorow before (speculative sci-fi isn't really my thing), I guess I was expecting more from this. Only the first of the four stories, Unauthorized Bread, is set in the near future (with a plausible warning about where present actions could lead if we continue to sleepwalk in that direction), and the other three stories serve as activist commentary on present-day life in the U.S. (concerning racism/white privilege, health care, and income disparity). Of course sharing the longest undefended border in the world with America means that what happens down there has plenty of impact on life up here, but even though Doctorow was born in Canada, I fail to see how Radicalized really fits this year's brief as described by the CBC: The books reflect this year's theme – "one book to bring Canada into focus" – and aim to inspire readers to consider a different perspective about the country and themselves. These stories are fine, and I may have enjoyed them more if I had picked this book up for any other reason, but this honestly didn't feel like a necessary, or Canada-focussed, read.
There was another world, vast beyond her knowing, of people who didn't know her at all, but who held her life in their hands. The ones who thronged in demonstrations against refugees. The politicians who raged about the scourge of terrorists hidden among refugees, and the ones who talked in code about “assimilation” and “too much, too fast.” The soldiers and cops and guards who pointed guns at her, barked orders at her. The bureaucrats she never saw who rejected her paperwork for cryptic reasons she could only guess at, and the bureaucrats who looked her in the eye and rejected her paperwork and refused to explain themselves.
Unauthorized Bread begins by exploring the refugee/immigration camps in a near-future America, but when Salima is finally free to pursue the American Dream, she will realise that literally everything has a price and is controlled by unseen authority. I thought that this was the strongest of the four stories and best explored a recurring theme of powerless people trying to disrupt entrenched and unfair systems.
The American Eagle had seen a lot of man's inhumanity to man in various war zones across the decades, had even had to clean up after one of the “good guys” had lost his shit and done something not so good. But this affected him differently. This hadn't happened on a battlefield in the fog of war, this had happened in a little private parking lot in Staten Island in broad daylight, committed by a group of guys who could have stopped each other, but instead shouted “stop resisting” for the benefit of one another's body cams.
Model Minority sees a very thinly veiled Superman confront his own presumptive whiteness in the age of BlackLivesMatter. If the American Eagle – who isn't even human, let alone American – really has been around for decades, fighting for the underdog, just where was he in the days of Emmett Till and Woolworth's lunch counters?
You know what happened next. Their insurer told Lacey that it was time for her to die now. If she wanted chemo and radiation or whatever, they'd pay it (reluctantly, and with great bureaucratic intransigence), but “experimental” therapies were not covered. Which, you know, OK, who wants to spend $1.5 mil on some charlatan's miracle-cure juice cleanse or crystal therapy? But adaptive cell transfer wasn't crystal healing and the NIH wasn't the local shaman.
The title story, Radicalized, is about the American health care system and allowing life-saving decisions to be in the hands of money-making insurers. Again, the powerless will attempt to disrupt the system, but I really didn't think that this added much to the current conversation. At least there was some Canadian content here, of the sort that the CBC would revel in: The Canadian prime minister weighed in on the subject and said that even though she was a conservative, she understood that there were some places where markets couldn't do the job, and health care was one of them. And while we Canadians love our socialised health care, there isn't enough money in the communal pot to pay for the experimental cancer treatments that this story is about: these treatment plans would likely be denied here as well.
Before The Event, Martin Mars spent a lot of time trying to game it out. Would the collapse be sudden, catching him off guard and unprepared, having to fight his way to his fortress as he escaped from Paradise Valley and into the desert hills? Or would there be some kind of sign, a steady uptick in civil disorder and failures from the official powers that counted down to the day, giving him a chance to plan an orderly withdrawal to Fort Doom?
In The Masque of the Red Death, a group of the filthy rich escape to a hidden bunker as society begins to collapse; having a great time playing at survivalists until they are confronted with actual threats. In a not very subtle turn of events, .
Speaking about Radicalized with the CBC for Canada Reads, Doctorow said, “If you want to write speculative fiction that is both salient and perennial, just write stories in which the underlying reality of technology doesn't change, lawmakers continue to fail to come to grips with it, and the consequences of that failure become more dire with every passing day.” And that is precisely what we have here: not so much a warning for the future as commentary on the now; and not particularly piercing or enlightening at that.
April 6, 2021
Four short stories. Immigrants to America having to deal with being treated as third class citizens and manipulated via technological advances; racism and police brutality; the criminal failings of the American medical system and the insurance companies who decide who has a right to live and die despite ridiculous premiums, and finally, a survivalist more concerned about his standing as leader than actually helping people survive an Armageddon.
The stories themselves were well developed and kept me interested. The themes are about issues most decent human beings want to see resolved as a question of basic human rights. But I was bothered by the didactic quality, the evident moralizing that comes through when any of us tries to send out a message to effect change for rightful reasons. I’m the fruit of social justice warriors and also oppose stifling political correctness and identity politics. I felt the author was too intent on showing us what those of us with a conscience already know all too well, and what those who could learn to be more empathetic won’t bother to read.
The stories themselves were well developed and kept me interested. The themes are about issues most decent human beings want to see resolved as a question of basic human rights. But I was bothered by the didactic quality, the evident moralizing that comes through when any of us tries to send out a message to effect change for rightful reasons. I’m the fruit of social justice warriors and also oppose stifling political correctness and identity politics. I felt the author was too intent on showing us what those of us with a conscience already know all too well, and what those who could learn to be more empathetic won’t bother to read.
March 2, 2019
(Note: The book description for this on Goodreads only describes one Novella. This is actually 4 stories)
This was a brilliantly thought provoking yet hugely entertaining set of novella’s, each one self contained, taking on a meaningful social issue and using speculative fiction to hit home.
Some immersively clever writing with a hugely authentic set of characters, yes even the superhero, who you’ll definitely recognise, all thrown into various dangerous situations which they may or may not be able to extricate themselves from.
From a distinctly perilous attempt to utilise technology we all take for granted, to being caught up in a terror campaign Cory Doctorow plays with the deep seated fears and casual prejudice we have inside all of us. Darkly humorous on occasion but always with a wry eye on human nature, each tale brings it’s own set of challenges to your thinking.
Unauthorised Bread was my favourite story mainly down to the main protagonist and the feeling that not to far in the future it could all be genuinely happening, but every story engaged my brain in different ways.
Overall very good indeed. Take a leap of faith out of your comfort zone and give this one a go.
Recommended.
This was a brilliantly thought provoking yet hugely entertaining set of novella’s, each one self contained, taking on a meaningful social issue and using speculative fiction to hit home.
Some immersively clever writing with a hugely authentic set of characters, yes even the superhero, who you’ll definitely recognise, all thrown into various dangerous situations which they may or may not be able to extricate themselves from.
From a distinctly perilous attempt to utilise technology we all take for granted, to being caught up in a terror campaign Cory Doctorow plays with the deep seated fears and casual prejudice we have inside all of us. Darkly humorous on occasion but always with a wry eye on human nature, each tale brings it’s own set of challenges to your thinking.
Unauthorised Bread was my favourite story mainly down to the main protagonist and the feeling that not to far in the future it could all be genuinely happening, but every story engaged my brain in different ways.
Overall very good indeed. Take a leap of faith out of your comfort zone and give this one a go.
Recommended.
March 25, 2019
I'll admit, I just enjoy reading pretty much anything from Cory Doctorow.
This book is a collection of short stories that are looking at some of the bigger issues facing us now if you set aside global warming. The impact and influence of social media as an echo chamber, social collapse and the long but quick fall of our society into dystopia, hardware as a service and how this might leverage more revenue out of the lowest income population under the false flag of making it affordable, and a discussion of race and police brutality from the perspective of a "Super Man", if he existed.
For me, his books are essays that talk about real issues, either to help you empathize with something or to educate you, but this is wrapped up in a human narrative with some generally positive outcome or perspective. Dystopian narrative with utopian underpinnings. Unlike authors like William Gibson, Cory's stories tend to feel more personally connected, more like a warning parable than a conceptual show of what could be.
This book is a collection of short stories that are looking at some of the bigger issues facing us now if you set aside global warming. The impact and influence of social media as an echo chamber, social collapse and the long but quick fall of our society into dystopia, hardware as a service and how this might leverage more revenue out of the lowest income population under the false flag of making it affordable, and a discussion of race and police brutality from the perspective of a "Super Man", if he existed.
For me, his books are essays that talk about real issues, either to help you empathize with something or to educate you, but this is wrapped up in a human narrative with some generally positive outcome or perspective. Dystopian narrative with utopian underpinnings. Unlike authors like William Gibson, Cory's stories tend to feel more personally connected, more like a warning parable than a conceptual show of what could be.
April 6, 2019
Disappointing
Only one if the four stories (the first) was strong, and all four were so heavy-handed in their politics, and sometimes heavily didactic, as to detract. Not as good as his novels.
Only one if the four stories (the first) was strong, and all four were so heavy-handed in their politics, and sometimes heavily didactic, as to detract. Not as good as his novels.
February 4, 2020
If there was ever a book to get you thinking, this is it! It's comprised of four novellas, three of which I really enjoyed. Doctorow has used these stories to showcase contemporary issues in their extremes and the result is an entertaining and thought-provoking read.
September 22, 2022
Este libro de relatos se me ha caído de las manos a la mitad del primer texto del libro, "Pan no autorizado". Queda tan embebido en la supuesta faceta especulativa del futuro cercano que se atora por completo a la hora de dar un relieve a la faceta emocional que también se está poniendo en juego y que debiera amplificar los dilemas/problemas lanzados sobre el lector. De hecho, gran parte del texto es palabrería trivial que admite su lectura en diagonal a lo grande, siempre que se preste atención a los diálogos. Y digo bien "supuesta faceta especulativa" porque las ideas se pueden resumir en un hilo de seis o siete tweets sin perderse nada. Añádese que la redacción es plana, pesada, reiterativa... Aquí había un articulito de Wired sobre los peligros del software propietario en los electrodomésticos y no una novela corta de 85 páginas.
Los tres relatos restantes funcionan un poco mejor. Dos de ellos tienen de nuevo serios problemas en la construcción dramática, pero se benefician de ser un poco más breves y tener algo de humor. Siguen teniendo paginitis pero muestran algo más de tono muscular. Aunque se me ocurren numerosos cruces entre Batman y Superman con más sustancia que "Una minoría modélica", y más garra en decenas de historias de gente que se va a un lugar apartado/refugio a esperar el fin del mundo que lo visto en "La máscara de la muerte roja" (guiño, guiño). Sí que Doctorow se reivindica en "Radicalizado", el texto más afilado del libro donde entra a golpes en el problema de los sistemas sanitarios basados en seguros. Un libelo de los próximos cinco minutos donde esta construcción demoniaca salta por los aires por la acción violenta de unas víctimas que devuelven al sistema la violencia que han recibido, amplificada y distribuida de manera desigual. Una cuestión problemática que sobre todo permite aliviar las entrañas de quienes lo padecen y, en nuestro caso, alentar la lucha por mantener un sistema de salud universal.
Al menos, Doctorow no insiste en los males de la tecnología a lo Black Mirror y se centra en describir su aprovechamiento por parte de una minoría para extraer riqueza del más mínimo recoveco del sistema capitalista. Pero lo hace de una manera tan literal, tan escasamente imaginativo, que me cuesta recomendar el libro para los que gusten de una ficción mínimamente elaborada. Para estos, aunque tenía sus altibajos, me parece mucho más satisfactorio Friday Black, de Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
Los tres relatos restantes funcionan un poco mejor. Dos de ellos tienen de nuevo serios problemas en la construcción dramática, pero se benefician de ser un poco más breves y tener algo de humor. Siguen teniendo paginitis pero muestran algo más de tono muscular. Aunque se me ocurren numerosos cruces entre Batman y Superman con más sustancia que "Una minoría modélica", y más garra en decenas de historias de gente que se va a un lugar apartado/refugio a esperar el fin del mundo que lo visto en "La máscara de la muerte roja" (guiño, guiño). Sí que Doctorow se reivindica en "Radicalizado", el texto más afilado del libro donde entra a golpes en el problema de los sistemas sanitarios basados en seguros. Un libelo de los próximos cinco minutos donde esta construcción demoniaca salta por los aires por la acción violenta de unas víctimas que devuelven al sistema la violencia que han recibido, amplificada y distribuida de manera desigual. Una cuestión problemática que sobre todo permite aliviar las entrañas de quienes lo padecen y, en nuestro caso, alentar la lucha por mantener un sistema de salud universal.
Al menos, Doctorow no insiste en los males de la tecnología a lo Black Mirror y se centra en describir su aprovechamiento por parte de una minoría para extraer riqueza del más mínimo recoveco del sistema capitalista. Pero lo hace de una manera tan literal, tan escasamente imaginativo, que me cuesta recomendar el libro para los que gusten de una ficción mínimamente elaborada. Para estos, aunque tenía sus altibajos, me parece mucho más satisfactorio Friday Black, de Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
January 23, 2023
I really enjoyed these near future speculatory, exploratory stories. My first Doctorow. Not my last. rtc
4.5ish Stars
Listened to the audiobook. All of the narrators were very good. Not a cast, but a different narrator for each story. The narrators were: Lameece Issaq, Mirron Willis, Stefan Rudnicki, and Wil Wheaton
4.5ish Stars
Listened to the audiobook. All of the narrators were very good. Not a cast, but a different narrator for each story. The narrators were: Lameece Issaq, Mirron Willis, Stefan Rudnicki, and Wil Wheaton
September 18, 2019
Radicalized ★★★★★
“They say violence never solves anything... that’s only true so long as you ignore all of human history.”
Boom! What would it take to get true universal health care in USA? Violence.
Masque of the Red Death ★★★★★
“Hell is other people.”
Or it could be Solarpunk heaven if you choose correctly. This was the story I was waiting for, the prequel to Walkaway!
In the early days of discontent and disruption the rich gather in small groups and arm themselves while the middle class and poor work together to form a new economy.
Add a little Poe and you have a recipe for a new world, a better world.
Unauthorized Bread ★★★★☆
Immigrants facing marginalization empower themselves by jailbreaking their appliances for technological democracy.
Model Minority ★★★☆☆
Unsubtle story of police brutality, racism, and skewed statistics. For a minute the subject of Superman not actually being white was interesting but hating on the Kryptonian for being an alien is not a new storyline.
Average 4.25 Stars
March 13, 2020
Radicalized by Cory Doctorow is a finalist in Canada Reads 2020.
I question this as it didn't feel like a Canada-focused read. It will be interesting to hear the debate surrounding the decision for this book.
Four stories relating to today's social issues and injustices lumped together into different universes - future, science-fiction and dystopic.
A quick, dark read!
I question this as it didn't feel like a Canada-focused read. It will be interesting to hear the debate surrounding the decision for this book.
Four stories relating to today's social issues and injustices lumped together into different universes - future, science-fiction and dystopic.
A quick, dark read!
May 31, 2019
Not my cup of tea. Hated every moment of this reading experience, but wanted to finish it for a book club.
October 16, 2019
Liked 1st novel only.
January 8, 2023
"Unauthorized Bread" 3⭐
"Model minority" 2⭐
"Radicalized" 3,5 ⭐
"The masque of red death" 3,5 ⭐
"Model minority" 2⭐
"Radicalized" 3,5 ⭐
"The masque of red death" 3,5 ⭐
June 22, 2019
Great little collection of 4 unique stories:
1) Unauthorized Bread - 4 Stars - All appliances are "smart" and are used to keep poor people poor. The lower class MC lives in an apartment building where the floors are clearly defined by class. She always has to wait for the automated elevator to pick her up because upper class tenants get picked up first, but just living in that building is considered a privilege. When her toaster stops working, she learns how to jailbreak the operating system, and helps her neighbors alter all of their appliances. This is illegal, and trouble ensues.
The concept was super interesting, but it did become a little too similar to the movie Dredd at times.
2) Model Minority - 5 Stars - My favorite story of the bunch. American Eagle (Superman) has an existential crisis when faced with police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement. His best friend Bruce the Billionaire Playboy (Batman) thinks they should stay out of it, but a similar event from Eagle's makes him demand change.
This story alone would make me rate the book 5 stars. It's such a unique take on not only the supervisors, but the issue of police brutality as a whole. Eagle's friendship he develops with a victim is great. I loved every second of this.
3) Radicalized - 5 Stars - When his wife is diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer and insurance denies her treatment, the MC joins a dark web discussion group for angry men in similar situations. When members of the group become radicalized and start planning terrorist attacks, he is torn between protecting his family, and joining the cause.
Being a Canadian, I only watch the American Health Care Crisis from afar, but I can absolutely see this happening in real life. It raises good questions about how culpable someone is for another's actions, when you know they are planning something horrible, but can't report them because you don't know who they are or where they live.
4) The Masque of the Red Death - 4 Stars - The weakest of the four in my opinion. It is a retelling of The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe. It centers around a wealthy doomsday prepper and his group of followers trying to survive a disease outbreak.
Pretty standard end-of-the-world survival tale, but since I love the original text, I found it entertaining.
1) Unauthorized Bread - 4 Stars - All appliances are "smart" and are used to keep poor people poor. The lower class MC lives in an apartment building where the floors are clearly defined by class. She always has to wait for the automated elevator to pick her up because upper class tenants get picked up first, but just living in that building is considered a privilege. When her toaster stops working, she learns how to jailbreak the operating system, and helps her neighbors alter all of their appliances. This is illegal, and trouble ensues.
The concept was super interesting, but it did become a little too similar to the movie Dredd at times.
2) Model Minority - 5 Stars - My favorite story of the bunch. American Eagle (Superman) has an existential crisis when faced with police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement. His best friend Bruce the Billionaire Playboy (Batman) thinks they should stay out of it, but a similar event from Eagle's makes him demand change.
This story alone would make me rate the book 5 stars. It's such a unique take on not only the supervisors, but the issue of police brutality as a whole. Eagle's friendship he develops with a victim is great. I loved every second of this.
3) Radicalized - 5 Stars - When his wife is diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer and insurance denies her treatment, the MC joins a dark web discussion group for angry men in similar situations. When members of the group become radicalized and start planning terrorist attacks, he is torn between protecting his family, and joining the cause.
Being a Canadian, I only watch the American Health Care Crisis from afar, but I can absolutely see this happening in real life. It raises good questions about how culpable someone is for another's actions, when you know they are planning something horrible, but can't report them because you don't know who they are or where they live.
4) The Masque of the Red Death - 4 Stars - The weakest of the four in my opinion. It is a retelling of The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe. It centers around a wealthy doomsday prepper and his group of followers trying to survive a disease outbreak.
Pretty standard end-of-the-world survival tale, but since I love the original text, I found it entertaining.
February 7, 2020
When the #CanadaReads folks picked their shortlist this one felt a bit off. While the other four books seemed to centre stories of marginalized voices, Radicalized felt on the surface like boilerplate sci-fi. Instead Doctrow gives us four short stories that speak the very social breakdown that is engulfing the world. The first follows a poor immigrant woman attempting to undermine the proprietary technology of appliance companies that help keep her and others downtrodden. The second is about a superhero who decides to take on the white supremacy of police departments he had long worked with. The third occurs in an America where bankrupted and victimized survivors of privatized medicine decide to use violence to win health care for all. The final story has a billionaire who uses his wealth to avoid the consequences of an impeding apocalyptic event. Each story hits on the nose the anxieties of late capitalism, as corporate power, state violence, profit driven essential services and environmental devastation surrounds our daily experiences. In themes of this year's theme, a book that puts Canada into focus, this hits the nail on the head.
PS the audiobook was great, fantastic narrators, including the skates strong Wil Wheaton
PS the audiobook was great, fantastic narrators, including the skates strong Wil Wheaton
August 8, 2020
Well, well, well, ..but not really well!
Three stars ....barely!
This was four separate stories, each a science fiction or dystopian account.
Each started out somewhat promising, engaging. Maybe I expected more. Maybe they were too short to provide more, or even to provide enough.
For the most part I felt that each of them ended without providing an ending. Maybe that was the point. You are supposed to let your imagination fill in the ending! I dunno!
The writing was good, nicely descriptive. Some narrative, some dialogue, some development of key characters, some plot development. But it all just felt incomplete.
.....and the icing on the cake..... WHY was this a finalist for Canada Reads, where the theme was “one book to bring Canada into focus”. I get we are in a pandemic, but we weren’t when the theme was chosen, nor were we when the finalists were announced, (just in case either of those scenarios would have made a difference).
....so... I dunno!
I’m sure this won’t be a very favourable opinion, but that’s the nature of opinions... they belong to the opiner! I dunno!
Three stars ....barely!
This was four separate stories, each a science fiction or dystopian account.
Each started out somewhat promising, engaging. Maybe I expected more. Maybe they were too short to provide more, or even to provide enough.
For the most part I felt that each of them ended without providing an ending. Maybe that was the point. You are supposed to let your imagination fill in the ending! I dunno!
The writing was good, nicely descriptive. Some narrative, some dialogue, some development of key characters, some plot development. But it all just felt incomplete.
.....and the icing on the cake..... WHY was this a finalist for Canada Reads, where the theme was “one book to bring Canada into focus”. I get we are in a pandemic, but we weren’t when the theme was chosen, nor were we when the finalists were announced, (just in case either of those scenarios would have made a difference).
....so... I dunno!
I’m sure this won’t be a very favourable opinion, but that’s the nature of opinions... they belong to the opiner! I dunno!
February 21, 2023
Me he llevado una decepción muy grande.
Quitando el único que me ha gustado, del que ahora hablaré, los otros tres son relatos insulsos, faltos de imaginación y originalidad, aburridos... No puedo decir nada bueno de ellos. Hay algo que busco cuando leo relatos de cifi y es que me impacten de alguna manera o que me sorprendan por sus ideas, y aquí Doctorow me ha dado lo más básico y visto y, además, narrado de una manera soporífera. Sumado a todo esto, los personajes más planos y sosos no podían ser.
El único relato que para mí ha merecido la pena ha sido el que da nombre al libro: «Radicalizado», que encima no es de ciencia ficción. Es un cuento en el que trata y critica al sistema de salud estadounidense con gran acierto, así como otra variedad de temas que siempre son de mi interés: crítica al capitalismo, luchas violentas contra el poder, etc...
Quitando el único que me ha gustado, del que ahora hablaré, los otros tres son relatos insulsos, faltos de imaginación y originalidad, aburridos... No puedo decir nada bueno de ellos. Hay algo que busco cuando leo relatos de cifi y es que me impacten de alguna manera o que me sorprendan por sus ideas, y aquí Doctorow me ha dado lo más básico y visto y, además, narrado de una manera soporífera. Sumado a todo esto, los personajes más planos y sosos no podían ser.
El único relato que para mí ha merecido la pena ha sido el que da nombre al libro: «Radicalizado», que encima no es de ciencia ficción. Es un cuento en el que trata y critica al sistema de salud estadounidense con gran acierto, así como otra variedad de temas que siempre son de mi interés: crítica al capitalismo, luchas violentas contra el poder, etc...
February 29, 2020
Being poor is expensive. from the inside cover synopsis
These four novellas may well radicalize some of those comfortable sleepers with their heads in the sand and those who earnestly believe in slogans like 'progress'. Set in a not so distant future, each deals with an aspect of our subservience to the system, on which we rely on for our food, health care, and justice.The idea that some people are entitled to these things and that others need suffer for their lack is exposed as unacceptable. If you already knew that, then perhaps you will find these stories, as chilling as they are, and if you still have a sense of humour, a paranoid's delight.
Running headfirst into the system doesn't change the system, it just gives you a headache, p164
January 30, 2022
Ficción especulativa muy centrada en las dinámicas sociales, más que en novedades científicas o tecnológicas, en la línea de J. G. Ballard o de Warren Ellis. Son historias muy dialógicas, complejas, oscuras, dramáticas, en ocasiones violentas, pero iluminadas por la convicción de que colaborar y compartir siempre saldrá más a cuenta que oprimir y saquear.
A pesar de que leerlos en inglés no siempre me ha resultado fácil —y no me puedo creer que la obra para adultos de Cory Doctorow no esté siendo inmediatamente traducida al castellano—, he devorado estas cuatro novelas cortas y me he apresurado a pedir otros libros del mismo autor.
A pesar de que leerlos en inglés no siempre me ha resultado fácil —y no me puedo creer que la obra para adultos de Cory Doctorow no esté siendo inmediatamente traducida al castellano—, he devorado estas cuatro novelas cortas y me he apresurado a pedir otros libros del mismo autor.
May 30, 2024
Like listening to episodes of Black Mirror on 'shrooms.
August 6, 2022
A re-read for a book club. This was the selection for the month that in-person book club was ended due to covid.
I wish I had story breakdowns from before. I'm just now through with re-reading the second one, Model Minority. And I kind had to just step away. I've been reading quite a few book on prejudice and racism and hidden bias over the last couple of years. I don't know where I was exactly when I read this novella the first time. It is a Superman and Batman story without using those names. But Superman stops a set of cops from possibly beating a black man to death. Fiction is a way to tell the same story that you tell in nonfiction but perhaps in a way that some readers won't get in any other way. I don't remember what I thought about this a couple of years ago. But at this point I found this almost unbearably believable.
And then there is Radicalized. Which is basically a story supporting terrorism. It punches hard. And I had to take a break 2/3 through. Or as my daughter says, "Capitalism". It is not a good world where corporate America has to be convinced to do the less wrong thing with direct violence.
The first story is Toast. And it is pretty terrific. For treating refugees and poor people like crap, it's very light-hearted. It is a near future with interesting technology ideas.
The fourth story, Masque of the Red Death is unlikely to have gotten better since I read it last. My memory is that its main point is that rich people who think they can avoid an apocalypse like climate change by riding it out in their bunkers, are assholes and probably won't win in the end anyway. And this one is slightly better than I expected and just a little bit different. But still not enjoyable, though really the others aren't enjoyable either.
I'm struck by how vivid this book, how easy it is to remember, and how easy it is to put it out of mind while life rolls on, waiting for all this to come through. 5 of 5.
Original Read
Wow. So this is a collection of 4 novellas. And they run the gamut from fantastic to fantastic and scary to very good. They are all pretty much near future, though Radicalized is essentially right now. They are all pretty much future's that I wouldn't want to be in. Or for that matter now's that I don't want to live in. A scary take on what technology can do. Worth reading. 5 of 5.
I wish I had story breakdowns from before. I'm just now through with re-reading the second one, Model Minority. And I kind had to just step away. I've been reading quite a few book on prejudice and racism and hidden bias over the last couple of years. I don't know where I was exactly when I read this novella the first time. It is a Superman and Batman story without using those names. But Superman stops a set of cops from possibly beating a black man to death. Fiction is a way to tell the same story that you tell in nonfiction but perhaps in a way that some readers won't get in any other way. I don't remember what I thought about this a couple of years ago. But at this point I found this almost unbearably believable.
And then there is Radicalized. Which is basically a story supporting terrorism. It punches hard. And I had to take a break 2/3 through. Or as my daughter says, "Capitalism". It is not a good world where corporate America has to be convinced to do the less wrong thing with direct violence.
The first story is Toast. And it is pretty terrific. For treating refugees and poor people like crap, it's very light-hearted. It is a near future with interesting technology ideas.
The fourth story, Masque of the Red Death is unlikely to have gotten better since I read it last. My memory is that its main point is that rich people who think they can avoid an apocalypse like climate change by riding it out in their bunkers, are assholes and probably won't win in the end anyway. And this one is slightly better than I expected and just a little bit different. But still not enjoyable, though really the others aren't enjoyable either.
I'm struck by how vivid this book, how easy it is to remember, and how easy it is to put it out of mind while life rolls on, waiting for all this to come through. 5 of 5.
Original Read
Wow. So this is a collection of 4 novellas. And they run the gamut from fantastic to fantastic and scary to very good. They are all pretty much near future, though Radicalized is essentially right now. They are all pretty much future's that I wouldn't want to be in. Or for that matter now's that I don't want to live in. A scary take on what technology can do. Worth reading. 5 of 5.
March 19, 2019
This was my first exposure to Cory Doctorow, despite knowing about him from Wattpad for many years now. I love a good novella, and these are all great novellas, so it seems I picked a good spot to jump in.
My favourites were by far the title story, "Radicalized," as well as the first story, "Unauthorized Bread." The former being all the more scary and real having read it just after the Christchurch mosque shootings, the latter being the longest and most thought-out of the bunch.
None of the stories, however, go beyond great—not in my opinion, anyway. They were all missing something for me... some Aha! moment, or some deeper connection to the characters. Still, Doctorow's writing style is smooth and modern, and I look forward to reading a full-length novel by him.
My favourites were by far the title story, "Radicalized," as well as the first story, "Unauthorized Bread." The former being all the more scary and real having read it just after the Christchurch mosque shootings, the latter being the longest and most thought-out of the bunch.
None of the stories, however, go beyond great—not in my opinion, anyway. They were all missing something for me... some Aha! moment, or some deeper connection to the characters. Still, Doctorow's writing style is smooth and modern, and I look forward to reading a full-length novel by him.
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