Red Team Blues
A number of years ago, while I was just beginning to figure out this whole Writing thing, I tried to classify what I saw as “successful authors”. You may know the usual names I trot out in interviews, those I cite as inspiration in developing my own voice—Delany, Silverberg, Brunner Brunner Brunner—and I won’t belabor those here. Right now I’m more interested in those authors at the other end of the scale, authors that—for one reason or another— I would never even try to emulate. Within that Phylum, I was able to identify three distinct taxa.
There were the authors whose writing made me cringe: clunky prose, wooden dialog, flat characters. There was often a very cool idea at the heart of their novels—something that would make me yelp in delight if expressed as an elevator pitch—but to my neophyte eyes, they’d pooched the execution. It didn’t matter that so many of them essentially lived in the bestseller lists; I would rather have languished forever in the midlist than write like they did.
There were those whose writing I admired and whose moves, once observed, I might have copied well enough—but there would have been no point because I had nothing to add. Having read Gibson’s hyperstylish Sprawl trilogy I probably could have written something similar, if I didn’t mind coming across as a cheap wannabe knock-off of William Gibson. That territory had been stamped and marked.
But there was also this third type of writer, who could tell you exactly what they were going to do—let you watch them doing it— and you still had no clue how they’d pulled it off. They could say I’m gonna write a novel about a guy whose father is a mountain and his mother is a washing machine, and he has these four brothers but one of them is undead and the other three are Russian nesting dolls, but the inner doll has all the internal organs for the three of them so when he disappears the others starve. And there’s gonna be community WiFi activism in Kensington Market. And you would say Dude, you’re a fucking loon. No way does that make any kind of sense. And they would shrug and go off and write the damn thing, and reading the novel you had to admit they’d pulled it off, but even with all that data you still didn’t have the first idea how to do something like that yourself.
So far I’ve only encountered one author in that category, and his name is Cory Doctorow. He’s got a new book out: Red Team Blues. It’s not nearly so batshit as Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, and it’s not even borderline genre like his Little Brother / Homeland bestsellers. But it’ll probably sell at least as many copies.
You already know about Cory; he’s one of this century’s brightest genre stars. He doesn’t just complain about The System, he grapples with it in real life. He has a long history with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He fights tirelessly against Digital Rights Management, he’s a champion of Open Source and Right to Repair and the Creative Commons (my own modest participation in the CC arena merely followed in his footsteps and in his shadow.) He writes manifestos with titles like How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism. He gives his writing away for free (or did, until Tor put its foot down). Hell, he did a Kickstarter for an indie audiobook edition of Red Team Blues because he reviles Amazon’s take on DRM and refuses to play their game.[1]
That’s Doctorow the activist. Today we’re talking about Doctorow the novelist, who’s—well, pretty much the same. His novels don’t just tell kick-ass stories; they frequently moonlight as instruction manuals for revolution. That may make them a bit didactic in places, but it doesn’t seem to have slowed his ascent any.
Red Team Blues—set firmly in the present day and containing no sfnal elements—is the first Doctorow novel that doesn’t qualify as genre. (It won’t be the last; he’s already contracted for two others featuring the same protagonist). He seems to be following the same general trajectory that William Gibson did a few years back: science-fiction futures imagined ever-nearer, finally segueing into a Now that still feels like SF. (Although these days, you’d have to try really hard to write a story set in the present that doesn’t feel like SF.) In this sense Red Team Blues is Cory’s Pattern Recognition, and at least in terms of basic propulsive storytelling I think it’s better. PR‘s Cayce Pollard spends significant chunks of her novel sitting in Moscow cafes, waiting for supporting characters to bring her pieces of the plot. RTB‘s Martin Hench—well, let’s avoid explicit spoilers and just say he’s somewhat more proactive, deliberately lighting the fuse for one hell of an explosion at the book’s climax (even if it largely takes place offstage).
The villains of Cory’s books aren’t really people; they’re systems. They wear punchable Human faces but those tend to be avatars, mere sock-puppets operated by the institutions that comprise the real baddies. In Little Brother the enemy was the Surveillance State, jacked up and hypertrophied on post-911 paranoia. “Unauthorized Bread” takes on ubiquitous DRM; For the Win ports sweat-shop economics and union busting into digital ecosystems. With Red Team Blues it’s Crypto, the paramount tech-bro wet dream of recent years (which would probably still be the paramount tech-bro wet dream if they hadn’t all got distracted by chatbots last month). It’s your typical Doctorow novel; entertaining, educational, contemptuous of realpolitik and all the greater-good rationalizations our rulers invoke to protect the status quo. It doesn’t come with Little Brother‘s appendix explicitly instructing readers on available countermeasures, but you’re not going to finish this book without understanding at least the basics of crypto and its associated dark sides, from security holes to carbon footprints.
Here’s the set-up: a new cryptocurrency is taking off in the Valley. An undisclosed back door has been discovered and seized by parties unknown. The whole house of cards is in danger of imminent collapse, taking with it the various little old ladies and mob interests who bought in. Criminals abound, many of them with government IDs. Blood is spilled. Shit gets real.
It’s somehow fitting that the guy brought in to clean up the mess—Martin Hench, our protagonist— is a 67-year-old semi-retired forensic accountant who lives in a touring bus and puts out a definite get-off-my-lawn vibe when it comes to these newfangled bottles of snake oil.
If that scares you off—if you’re envisioning spreadsheets and green visors and leaden voiceovers detailing Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Pivot Tables— breathe easy. This story moves: the first blood-soaked crime scene shows up a mere fifth of the way in. There are a couple of spots, granted, where our humble narrator goes into so much detail about meal prep that you wonder whether he has some kind of sex/food kink. And the actual sex scenes are strictly fade-to-black, which seems a bit anachronistic for 2023 (although not, perhaps, for a 67-year-old semi-retired forensic accountant).
Those are nitpicks, though. If I had a real complaint about Red Team Blues it would be that its cast of characters is so, well— nice. I’m not just talking about our smart, affable hero and his friends, although Hench does crank the Virtue knob to eleven—I mean, what can you say about a guy who goes out of his way to pay as many taxes as he possibly can, just to make a point? (And what does he think the Feds are going to spend all that money on, hmmm?) I’m talking about the people on the opposing team. Sure, Hench’s distaste for the Ellisons and Musks of the world is explicit, but the one tech bro we meet face-to-face is basically a good dude whose heart is in the right place; he just made a stupid mistake for benign reasons. The crooked lawyers who make their living laundering mob money take it all in good spirits when our hero makes their lives difficult, offering up grudging respect instead of backlash vendetta. Even the manipulative gummint spook who effectively kidnapped Hench, froze his assets, and held him incommunicado—even he shows up in the last scene to shake hands and mend fences. Certainly, there are irredeemably evil folks in the story—somebody killed all those people in cold blood—but we don’t meet them.
I’ve never fully come to terms with the general decency of Cory’s characters. Doctorow the activist lives in the trenches, fighting those who make their billions trading the details of our private lives, telling us that they own what we’ve bought, surveilling us for the greater good and even greater profits. He’s spent more time facing off against the world’s powerful assholes than I ever will. He knows how ruthless they are. He knows, first-hand, how much of the world is clenched in their fists. By rights, his stories should make mine look like Broadway musicals.
And yet, Doctorow the Author is—hopeful[2]. The little guys win against overwhelming odds. Dystopias are held at bay. Even the bad guys, in defeat, are less likely to scorch the earth than simply resign with a show of grudging respect for a worthy opponent.
Maybe it’s a fundamental difference in outlook. I’ve always regarded humans as self-glorified mammals, fighting endless and ineffective rearguard against their own brain stems; Cory seems to see us as more influenced by the angels of our better natures. Or maybe—maybe it’s not just his plots that are meant to be instructional. Maybe he’s deliberately showing us how we could behave as a species, in the same way he shows us how to fuck with DRM or foil face-recognition tech. Maybe it’s not that he subscribes to some Pollyanna vision of what we are; maybe he’s showing us what we could be.
Even I find it hard to fault the man for that.
- In the interest of full disclosure, he’s also the Number-1 guy who had my back when I was up against the armed capuchins of the US Border Patrol back in 2009. ↑
- I almost wrote “an optimist” there, but Cory himself eschews the term. ↑
I follow exactly two authors (as people/creators, not just consume their published work): Peter Watts and Corey Doctorow. You’ve closed the loop!
What can I say? Your taste is superb, but it could be broader…
Peter Watts, Corey Doctorow, and Paolo Bacigalupi, are instantly and immediately the first three authors that come to mind when I try to imagine how to explain the upcoming future to my children.
I would add R Scott Bakker here, but he went under radar… Hope he is doing well.
RTB is both chilling and upbeat. A strange mix but Cory makes it work.
Did you ever read any Gene Wolfe?
Not as much as I should. Fifth Head of Cerberus back when I was literally in Grade 7; 90% of it must have gone right over my head. A few shorts, more recently, which impressed. We have the Books of Various Suns—The BUG bought them last year, and raves about them—but while they’re on my list, I haven’t got to them yet (just finished Children of Time).
how WAS children of time?
It was really good! For the first few pages I wondered what all the shouting was about, but it grew on me.
I’m convinced.
I’m a few chapters in already, and it’s got some of that Watts fatalism, those uncomfortable unfathomable stretches of travel, and I have to laugh a bit at the scientific elitism circle jerkery.
Man I can’t put it down though
While I think he picks interesting themes, I find his characters somewhat flat and one dimensional. His main character always reminds me of a boy scout for some reason.
That characteristic Niceness I was speaking of. Maybe he can’t imagine bad people; or maybe he dares to imagine good ones.
Currently in the middle of RTB. Reminds me a lot of some crime novels I’ve read by Max Allan Collins and Donald WestLake. A crime novel with a high tech sensibility much like a William Gibson novel. I’m enjoying RTB a lot.
Sorry, I cannot look at a 45 minute youtube, even to see Doctorow being intereviewed.
I hope Doctorow’s attitude is something like this:
From the video at 32 minutes in:
“I have hope which is much better than optimism. Hope is the belief that if you materially improve your circumstances, then you will attain a new vantage point from which you may espy another way to improve…that you couldn’t see from where you were before you went up the gradient a little.”
https://youtu.be/24k8r-p6ibQ?t=1920
Thanks, Oge. The only thing I’d add is that he also describes optimism as a kind of cop-out where you can basically just put your feet up and wait for the world to get better. Hope demands effort.
Don’t know if I’m entirely on board with that distinction, but the labels don’t really matter. What matters is, the thing that inspires to action is the thing we need.
We’ve got plenty of action. We’ve even got a net direction that emerges from the action.
What we’ve got rather less of, is control over what that net direction is.
Fair point.
Okay, I can’t help my base mammalian urge to pop into the comments and note that I am continually surprised to find you looking up at writers whose writing is way, way, way below yours.
I dunno. In terms of accolades (not to mention sales figures), I think it’s safe to say that your view (while greatly appreciated) is not one that’s widely held.
I’ll certainly confess to a fondness for my own prose, sure. But it’s that same prose that inspired someone to once ask when Blindsight was going to be translated into English. Mileage varies.
See, Dr, that’s the problem with tapping into a river of fire like the one which you have been known to channel.
It’s far beyond most humans. They can barely begin to grok it.
Egan always had the same issue, but from a very different angle.
No Oprah Book Club in your future I’m afraid. The possum bones never lie.
Why is the RSS version of this post full of cutesy fucking icons? Sorry, just had to ask!
Wait, what?
See the screenshot. I have no idea what those things are (viruses? and an occasional secret agent?) and how they got there.
Huh. I have no idea what those are.
@foresterr – you’re probably using a font that the RSS reader is parsing as “icons” if there are any unicode references.
I have a text-only RSS reader and see nothing like what you’re seeing.
> The villains of Cory’s books aren’t really people; they’re systems. They wear punchable Human faces but those tend to be avatars, mere sock-puppets operated by the institutions that comprise the real baddies. […] With Red Team Blues it’s Crypto, the paramount tech-bro wet dream of recent years
it’s a Cory Doctorow book, so i would have read it anyway. i have no regrets in my decision to do so, but i am a bit disappointed in the way it’s been sold. the villainous system here is something broad like financialization: concentrated capital behind obfuscated money flows; mob bosses and family wealth hidden behind shell corps and offshore companies; these things enabled by financial planners, tax advisers, venture capitalist bros and crypto dudes — all of whom turn a blind eye to the clients they serve.
i’ve read stories about Standard Oil, about the Bangladesh Bank Heist, about HSBC knowingly serving cartels: each story covers one narrow pillar of this system. crypto is another such pillar, and i would love to read a story about that pillar. hence my disappointment that this was hyped up as a story about crypto but turned out to not have that pillar-level scope. Cory used the phrase “financial thriller”: approach it as that and it has some worth; present it in any narrower scope and you’re setting readers up to expect an inappropriate type of depth.
.
I feel the same way about Charles Stross as you do for Doctorow, Dr. Watts. I’m always catching my breath, wondering how we got from there to here. Accelerando comes to mind- still dazzled after all these years. And like Doctorow, he has his own take on bureaucracy.
On a related note, I’ve recently taken a leap of faith and thrown my hat into regional politics…and was elected. I encourage any and all that wish to grumble about the State to get involved, as it has really been an eye-opener. So many things that seem evil from without are simply pure benign overwhelming complexity, choice-paralysis, and sacrifising on the inside. And the turnover is rapid and disjunctive. Still, maybe a political future for you, doctor? Take ’em down from the inside.
Hi Peter,
An off-topic question, but I’m curious: have you read anything by Greg Egan, and if so, what do you think of his writing, both from the perspectives of hard-SF ideas and prose?
I’m asking because I personally haven’t read any of his works yet, but I’m planning to. As a science fiction writer whom I admire, your opinion would be greatly appreciated.
I’m ashamed to say I’ve only read a couple of short stories (“Wang’s Carpets”, “This is not the way home”). I haven’t read any of his novel-length work, although it has been repeatedly recommended to me. I hope to remedy that flaw in my character, but at the moment—as usual—other things take priority.
The two stories I read, well, I can certainly appreciate the scientific rigour that went into their construction. As stories, though, I’d have to say they were…okay.
I would highly recommend his short story “Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies”
Yes with Egan you are paying for the ideas not the prose or characters mostly. His more recent stuff has gotten quite weird, but _Diaspora_ (Wang’s Carpets expanded), _Permutation City_, and _Schild’s Ladder_ are well worth reading, as is _Incandescence_.
Bought the book after reading this post, never read Cory Doctorow before. Halfway through, it’s an interesting plot but it’s somewhat… “cringy”? Guess that’s the right word. The use of “latinx” for example. The forced jab at Elon Musk (even mocking the Starlink satellites, which AFAIC is a tremendous success?), and so on. Everyone is too nice and perfect, all so politically correct and agreeable. It’s just a bit much for me and detracts from the story. Maybe I expected too much after reading more “hardcore” stuff like your books, Dr. Watts, not sure how to put it but something feels off and… well, cringe.
A question for everyone reading this: what other writers are like Peter Watts? I am craving more stuff like Rifters and Blindsight but can’t find anything that truly satisfies my needs.
This is the part where I unslumber to recommend Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea. It’s not quite as weighty as Our Esteemed Host’s writing but it treads more or less the same grounds, and is all-around a great, breezy read.
As for the plot: in the not-too-far-off future humanity makes first contact… except instead with the octopi instead of aliens. Hilarity, discussion on consciousness, attempts at finding a way to communicate, corporate warfare and political power plays ensue. There’s a lot going on even when there’s not a lot going on if you catch my drift.
I second that. To my mind TMitS’s various plot threads didn’t quite gel as cohesively as I would have liked, but the threads themselves ranged from decent to flat-out fascinating.
Yeeeah, the book could’ve used, like, another 200 pages or so to tie it all together; especially the trawler slave ship part seemed to have little to do with everything else going on, spectacularly written though it was.
Still though, that’s something that only hit me once I was done, and I would have loved if it kept going. If we ever get a sequel I’ll be in front of the line to get it.
‘Writers like Watts’ is kind of a tall order (there’s a reason he’s distinguishable as one of my favorites, after all), but there’ve been a couple of times I got enough Wattsian vibes from something that I thought the comparison was appropriate:
Daryl Gregory’s Afterparty touches on a number of the same neuro-biology stuff that Blindsight dips into, although I’m not sure they’re the same in style and it’s a far more ‘near future’ story (still one of my faves, though). I enjoy his other writing as well but they’re far less on the Watts vibes (maybe edging closer to Robert Charles Wilson, another favorite).
The Fortunate Fall, published in 1997 under the name Raphael Carter (out of print almost immediately but as I understand it, Tor will be finally republishing it next year under the author’s new name Cameron Reed) is an excellent cyberpunk/postcyberpunk novel that one of my go-to descriptions for it was that it was a bit like if Watts DID write a Cyberpunk book that wasn’t largely sea based (I mean, there is a cetacean involved, but it’s not like Rifters). Not as science heavy, perhaps, but in tone and some of the ideas. The author, after such a long gap, is writing again, but I have no idea if her current stuff will have a similar vibe but I’m excited to find out.
I also recently read The Mountain in the Sea and nth the recommendation of a great read (with a few of the same drawbacks as others have mentioned). It definitely touches on the Wattsian but probably less than the others. Still, an author I’ve already put on my watchlist.
How is it compared to Walkaway?
Finished RTB a week ago, it was fun to read. Comparatively I’d say Walkaway is a far better book, there’s a lot more going on, a lot more action for sure.