The Do-Nothing Machine Wakes

Over the past few years, there has been a spate of novels focused on the fate of robots who have been left behind after a cataclysm has mostly wiped out humanity. Examples include C. Robert Cargill’s western Sea of Rust, Charles Stross’ adventure yarns Saturn’s Children and Neptune’s Brood, and Adrian Tchaikovksy’s comedic romp Service Model.

This is not an entirely new premise — one only needs to look back at Clifford D. Simak’s City or “Who Can Replace a Man?” by Brian Aldiss to find an earlier example — but it does seem to us that it has become more prevalent of late. Moreover, such stories seem to have become more melancholic.

Although critics question Graeber's
findings, it's clear that his book
resonated with many readers. 
(Image via Wikipedia)

We have a theory why.

The post-apocalyptic robot story offers a reflection on technological advancement’s latest separation of the worker from meaningful labour in their employment. At a time when many in North America perceive that Large Language Models and generative AI are undermining the creative industries and even workplace creativity itself, perhaps these stories resonate more. It is reminiscent of the deindustrialization of high income countries and the resulting rising in inequality of the 1970s and 1980s and how that shift created an audience ready for what cyberpunk offered.

For decades, the robot in most science fiction stories was depicted as being purpose-built to serve humanity. Notwithstanding the problematic nature of treating sentient beings as servile and free of rights, Asmiov’s robots found meaning and satisfaction in their work. In the post-apocalyptic robot story, the work continues but the meaning and the satisfaction of their labours are gone. There is no liberating aspect to humanity’s absence; the protagonists are faced with a continuation of systems that have lost their reason for existing.

If the Asimovian robot story is a metaphor for workers in a standard employment relationship, then perhaps the post-apocalyptic robot story holds up a mirror to what David Graeber describes in his book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory.

Graeber defined a bullshit job as “A form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence.” To be clear, he didn’t mean unpleasant or low-paid jobs (Garbage collection isn’t high-paying, and it is not a task anyone does for fun, but nobody would question whether or not it’s necessary, it is therefore not “bullshit”). The issue is not whether a job is enjoyable or even prestigious, but whether it serves a purpose that produces a sense of meaning and accomplishment for the employee. Examples he gives of “bullshit jobs” are employees who create paperwork or reports to give the appearance that something useful is happening, or managers whose primary purpose is supervising people who do not require supervision. Jobs that have become less relevant due to changing technology or societal value or priority shifts. In essence gains of productivity in the past few decades, Graeber argues, have not led to increased free time, but more hours spent on tasks that provide no value.

Charles Stross has indicated
that his post-human robot
novel Neptune's Brood was 
influenced by David Graeber's
Debt: The First 5,000 years.
(Image via Goodreads)

Much like workers experiencing “bullshit jobs,” robots in these post-apocalyptic stories are trapped by their place within a hierarchy of labour. Their programming, social conditioning, or deeply ingrained understanding of themselves compels them to continue performing tasks long after those tasks have ceased to matter. Uncharles, the valet robot protagonist of Tchaikovsky's Service Model, navigates an absurd bureaucracy that no longer serves any living citizen. The robots of Saturn’s Children inherit human conflicts and hierarchies despite the disappearance of the species that created them. It’s worth noting that this year’s Hugo-finalist novel by Nnedi Okorafor, Death of the Author, features a novel-within-a-novel called Rusted Robots which takes a particularly interesting angle on these themes. Rusted Robots seems to play with the way modern AI is undermining the meaningfulness of creative pursuits.

One counterpoint to these stories is Becky Chambers’ Monk and Robot trilogy of novellas. The robots in these stories do not continue performing meaningless labour after humanity. Instead, when they achieve sentience, they simply stop. There is something somewhat radical in Chambers’ work because of protagonist Splendid Speckled Mosscap’s rejection of bullshit work. In fact, the refusal to define themselves through that work is what Chambers depicts as the great act of liberation.

There is a subtext in the post-apocalyptic robot novel that the worst parts of capitalism — alienation of the worker from their labour, power imbalances, hierarchy — will survive the extinction of humanity. The purpose may end, but the labour will carry on.

The Best Laid Plans Of Paratime Mice

Over the course of six volumes and almost a million words, Charles Stross’s Merchant Princes series has careened rapidly from one genre to the next. The series has at times been a portal fantasy, a crime drama, a nuclear thriller, a steampunk subterfuge, and finally an alien invasion tale. The series has been many things, but predictable is not one of them.

Wrapping up the Empire Games
trilogy,  Charles Stross has delivered
his most satisfying novel in about
eight years. 
(Image via Goodreads)

The series wrapped up this month — possibly for good — with the release of Invisible Sun, a much-delayed but ultimately satisfactory conclusion. This is a book that many longtime fans will welcome, and serves as a good argument for why new readers should give the series a go.

Invisible Sun kicks off with a simmering feud between alternate versions of America, connected by paratime travel (between timelines). In one America, a steam-punk democratic revolution is struggling with a succession crisis, while in the other America (one more similar to our own), the post-9/11 War on Terror has metastasized into a relentless surveillance state. While part of the story involves a covert extradition mission from the surveillance state world, another part of the story involves back-channel diplomacy to avoid nuclear war. Simultaneously, both worlds have to confront a threat posed by a far-advanced and ancient evil race from a third timeline.

It’s a lot to juggle, and our main criticism of the book would be that at times, some of these plotlines receive short shrift. That being said, we appreciate a narrative structure that is stronger than many of the previous Merchant Princes books. Specifically, Invisible Sun doesn’t derail its readers.

Because often, these books do go off the rails with unforeseen problems cropping up for the protagonists. One could even describe the series as an exercise in subverting expectations. It seems as if two or three times per book, the point-of-view protagonist (Miriam Beckstein in books 1-3, and Rita Douglas in books 4-6) concocts seemingly well-thought-out plans … only for things to go sidewise.

As a reader, having your expectations subverted is often a lot of fun, and Stross is an expert at doing so in a way that feels natural and believable. At its best, this series offers surprises that once revealed seem like the natural consequences of the setting and of choices made by the protagonists.

And this lack of predictability has been both the strength, and the pitfall of these books. Unlike the
Laundry Files — Stross’ other long-running and Hugo-shortlisted series — The Merchant Princes never gets overly familiar or in a rut.

It's difficult to think of another
series that could start somewhere
like Nine Princes in Amber, and 
end in The Sum Of All Fears.
(Image via Goodreads)

But after five books, the trick of subverting expectations can grow wearying. There’s only so many rugs that can be pulled out from under the reader before the trick becomes stale. The directness of Invisible Sun, the more streamlined nature of the denouement, and the lack of shocking revelations and surprises is … actually quite welcome.

We would note that the final 20 pages of the final book does feel somewhat rushed. All the denouement, all the resolution, are jammed into as few words as possible. It feels almost as if after writing a million words in the series, the author just wanted to be over and done with it. And maybe so do we.

The entire book club read the first book in the series, with somewhat mixed reactions, but as of yet, only two of us have read the complete series. Those who made it past the first book were enthusiastic about the unpredictability of Stross’ imagination. Re-reading the entire series back-to-back, it becomes clear just how much Stross has evolved as a wordsmith and as a crafter of narrative structures.

The Merchant Princes is a series that accomplishes a lot in six books; offering a reassessment of classic portal fantasies, delving into development economics, examining the tension between safety and privacy, and exploring ideas about how democracies come into existence and wither over time. At its best, there was no better contemporary long-running science fiction series. And by offering it a definitive conclusion, Stross has provided an opportunity to assess it in fullness.

We hope to see it on the Hugo Award ballot for best series, and if it does will likely rank it highly.

Even Charles Stross' worst book is pretty good

If we select nominations for Best Series based on a representative title being released in 2020, The

Laundry Files may not make the grade. But if we are choosing nominations based on the strength of the entire series, then Charles Stross’s decades-long Laundry Files series is nearly a lock for our ballots.

This is not to say that Dead Lies Dreaming is a let-down. Rather, it’s an uneven book that doesn’t always showcase the strengths of the series, or Stross’ rich imagination.

Taking place in a London transformed by the rise of the dark and eldritch forces unleashed during the events of the previous few Laundry Files novels, Dead Lies Dreaming follows the exploits of a group of marginalized youths who support themselves through magic-based crime. Through various circumstances — and family connections — they become embroiled in a plot to travel back in time and secure a rare and dangerous tome of magic.

As always with Stross, there’s a fair degree of on-point criticism of capitalism’s excesses, much of which lands well. The sections in which he uses the point of view of the marginalized youths to examine the completely bizarre housing market in the United Kingdom, are perspicacious, witty, and sad.

One of the strongest scenes — and perhaps the most difficult to read because it hits so close to home — involves a visit to a long-term care facility. Stross writes the section with a keen eye for the real-world horrors of old age, dementia, and under-resourced nursing staff.

Those who have spent time at privatized seniors
care facilities will find Stross' insightful writing
about such places to be harrowing.
(Image via Chilliwack Progress) 

Where Dead Lies Dreaming falls down as a book is that it’s hard to get a handle on any of the characters as people. Several of them seem interesting at first — particularly police officer / thief taker Wendy Deere, and corporate power-broker Eve. Stross has introduced a large and diverse cast, but doesn’t develop many of them beyond sketch work.

Stross has made a clean break here from all the previous books in the series. The story barely even mentions any of the existing characters, does not tie into the overall story arc, and doesn’t even touch on the spycraft that had been the unifying theme for the series. This makes one wonder whether this book might have been better-served by being pared down, streamlined, and released as something wholly separate.

It has been almost a decade since Charles Stross penned a novel that was not a sequel to one of his previous books. Dead Lies Dreaming is still a sequel, but in some ways it is a welcome change in that it stands alone far more than most of his recent novels. Some might even find it a better entry point to the world of the Laundry Files than several of the previous books. But is this a world that is worth devoting many more books to? Only Stross can pull that off, and we think he could, but is he ready to move on? Dead Lies Dreaming leaves us hoping he might be.

Spin stands out

In retrospect, Spin seems like an improbable winner for the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Spin is a novel whose
appeal may be limited
outside of fannish
circles, but that's also
what makes it great.
(Image via Goodreads)

From 2001 – 2010, the Hugo Awards converged with the mainstream literary establishment in a way that they usually hadn’t in previous decades. Six of the Hugo-winning novels from that decade sat atop the New York Times bestseller list and sold millions of copies. Three others were written by perennial Hugo favourites.

Which is why Robert Charles Wilson’s win in 2006 stands out. Wilson is certainly not as big a name as George R. R. Martin. He hasn’t enjoyed the same level of sales as John Scalzi. And he hasn’t been Hugo shortlisted as often as Charles Stross. But Spin beat out Accelerando, Old Man’s War, and A Feast For Crows to take home Wilson’s to-date only Best Novel Hugo Award.

And it’s a win that, with the benefit of a dozen years of hindsight, looks better and better.

Spin is a novel about a mysterious event that separates the Earth from the rest of the universe. All at once humanity is cut off from its telecommunications satellites, and observations show that time is moving thousands of times more slowly on Earth than outside the barrier. The protagonist Tyler Dupree grows up in the shadow of this mysterious event, all the while searching for answers.

Spin faced tough competition in 2006, in what was possibly one of the most stacked Hugo shortlists in recent memory. Old Man’s War is perhaps John Scalzi’s most famous work, spawning five sequels, a variety of short stories, and earning the author a blockbuster literary deal. It’s probably Scalzi’s best book to date, engaging and fun, but Spin aims higher in terms of nuance and imagination.

A Feast For Crows was the first George R. R. Martin novel to top the New York Times bestseller list,

Robert Charles Wilson may not have
as high a profile outside of fandom,
but his work is worth celebrating.
(Image via Goodreads)

a success that helped convince HBO to greenlight the TV show. The book develops fan-favourite character Brienne, and delves into Cersei’s motivations. But as the fourth book in a series, it is impenetrable to outsiders, and perhaps a bit redundant.

Charles Stross’ Accelerando has been described as the gold standard of singularitarian works. It’s a very interesting book, offering a series of vignettes that show how the world changes over three generations. But Stross’ everything-and-the-kitchen-sink cavalcade of sci-fi ideas gets in the way of the human aspects of the story.

Ken McLeod’s Learning The World is a moderately good novel that is undermined by a deus-ex-machina ending. It remains one of the more puzzling Hugo-shortlisted works in recent memory. McLeod is an excellent writer (The Execution Channel should not be missed), and this book has interesting ideas about assimilation and cultural norms, but the ending is deeply unsatisfactory.

Spin bested all of these, and in retrospect I think it deserved to. It is a deeply human story of growing up, set against a backdrop that explores a unique and science-fictional idea.

While the central mystery of the novel is well imagined, and explored seriously and satisfyingly, it is probably not something that would have been noticed by the mundane literary establishment.

This is a novel that deserves to be celebrated, but unlike most other Hugo winners in that decade, would never have been recognized outside of genre awards.

To us, it may be the platonic ideal of what a modern Hugo Award winner should be.

Spoiler-Free Empire Games review (Charles Stross)

Any author whose works have garnered a total of seven Hugo nominations for best novel has to be seen as a potential nominee every time one of his books hits the shelves.

Charles Stross' latest novel, Empire Games, which landed in early January deserves every bit of consideration it's going to get this year.

Complicated set-up, worthwhile story

It's a taut, well-handled espionage novel set in a cold-war between two dimension-hopping governments in alternate versions of America. One version of America is much like a near-future version of our own, having only been disrupted by dimension-hopping nuclear terrorists in about 2006, the other is a semi-Victorian steampunk world whose government had ties to the aforementioned terrorists.

Despite the complexity of the setting — and the author's exploration of large themes of surveillance, government overreach and securitization — the actual prose of the book is engaging, fast-paced and light.

This is a very smart, nuanced, thoughtful book that reads like popcorn literature.

Merchant Princes - Part 7

The fact that Empire Games is tied to previous Stross novels does count against it for those of us who prefer standalone works.

Charles Stross
has a blog

But, while Empire Games is set up as the first part of a trilogy, and stands well on its own. It is set in the same continuity as Stross' Merchant Princes series (none of which were Hugo nominees). Reading it with his other novels is a richer experience, but the overall quality of the work does not depend on those books.

Choices have consequences

One of the rewarding things about reading Charles Stross' more serious novels is the level of internal consistency he adheres to. In this book (and the Merchant Princes books overall), choices have consequences, and Stross does not shy away from unpleasant repercussions. There's no deus-et-machina, and once a rule is established in the narrative, it is unbroken.

The central premise — that there are many universes with different histories, and that there are ways to travel between these — is explored unflinchingly. The consequences of this premise are treated with seriousness and insight, and this is Stross' unique talent.

Give Empire Games a Hugo nomination please

Stross is long overdue for a win in the best novel category of the Hugos, but this book probably won't score it for him. Empire Games is Stross' most satisfying novel in about six years (probably since Rule 34), and in most years would probably be a strong contender for the top prize.

2017 is already a remarkable year for new SF novels, and the competition is going to be fierce, but Empire Games is definitely worth at least a Hugo nomination on what will be a crowded ballot.