Book Review: Radicalized by Cory Doctorow - More2Read
 

Radicalized by Cory Doctorow

Told through one of the most on-pulse genre voices of our generation–New York Times bestselling author Cory Doctorow–Radicalized is a timely novel comprised of four science fiction novellas connected by social, technological, and economic visions of today and what America could be in the near, near future.

Unauthorized Bread is a tale of immigration, the toxicity of economic and technological stratification, and the young and downtrodden fighting against all odds to survive and prosper.

In Model Minority, a Superman-like figure attempts to rectifiy the corruption of the police forces he long erroneously thought protected the defenseless…only to find his efforts adversely affecting their victims.

Radicalized is a story of a darkweb-enforced violent uprising against insurance companies told from the perspective of a man desperate to secure funding for an experimental drug that could cure his wife’s terminal cancer.

The fourth story, Masque of the Red Death, harkens back to Doctorow’s Walkaway, taking on issues of survivalism versus community.

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Praise for Radicalized:

“Doctorow’s combination of cutting edge speculation and deep interest in the social and political possibilities of the future make this collection a must-read.”
–Booklist (starred review)

“Doctorow captures the mix of hope, fear, and uncertainty felt by those in precarious situations, set against the backdrop of intriguing futuristic landscapes.”
–Publishers Weekly

Review:

These four thought provoking tales original and brilliantly constructed by an author that makes it clear he is son of an asylum seek, father of an immigrant, writing with something that his heart beats at one with.
4 Moral tales, tragedies and injustices, things that occur at conflict with the human heart all laid down with many truths in fiction, a must-read and a best book to be published in 2019.

Unauthorized Bread

Rich and poor
Immigrant and native
Refugee
Camp and subsidized apartment in tower block
Factory default – jailbroken
Following rules and breaking them
Doings and undoings

Single bookkeeper Salima and single mother Nadifa seamstress with kids.
Living on a sheet of ice upon a freezing river.
They have to watch their step in their subvortex of love and hate, part of a vortex of divergent mostly haves.
Boulangism toaster of the future, new future, new dilemmas, but same current affairs, same real problems around us upon this earth.
With all the hack talk contained within, firmwares and the jailbreaking of this device, there is something else real in this tale of immigrants and asylum seeker survival, people in refuge, pursuits of happiness caught in a network of inequality.

Actions and the reasoning behind actions, poverty, disenfranchised, the immigrant tale, the subsidized life, and then the rectification of errors with helping hand of surprising other city dweller.

Model Minority

There is in this tale the Mason-Dixon line that separated white Staten Island from black Staten Island, there will be a trial, ensuing riots, demonstrations, and superheroes.
Foursome of Staten Island cops beating a black man down and down, and whilst cams running creating false idea that he is resisting.
The American eagle intervenes, he had been saving lives and intercepting many things, many in the cause of the white people of America and there benefit in enterprise, many years past, but why now has he only turned to the plight of the black man in oppression and subjugated to violence and hate. This story tries to address that fact and that a American figure of greatness, a hero, a deputized federal Marshall that can fly, defender of good beater of bad, decided to say that enough was enough, he made a stance and he just couldn’t stand anymore of the injustice and outraged at it.
This innocent man beaten, saved from further beating, then charged, he has made it his mission to see him have a fair trial.

Well this author has brilliantly crafted something very real in the framework of fiction and unsettling but also heroic, this superhero American Eagle, realigning and readjusting to what does he really stand for, fiction echoing reality where everyman has the power in a sense to take this stance of the hero standing up for things, the plain injustice, this can’t help but bring me back to this quote that I and few authors and readers love from author William Faulkner.

“Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got.”
William Faulkner – Intruder in The Dust

Radicalized

With all the desperation, loss, hostility, and anger, radicalization followed.
The lack of funding for healthcare, debts, insurance not paying up, lack of health care support, cancer taking lives with no mercy, an underground forum, a network of furious kin of people dying of cancer, encouraging f**k cancer, characters in a network of online community ones spreading out murderous rage and violent actions.
Will there be some solution to end this radicalization?

The Masque of the Red Death

Thirty in lockdown in a remote location called Fort Doom in Arizona.
There will be self-preservation at a cost, deaths, invasion, riots, arson, cities fallen, scavenging, marauding and of all things, “Armageddon tired of waiting around,” till what end?

 

Portrait by Jonathan Worth : http://jonathanworth.com

Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing (boingboing.net) and the author of RADICALIZED and WALKAWAY, science fiction for adults, a YA graphic novel called 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 works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, is a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University, a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of South Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.

Reviewed by Lou Pendergrast on 20 March 2019