On "Infomocracy" and making sci fi elements fit the story
A review of Infomocracy (2016) by Malka Older
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5)
Science Fiction: ★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5)
Literary: ★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5)
Vibe: ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5)
[No spoilers section]
Through no particular intention I started my reviews off with several books that had physicists as primary, if not main, characters. Three Body. Diaspora. The Dispossessed. Infomocracy was a breath of fresh air in the sense that the technical field the story rests on is political science — the main characters are a mix of election workers, campaigners, purveyors of dirty tricks, and bureaucrats. This does mean the non-political science (and invented technology) results in a few howlers. However, the engineers and physicists out there writing their sci fi novels tend to create a different set of howlers for political scientists, sociologists, economists, or biologists. It’s just the nature of the game.
Overall, this is a fun globe-trotting thriller that at points verges on feeling like Jason Bourne pulp — in a good way. The politics and sociology (and characters) are far more intelligent. I breezed through nearly 400 pages fairly quickly. One particularly fun detail in Infomocracy is an almost Miyazaki-like attention to the details of a variety of foods. This exploration of “microdemocracy” is a definite recommendation from me.
[Spoilers section]
The fundamental political unit in Infomocracy is the centenal — small contgiuous districts of approximately 100,000 people. I didn’t glean from the book if this is 100,000 voters, citizens, or individuals (the book says “neighbors” which makes me think this is just raw population). New York City has a pretty close example of dividing districts to that size (approximately 170,000 see here and here [pdf]). The East Village and the Meatpacking district wouldn’t just have different representatives, but different (quasi-) national governments. One issue (as in, source of social conflict) I see immediately is redistricting. While NYC has city-wide laws, NY state laws, and US federal law operating continuously across districts, adjoining centenals a block apart could have different e.g. extradition laws (as noted in the book). Redistricting could move your block from a government more like Massachusetts to something more like Texas through a few keystrokes. No wonder one of the regions simply selects a government labeled after the region — an attempt to reconstitute some of the benefits, or at least the certainties1, of contiguous physical space.
If districts next to each other were different governments, you’d have to have agreements between multiple competing governments to run something like the subway which crosses from region to region. It’s hard enough getting transit to work together in the NYC tri-state area — and it’s generally the same party in power at the local level. This is touched on in the book, with “Crows” (airborne point-to-point taxis/busses) replacing the conventional mass transit that’s in decay (understandably, given the splintered nature of the world). It’s harder to see how waste would be handled efficiently, but e.g. ubiquitous solar could work as decentralized electricity — unless one centenal built a tall tower blocking the sun. Food in cities is already fairly micro-distributed in the “last mile” so doesn’t seem as problematic. New York is proud of their bodegas which definitely occur nowhere else on Earth2. Water in NYC used to include a lot of these:
… but could fall back to the bottled stuff. Overall, it’s not implausible that it could work — but it should seriously affect infrastructure (and sociology!).
An interesting idea given the “mantle tunnels” (something that is vaguely touched on and may be part of the other books in the series) is that while the two-dimensional surface of the sphere might be allocated in a checkerboard pattern of multiple governments, tunnels through the interior3 could create a contiguous region three-dimensionally. However, it does seem that investment on that scale would be unlikely in a realistic world — there’s the political risk of losing the centenal when building fixed capital and infrastructure so the wiser choice would be investing in things you could move4. A partially constructed tunnel entrance (that is hinted as the cause of a major earthquake in the story) is under the sea — a kind of “international” zone that would reduce that political risk. Again, maybe later books elaborate on this.
There is only one public good that spans all centenals regardless of government — Information. A kind of public, ubiquitous, non-partisan wireless internet run by an NGO-esque bureaucracy that operates like an Augmented Reality, fact checker, snopes.com, monetary system, election administrator, and wikipedia all in one. I found the reaction of one character who works for Information to losing access — stabbing her romantic fling in the leg5 — to be a true laugh out loud moment. It’s probably not far from the kinds of panic and disruption that would occur if the internet shut down today.
Along with disparaging the categorization, I’ve said before that true “hard” sci fi would basically be limited to cyberpunk on Earth. However, Infomocracy is an example the converse is not always true. Just because it’s cyberpunk on Earth, it doesn’t mean the invented technologies are any more plausible. As I keep stressing, I point these things out not because I think it’s bad (q.v. Footnote 1) — it’s because of my continuing mission to point out that even “hard sci fi” will have elements that are pure fantasy, rendering the categorization useless6. In this particular case, unlike the “howler” of the mantle tunnels above, I do have a complaint based on the story.
The fantasy technology in Infomocracy that I’m going to discuss is the “lumper”; purportedly magnetic, it “permanently disable[s] all metal firearms within its effective radius”. The idea of removing guns from society is a great (and laudable!) trope of speculative fiction. Dune (1965) has shields that explode when hit with energy weapons, and prevent any fast-moving object (i.e. bullets) from penetrating them. My own novel (Inner Horizon, in progress) has the Aegis, a quantum algorithm that prevents high energy density and particular quantum signatures from passing through a causal horizon originally developed to counter quantum-teleporting bombs. Among other things, the Aegis seriously reduces the effectiveness of guns7. I think trying to find creative ways to remove guns from a story is great — but nearly every one I’ve seen is fantasy. Even mine.
All we know about the lumper is that it operates via a magnetic field. However, non-ferrous metals such as titanium or aluminum could feasibly be used for almost every mechanical component of a gun. The critical component that needs both strength and a reduced tendency to cold-weld or friction-weld is the barrel — steel, iron with an admixture of carbon, is one of the few materials that fit the bill8. The only feasible path I see to a magnetic field generating a device causing an issue with a mostly non-ferrous gun except for the barrel is something like induction heating (like a stove) of the barrel to such a high temperature that it impedes firing. In the story, the lumper somehow doesn’t affect a flamethrower’s mechanical parts, so this inductive heating is the most plausible.
However, in addition to not being energetically practical at long range, this is actually a normal problem that firearms encounter when firing too fast — one that can be solved with cooling (e.g. Howitzers can be water-cooled). Sufficient cooling would allow you to get off a few shots, and since guns are an extremely effective way of violently imposing your will cooling would almost certainly be developed to counter the lumper. (Assuming it worked in the most plausible way.)
But there’s more than just the guns. Even if you could produce this strong of a field, it would impact almost all known forms of electronic equipment in deleterious ways — magnetic shielding is difficult! And if you had good magnetic shielding for electronics, you could use it to shield a gun.
I’m pretty lenient when it comes to the science in my sci fi — as I’ve mentioned, there’s always some amount of fantasy. It would be boring otherwise — all “cyberpunk on Earth”. My complaints generally come when an idea’s ramifications aren’t fully explored (the mantle tunnels above9), are completely unnecessary, or a more on-theme solution is available10. The lumper falls into this latter category. Why can’t the governments restrict the private ownership of guns with different levels of effectiveness — turning a choice between e.g. Heritage or Policy1st potentially into a choice between the US and the UK in terms of gun policy? It could make going from one centenal to another be an “oh, no — they have guns here” moment of tension. Why can’t Information keep such pervasive knowledge over their manufacture and distribution as to make their location always known or otherwise controlled? This would have the same effect as the lumper given the 3D printed plastic gun workaround that does appear in the story. There are more in-world options than just creating, in this case, a magic box.
I don’t want to make it seem like this detracts from the book. Even books I like can be used to create interesting examples of things I’d personally try to avoid. We’re all just having fun here. As I noted in the no spoiler introduction, I’d totally recommend Infomocracy — it’s a great summer read. Malka Older has a newer book out that’s not part of the Centenal Cycle that I’ll probably check out.
Always impermanent — remember, we are dealing with human social systems.
Sarcasm, lol.
Lol, but the fun of sci fi and spec fic is that you can make up whatever.
In Inner Horizon, you can lose your investments in registries and hyperquantum jump conduits in the Intragalactic System. However, the time scale for those losses are the rate of emergence of new sapient species — meaning the rate of change of political power in the galaxy is glacial.
In the story this is more of a “anyone could be a spy” moment of paranoia than actually reacting to the loss of Information. Because of the availability of patches that can repair knife wounds as if they’d never happened, it’s entertaining to witness both the stabber and stabbee trying to work out this “issue” in their relationship. Regardless, it’s not healthy.
I mean if we want to use “hard sci fi” as a designation for novels that forego character development and story in pursuit of boring passages trying to persuade us that a particular technology is plausible despite having patently ridiculous violations of the laws of physics, then I could be on board.
The main driver of the Aegis was to allow the creation of perfectly safe bubbles — safe from violence, state or otherwise. They’re not invincible but do seriously shift the balance of power between the state (and its inevitable penumbra of violence) and the individual.
Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel should actually just be Germs and Steel since the guns follow from steel.
But may be in future books — I haven’t read them, but probably will given the 4-star overall rating for this one.
One of the things about the David Lynch Dune (1984) film that I love is alteration of the weirding way — while on-theme in the book (which has a lot of “micro-manage your own body”/human potential material), creates an entirely new on-theme aspect for a movie which has a lot of Lynchian emphasis of sound from the thumpers to The Voice. FYI, I am re-reading Dune (1965) for my next review (I haven’t read it since I was like 10 or 11 years old).