Old Man's Boss Baby

(Image via Goodreads)

There’s a saying in the labour movement: make someone a boss and they’re going to act like a boss.

It’s an observation based on a familiar pattern of workers becoming managers and then acting in ways that put them at odds with the needs of the proletariat. The system incentives people to make decisions that serve the few instead of the many.

This is, fundamentally, the problem with John Scalzi’s latest novel. Starter Villain is narrated in the first person by Charlie, an underemployed and financially precarious teacher who inherits a megacorporation after the death of his estranged uncle Jake. Charlie quickly learns that Uncle Jake’s business empire involved global extortion, illicit genetic experiments, and orbital laser platforms; the protagonist inherits the role of corporate supervilain.

It’s an amusing and intriguing premise … one that could have been used to interrogate capitalist systems of power. Instead, Charlie is presented with a series of facile moral quandaries that are resolved when his ‘common-sense’ and ‘hometown values’ lead him to simplistic solutions for complex situations.

He’s a boss … but he avoids acting like a boss because the book skirts around the perverse incentives that (in the real world) drive many in the management class to act like psychopaths. The novel suggests that the evils of capitalism are not based on structural problems, but on the fact that the wrong people are in charge.

Possibly the most egregious example of this is in how Charlie deals with workers’ rights at his secret volcano lair. Early in the novel, he’s introduced to a pod of genetically enhanced intelligent dolphins, and he learns that they have formed a labour union in order to demand better compensation and working conditions. Although the complaints of the dolphins are depicted as being valid, their negotiating tactics are portrayed as obstreperous and confrontational. That is, the reason they have been unable to resolve their contract negotiation is because of worker intransigence. This dispute is resolved when Charlie takes the time to listen to the workers without getting angry at their antics.

The problem with this understanding of labour relations is that it diminishes the agency of the workers and portrays the skills of managers as superior instead of specialized.

Now, it should be noted that this type of labour union depiction is a significant improvement over the anti-worker rhetoric that was common in science fiction of the 1940s-1970s. But it is still based on ideas of management-class paternalism; this is a story in which the liberation of the cetacean proletariat derives not from the emancipation of the worker but from the benevolence of management. However, in reality, anything that can be offered by a good boss can be denied by a bad one.

Maybe it's a bad idea to put people into positions
of authority based on who their uncle was.
(Image via NPR.com)

Ignoring worker perspectives has a long tradition in science fiction stories. Scalzi’s work fits neatly alongside Asimov’s, Dick’s and Pohl’s; evidently well-intentioned towards workers, but ultimately reinforcing management supremacy and failing to platform worker agency.

One highlight of Starter Villain, however, is a denouement which relies on worker-led interspecies solidarity. Not only is this a philosophically coherent plot mechanism, but it showcases percussive action that few authors writing today are capable of.

Scalzi is an author whose work we’ve often admired. His brand of quippy, accessible prose is often entertaining and fun. The Collapsing Empire novels were engaging and well-thought out parables about the dangers of science denial. Old Man’s War is a modern classic for a reason. But Starter Villain hews to some of Scalzi’s more irritating writerly quirks; a protagonist who’s a bit too smug propped up by smart-alec sidekicks. This is admittedly a comedic novel … and nothing is more subjective than comedy. So this farce might be more to some peoples’ tastes than ours.

Not all labour unions are created equal, and nor are depictions of labour unions in science fiction. The past few years have seen some of the best SFF about labour unions ever published (among others, we’d highlight Babel by R.F. Kuang, 

We Built This City by Marie Vibbert, & Hunger Makes The Wolf by Alex Wells). Simply put, Starter Villain falls short.

A Canticle For Hopepunk

From early days in the genre, novels were often built out of previously-published short stories. The result was called “A fix-up.” Stories that had been popular in pulp magazines sometimes helped convince publishers that there was an appetite for a more expansive and expensive book-length version.

Vast sweeps of history can show
the ramifications of policy decisions.
(Image via Goodreads)

These fix-ups also came with their own synergy between form and function. Interlinked stories working on similar themes turned out to be a form of science fiction that was well-suited for galaxy-spanning tales and large sweeps of future history. Many of the books traditionally considered to be classics of the genre fit this mold, such as Foundation, City, and The Martian Chronicles.

With the rise of cheap paperback novels in the 1960s, and the decline of pulp magazines, the great science fiction tradition of fix-ups has been in significant decline. Which is why it’s refreshing to read Annalee Newitz’ latest novel. Although not technically a fix-up, The Terraformers uses a style and structure that is reminiscent of many of these works.

In fact, the novel could be read as a response — a mirror image even — of Walter Miller Jr.’s Hugo-winner A Canticle For Leibowitz. But while Miller is focused on history’s cycles of creation and destruction, Newitz’ book explores tensions between freedom and corporate serfdom.

Like Miller’s fix-up novel, Terraformers is split into three sections that are set in similar locations but separated in time by centuries.

Each book’s first section focuses on an individual in a sparsely-populated world making the discovery of an underground facility filled with hidden knowledge. It’s this section of Terraformers that provides the book’s two most memorable and compelling characters; an ecological systems analyst named Destry and Whistle, the intelligent flying moose she rides.

In both novels, the second section involves two institutions in conflict over the control of technology. While Miller had secular scientists and the church battling over access to knowledge, Newitz shows democratic egalitarian governance struggling against hierarchical capitalists over transportation technology.

We are on #TeamWhistle.
(Photo by Olav Rokne)

Though both novels end with a revolution, Newitz’s work is less fatalistic. Terraformers seems to suggest that although there will always be those who seek to dominate others through wealth, through hierarchy, and through coercion, the majority of people will work towards community and good governance. 

The classic fix-up novels that focused on a sweep of history shared many similar flaws; compelling characters are given short shrift, transitions between historical eras can be jarring, and some portions drag. In mirroring the strengths of these works, The Terraformers is also burdened with many of the same problems.

Large-scale sweep-of-history stories might make it difficult to put the focus on individual characters, but they do provide the opportunity to relay the long-term consequences of policy decisions. In the hands of politically astute writers like Newitz and Miller, this medium can provide insightful commentary on human nature.

There is also something of Clifford D. Simak’s fix-up novel City in the DNA of The Terraformers, as uplifted animals debate the merits and the legacy of humanity. Newitz introduces us to talking wolves, cats, and earthworms, whose views on the conduct of homo sapiens is not always glowing. This occasionally gives the book a fable-like quality that some readers appreciated, but others found a wee bit twee.

With their third novel, Newitz offers readers a good example of a classic science fictional form that has been much neglected over the past few decades. As with the best fix-ups, it is more than the sum of its parts.

The Humanity Of Machinehood

Several short works by S.B. Divya have been among our favourites in the past five years or so.

Image via Simon
& Schuster

“Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse,” “Loss of Signal,” and the Nebula-shortlisted novella “Runtime,” demonstrate that she is a writer who delivers interesting ideas wrapped in approachable and stylish prose. We therefore had high hopes for her debut novel Machinehood — and were not disappointed.

The novel is clever, brimming with engaging ideas, and provides important commentary on current political trends. Set a century down the line, Machinehood delves into the erosion of human rights, the perils of capital-driven pharmaceutical development, and the evolving understandings of privacy.

Machinehood centres on Welga, a security contractor who ends up investigating a series of terrorist attacks thought to be orchestrated by the world’s first truly sentient artificial intelligence. Although the story initially feels like an adventure novel, it’s soon apparent that the story centers on Welga’s quest to create stability, the precariousness of her work situation, and her sister-in-law’s medical investigation into seizures that Welga begins experiencing.

Divya uses these narrative threads to explore how capitalist-driven competition can lead to negative outcomes for society. In particular, the use of performance-enhancing drugs has been normalized in this future, leading to workers whose employment is contingent on their willingness to punish their bodies and nervous systems beyond their natural limits. While this is a bleak (and unfortunately believable) aspect to the world Divya has crafted, it is not entirely dystopian.

While the novel depicts various forms of body modification having detrimental effects, and the gig economy making working relationships more tenuous, other advances such as automatic kitchens, the ease of global travel, and medical printers have created higher standards of living in other ways. This is a nuanced future that avoids monocausal explanations for society’s changes.

Escape Pod co-host
S.B. Divya's engineering
background is evident.
Image via Analog

One of the recurring themes explored in the book — and one of the reasons it should be considered for the Prometheus Award — is the relationship between government services, the private sector, and do-it-yourself culture. As an example, those wanting to go to space do so through the participation of voluntary hobbyist rocket-ship clubs, while health care is allocated through a system of micro-auctions. Pharmaceuticals are often printed at home with some government oversight, but pill designs come from both giant corporations and from hobbyists. None of these details are delivered by way of polemic, but rather flow naturally within the story.

In such a setting, the most powerful actors seem to be religions, in part because of the unassailable sway they have over their followers. Without giving too much away, there are philosophical aspects to a religion of Neo-Budhism that provide incredible motivations to some of the religion’s adherents. Religion thus is shown to be a tool to navigate and instigate change.

One of the greatest strengths of the novel is that as it progresses, the conflict becomes less and less black-and-white. The antagonist is compelling in large part because it’s easy to see their side of the issues, even though their tactics aren’t acceptable. Has the terrorism perpetrated by the Machinehood improved the lives of humanity? Divya has the courage to leave that question unanswered.

Every few years, it starts to seem like science fiction is running out of ideas. Thankfully, authors like Divya remind us that the future has an almost infinite array of possibilities. Machinehood is the type of novel that gives us faith in science fiction as a genre.