Microreview [book]: Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow

Online privacy message fiction for the masses

He who controls the online information flows controls everything — including you. When our lives become increasingly digital and our everyday appliances, apartments and cars are assortments of computers with dubious privacy, we can never be truly secure. This is especially true if we disagree with those who control everything. Something along these lines might be the message of Cory Doctorow's novel Attack Surface. Indeed, it is a book with a message which makes it a bit hard for Doctorow to make in truly enjoyable, but he does not do a bad job. As far as online privacy message fiction goes, Attack Surface is in fact a rather good read, especially when Doctorow manages to keep his didactic impulses at bay.

Attack Surface continues the story of Little Brother (2008) and Homeland (2013) in which we followed Marcus Yallow, a nerdy teen who becomes a hacker guerrilla after a terrorist attack on San Fransisco. US that Marcus and his friends live in becomes practically a police state which turns loose its overreaching security agencies with devastating consequences. Whereas the first two novels were YA, I suppose Attack Surface is a book aimed at adult readers. This time the protagonist is Masha Maximow, a conflicted hacker who sneers at Marcus's ethical grandstanding but still cares deeply for privacy and (although a little less) for doing the right thing. Unfortunately, she works for a shady IT firm that specializes in selling surveillance technology for authoritarian regimes.

While working, she helps the bad guys with tech, but off-duty, she helps anti-government protesters stay safe from the same technology. It is inevitable that her hobby will get her into trouble, and that is where the story starts. In the beginning of the book, she is based in "Slovstakia", a code-named East European country where the security apparatus plans to keep democracy activists and other troublemakers pressed down indefinitely. Losing her job is unavoidable, as is losing her friendly connections to the Slovstakian activists, and Masha returns to San Francisco without knowing what to do next. Back home, her childhood friend Tanisha who is also a political activist has run into trouble with surveillance technology as well, and when Masha looks into it, it looks a little too familiar. Turns out Tanisha is targeted by the cyber surveillance technologies Masha had been developing for another shady government contractor. There are demonstrations, weaponized self-driving vehicles, eroding civil liberties, mass surveillance and a lot of hacker talk about security and compromised devices.

Masha's backstory forms a big chunk of the narrative. She was a supporting character in ther earlier novels but now Doctorow fills in everything around the events featured before. In Little Brother, Masha used Marcus to plan her own escape from government goons and kidnapped him in the process, and in Homeland, she became Marcus's helper and a whistleblower who revealed some dirty secrets. In theory, Attack Surface can be read on its own, but readers who are familiar with the earlier books certainly get the most out of it. Otherwise, the details of how Masha got hold of the information she gave Marcus in the previous novel is probably not very interesting. Switching the main character is a good move, however. At least I preferred Masha Maximow to Marcus Yallow who always felt a bit simplistic protagonist. Now, a well-meaning IT and privacy enthusiast has been replaced by a more Snowden-esque and conflicted character, who has to juggle, negotiate and compartmentalize in order to stay sane. The Edward Snowden quote on the front cover is certainly stamped on the right book.

Attack Surface is a smart technothriller with smart people and smart technologies. The technical side is mostly interesting, but at times Doctorow really cannot hold back. When Masha gets out of jail after a brief and borderline unlawful arrest, she gets back her cellphone that the police has done who knows what while she was in custody. Masha cannot trust the device anymore but having a cellphone at hand and not using it is impossible. So she smashes the phone. That it followed by a page-long discussion of the philosophical underpinnings of the concept of Olysses pacts that at least this specific reader could have done without plowing through. Undoubtedly this is how nerds think and speak but enough is enough. The narrative lecturing and infodumpy dialogue leave little work for the reader.

Sadly, the novel is highly relevant and could take place in our world — or I guess one could make the argument that in fact it does. San Francisco, Iraq and Mexico City are real places that feel real, and it is a little disappointing that the Eastern European country that is so central to the story is so artificial. Like Dr. Doom's Latveria, Slovstakia is an exotic mishmash of stereotypes. It would have been neat to learn something about a real place like Belarus or pre-Maidan Ukraine that Slovstakia is clearly emulating, but the country — like many elements in the novel — is there to make a point.

The Math

Base Score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for relevance

Penalties: -2 for overbearing explanations

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10 – "an enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws"

POSTED BY: Spacefaring Kitten, an extradimensional enthusiast of speculative fiction, comics, and general weirdness. Contributor since 2018.

Reference: Doctorow, Cory. Attack Surface [Tor Books, 2020]

Questing in Shorts: March 2020

I have a somewhat truncated edition of Questing in Shorts today, owing to March being, to put it mildly, a Month. From next month I'll be focusing back on magazines and some of the small press collections I already have on my shelves, but for this month, let's see what I did manage to get through in the circumstances. Luckily, it's all rather good:

The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper by A.J. Fitzwater (Queen of Swords Press)

This collection, featuring a capybara pirate captain in a world full of anthropomorphic animals and magical creatures, is definitely more of a short fiction collection than a novel, but it's also a bit of an odd duck when trying to review as short stories, as there's a strong through narrative between each tale (or "tail") that makes it hard to speak about them individually. After an opening story (the aptly titled "Young Cinrak") that sees Cinrak take her first steps into piracy (in this world, apparently respectable career for those seeking freedom and a good community around them), the rest of the collection deals with her time as an established captain, taking on an increasingly mythological set of exploits, all while maintaining the affections of both opera prima donna Loquolchi, and the Rat Queen Orvillia, and looking after her diverse and entertaining crew of rodents and affiliated creatures.

Aside from the obvious parallels to its characters, there's something very soft and cuddly about these stories, in which krakens can become allies, stars can be freed from their royal captivity and sent back to the heavens, and pirates make for the most successful diplomats to all the various creatures of the earth (even the felines!) While it doesn't go particularly heavily into characterisation, its core cast all have enjoyable personalities and quirks to watch, and Cinrak herself is a delight at the heart of it all. The highlights for me came towards the middle, with the star-wrangling and celestial racing of "The Wild Ride of the Untamed Stars" signalling a shift into more magical adventure territory, and "Search for the Heart of the Ocean" following it up with an epic voyage which cements the compassion with which Cinrak, and the narrative around her, treats all the creatures in its orbit. I may have read this collection before "adventurous fluff in which everything is fundamentally OK" became one of the most important commodities on the planet, but my appreciation for it has only grown since then, and this is definitely a diversion I'd recommend to anyone who needs one at the moment.

The Nine Lands by Marie Brennan (Book View Cafe)

The Nine Lands is a collection of early stories from Brennan, all set in a shared world, although there's little overlap in the places and cultures covered. Despite being early work, the seven tales here are all highly enjoyable and, although its hard to get a full picture of the world as a whole, the individual pieces of worldbuilding and concepts are as accomplished and interesting as I'd expect from Brennan.

The stories themselves are relatively simple and self-contained in their narratives. Some are pretty bleak: "Execution Morning", the story of a Lieutenant dealing with a group of captured people from another culture who are due to be brutally executed in order to scapegoat them for their people's crimes, has very little in the way of hope or good choices for its characters, although it also offers a surprisingly sympathetic take for all involved. "The Legend of Anahata" tells the story of a King struggling to accept the impossible odds standing against his kingdom, and the sacrifices required from the Goddess. And "Sing for Me" is the story of a woman taken from her home in order to become the protege of a noble, and forced to develop painful talents she has no interest in making a name for herself over. In contrast, some of the stories do deal with forms of justice and belonging, from "Calling into Silence" and its story of a young woman cast out of her home and made to feel like a spiritual failure for her inability to complete a possession ritual, only to find the solution to her worries is rather closer to home, to "White Shadow"'s similarly spiritual tale of self-discovery among the shape-shifting Kagi people.

"Lost Soul"'s handling of a bard who has left bard college and is now struggling to find her passion within the magic of traditional music is a story that rivals some of the best musical stories of Sarah Pinsker, ending in a jam of epic proportions whose transitions and modulations you can almost hear through the invented song titles and descriptions. My favourite of the lot, however, is "Kingspeaker", in which a woman who has been raised to become the "voice" of a King, communicating his words to others as no others are able to bear the sound of him speaking, must find ways to reconcile her role with her broader duties to her Kingdom during wartime and the need to protect her young charge. Its a novel concept that dances between magical and cultural (though the author notes confirm that there is indeed something magical going on which makes the protagonist's role vital) and though the story is pretty light even for this collection, its a decent vehicle to showcase the concept and characters. Though it's hard, from an outside perspective, to automatically see that these stories belong to the same world, there's a common thread of highly accomplished worldbuilding which makes this early collection a worthy escape, especially for those who enjoy snippets of high fantasy in short fiction form.

Radicalized by Cory Doctorow (Tor Books)

This is, I think, my first time reading Doctorow, and it's a promising start. The four novellas in this collection deal in some way with near future scenarios which tackle aspects of US culture, and some of the more dystopian elements of late capitalism. There's "Model Minority", a story in which Not!Superman tries to take on a case of police brutality against a Black man, only to find his motives, his effectiveness and his own "whiteness" called into question as an alien. "Radicalized" deals with a man who finds comfort in an online community for men whose family members are suffering from cancer and whose insurance won't pay for the treatment which would save them. In "The Masque of Red Death", a man who has created what he considers the perfect post-apocalyptic survival community has his assumptions severely tested. Having sent away the family of one of his carefully selected co-survivalists, and learned a hard lesson in going up against an equally well defended other outpost and discovering what rampant post-apocalyptic gun violence actually looks like, it's illness (cholera, in this case) which really brings the realities of crisis survival home, and there's an interesting progression between the carefully curated image the protagonist puts forward at the beginning of the crisis, and the raw unpleasantness of the experiment's end.

The best story here, however, is "Unauthorized Bread", a story which creates an entire community of refugees living on the "poor floors" of a new build luxury apartment block, whose lives are dictated by the smart appliances installed in their flats which force them to use particular marked-up products to be compatible with them, or go without. When Salima's toaster company goes bankrupt, she finds a way to jailbreak it and toast all the bread she wants, but sharing this knowledge among her community sends them up against the system in a way she's not entirely sure she's prepared for. By turns chilling and heartwarming, and with a great supporting cast, Salima's story offers a terrifyingly plausible vision of a future where autonomy must be paid for, while also showcasing the hope and ingenuity that people can deploy against such systems.

POSTED BY: Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy.

Microreview [book]: Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow

The Meat

Pirate Cinema is well-known internet "influencer" Cory Doctorow's latest young adult dystopian novel and call to arms. It is his political manifesto against draconian copyright laws that stifle creativity and divert resources from issues that may matter a great deal more. And it is his broader call to arms against the corporate involvement in the lawmaking process. Set in the United Kingdom in the not-too-distant future (perhaps two or three decades), Pirate Cinema tells the story of Trent McCauley, a sixteen year old British kid and mashup artist who spends his free time illegally downloading videos of his favorite actor, editing and mashing up those videos, and reposting them online as his own creations. And he's very good at it. But thanks to a draconian copyright law, Trent's illegal downloading and copyright infringement causes his family to lose their internet access for an entire year, with no appeal. Losing the internet nearly destroys his family, which depends on the internet for their livelihood. Trent's father loses his job, his mother loses access to her health benefits; and his younger sister is unable to study online. Faced with this familial crisis, Trent runs away to London.

Author Cory Doctorow

Once in London, Trent meets up with Jem, a well-spoken, intelligent young hobo who teaches him the ways of his new world. Not only does Jem teach Trent how to survive, he shows him how to flourish! They squat in an abandoned pub, build him a new (and more powerful) laptop computer, and enter a society of artists and activists. Trent joins an underground pirate cinema community, and finds himself and his culture jamming friends thrust to the center of a fight against an even-more-draconian copyright law, one that threatens to enrich Hollywood at the expense of pretty much everyone else. Thus begins a story pitting young activists against evil (money grubbing) corporations, a story where it takes the power of a movie to change people's attitudes toward societal injustice. 

Overall I found Pirate Cinema to be a neat, crisply written page turner. Doctorow has great narrative skill, and creates a number of charming, creative, intelligent, and funny characters. Trent, Jem, 26, Aziz, Rabid Dog, and Dodger are all interesting characters in their own right. Doctorow even uses Trent's adolescent friends to explore other social issues (like sexuality) that teens need exposure to. And Doctorow is at his best when highlighting adolescent angst in all its colors. Trent runs the gamut of emotions that we all felt as teens, from insecurity to boastful pride, from depression to the heights of happiness, and from fear and self-conscious doubt to courage and unlikely heroism. 

But Pirate Cinema at times feels preachy and polemical. Granted, Doctorow has an important point to make, so preachiness is part of the book's purpose. Pirate Cinema is littered with campaign speeches against draconian copyright laws, showing how they stifle creativity, enrich Hollywood at the expense of the broader public, and are a waste of resources that could be better spent elsewhere. Granted, I am with him. Penalties for copyright infringement, in particular, are too harsh, and there needs to be a broader discussion about the rights consumers have over what they purchase. And there also needs to be broader discussion about what is fair use for hobbyists (for instance, the two pictures that I placed on this website, pictures I neither purchased nor paid for the rights to use). Since his book is geared at a young adult audience, Doctorow should consider himself successful in highlighting an issue that will become more important in the coming years. 

At times, however, Doctorow's polemic lacks nuance. Pirate Cinema channels the rage of the global Occupy Wall Street movement, and portrays media executives as money grubbing goons that will stop at nothing to make a few extra bucks... even if this comes at the expense of sending young boys and girls, whose only crime is to download off the internet, to prison for violating copyright laws. The corporations are pure E-V-I-L. Granted, this is done through a splendid narrative, one geared toward a teen audience that is more receptive to such argumentation. It would have been nice, however, to see the other side of the argument as well, presented in a dispassionate manner.

But the biggest problem with Pirate Cinema is that the overall narrative at times feels contrived. For a boy who runs away to London, Trent experiences surprisingly little misfortune. Instead, everything seems to come very easy to him:

!WARNING: SPOILER AHOY!

Trent runs away from home, but the worst he experiences in his first nights is having his laptop stolen. He is neither roughed up, hurt, nor taken advantage of during his initial adventures in London. And he never goes hungry. Shortly after arriving he meets Jem, who takes Trent under his wing and teaches him the lay of the land. Jem shows Trent that everything comes easier while homeless: they make a ton of money begging, build better computers (with the help of Aziz) through throwaway materials, have a more active social life, and have more time to make an impact with fellow culture jammers and mashup artists. Trent, in fact, never experiences a truly tense moment or series of moments. I never got the sense that Trent was in real danger of physical assault, nor did I feel like he would actually be thrown in prison (even after being slapped with a lawsuit). Even getting laid was easy! Not to mention forming a plan to influence Parliament to vote against the draconian copyright infringement laws...

!SPOILER ENDED: READ ON, OH FEARLESS READER!

In the end, I had to remind myself that this is a book for teens, not adults. In this sense, I think that Doctorow has created a book that rests in the sweet spot between enjoyability and educational content. Young teens will find much to enjoy in Pirate Cinema. It features a fun narrative and memorable characters, and highlights important issues that face society today. 

The Math

Objective Quality: 7/10.

Bonuses: +1 for interesting characters and the crisp, fun writing style. +1 for cool mashups, cooler online forums, nice gestures to rave culture, and fantastic video editing technologies.

Penalties: -2 for the lack of suspense or tension in Trent's storyline. 

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10 "An enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws"

[See an explanation of our non-inflated scores here]