I have plenty of friends I know through doing the Dickheads podcast who think 21st-century science fiction is dead or sucks. I know myself I generally like the time out of joint feeling that a future conceived in the past gives the reader. That really makes it feel like another universe. There are plenty of modern science fiction novels I think are great, and this is the best one I have read in a while. Is it perfect? No, but you’ll notice I graded up on the curve because it gets so much more right than wrong.
I have tons to say about this novel. First off this is a debut novel? Pretty solid first effort.
“The machines who labor for us and alongside us are enslaved and exploited in their own fashion. Gone are the days of dumb engines and processors. Today, nearly every machine contains some type of adaptive intelligence. What gives human beings the right to arbitrate when an intelligence becomes equivalent to a person?
The Machinehood Manifesto; March 20, 2095”
The story has two rotating point-of-view characters, although most of the story centers around Welga. She is an excellent character to explore these themes through, as her body itself becomes a major question in the closing chapters of the book. Her sister-in-law Nithya on the other hand is a majorly important character in the story, for her normality. Mostly she appears to exist as our window into day-to-day life in this future. I understand the role Nithya plays in the narrative, but her chapters felt like asides to me. Small nitpick, but I think some readers might feel stronger.
This novel is set in the last 5 years of the 21st century and technology has progressed to the point where machines, computers, and AI are running most of the world. Humans carry swarms of bot assistants like we do our phones. Humans have to take pills called ‘zips’ to be able to compete with machines. There is plenty of smart world-building, like the best of the genre this is done with a scalpel, not a hammer.
One way this was expressed that really got me thinking was that Divya dialed up what I consider to be a realistic future where culture has moved past jobs as we know them. People pick up gigs and survive based on a virtual tip jar. Like many classic science fiction novels, Machinehood is an idea book and there is plenty of thought-out depth in the world-building. This happens in grand moments related to the themes and in tiny details.
Privacy is a major theme that comes up often in the novel. This I think gives us the chance to look at a nuts-and-bolts issue of writing science fiction. We are taught as Sci-fi writers to be wary of the info dump. You are taught to achieve this in subtle ways. There is a scene where Welga and her partner have sex. She mentions that it is more intimate because they have turned off their bots, and no tip jar. It is a subtle moment but thinks of what it says about this future?
Earlier this point was made with an info dump.
“Privacy had gone the way of the dodo during Welga’s childhood. Some part of her always remembered the cameras. In Marrakech, the caliph’s network blackout had unsettled her more than the potential for violence – the lack of communication, the inability to see what others were doing. It would take a million lifetimes to watch every minute of every public feed, but she had a sense of security knowing she could look out for her people, and they’d do the same. Losing that had felt like walking around with one shoe: doable but not at all comfortable.”
Now, that is a very well-written and useful information dump. It tells us about the world, the character narrating it, and ends with a great visual. Both are valid and well done, but they are different.
Excuse my aside on composing science fiction. What did the above say about privacy? It doesn’t exist in this future. To someone of my generation that feels like a warning, to my nephew’s generation it probably feels like “whatever dude.” I found that to be a powerful part of the book. When Machinehood, a radical Machine rights organization cuts out the grid. The disconnection from social media was almost as destructive apocalypse to this future as the rolling mushroom clouds in The Day After.
“The roads are full of wrecked bots. People are sick and dying in the streets. No one wants to leave home, because they don’t have pills or swarms to protect them.”
I dog-eared this page and came back to this quote because it says so much about the future in Machinehood. Welga as a character is ex-special forces who gigs as security for political figures as such she is a perfect POV for the story because embodies the contradiction. The line where humans ends, the machine begins, and where our responsibility lies to things we give life.
If a machine thinks, does it therefore live? That is the question. Well, it is one question and this novel poses many questions.
Machinehood is an organization that is the antagonist of this story but it puts the generally progressive leftist Sci-fi reader in an uncomfortable position. I generally feel comfortable siding with the oppressed in stories but I also am not a huge fan of technology. As a long times Animal Rights person, it also made me uncomfortable to imagine equating their struggle to the one for animals. We are not close to solving the issue of animal exploitation but Divya may be implying this future had. Certainly, humans solved the climate crisis in the future. This future is not all bad.
Again, I am getting lost in the ideas. That might hold back some readers but not me. OK, back to the story. The world is plunged into chaos when Machinehood cuts off all AI technology and demands rights. Welga makes it her mission to stop them. The problem is she was born human but through her life, she became more and more machine. The question of her rights and humanity comes into question many times.
“That was pre-regulation. It’s much harder to litigate this kind of thing today. If it’s something unique to Welga’s biochemistry, there might be something illegal here. And it’s not likely to attract lawyers.”
Then comes the issues of strange bedfellows, who is helping machinehood? The technology adverse Islamic Caliph nation or neo-Buddhists living off the earth in orbiting space stations. This brings many social and political issues that never failed to engage this reader. I like that the novel didn’t seem to tell the reader what to think, just told the story and presented the ideas…
“The western way of thinking embraces duality. Good and evil. Man and woman. Mind and body. Human and machine. We reject these false dichotomies. Science has shown that our universe works across a range of possibilities. It embraces the infinite.”
Without giving away the ending the novel is fast-paced and the narrative is driving without being a shoot’em up. There are moments that feel familiar like Welga having to go rogue. You might be expecting a training montage, or a big shoot-out but power in the story still remains close to the ideas and questions.
“Her people attacked me, and I defended myself. We believe that she is responsible for crimes against human- and machine kind. We believe that the governments of Earth have failed to protect their people from criminals like her.”
“Are you human or AI?”
“I am both.”
The second agent spoke. “In what ways are you human?”
“I have a mother and a father, I was born into the world, like you. I have a soul.”
“and what makes you AI?”
“My body contains a collection of machine intelligences. We coexist.”
Everything builds towards a huge confrontation but I can’t help thinking it all comes down to Welga talking to talks to her AI assistant.
“Por Que, do you consider yourself enslaved?”
“I belong to you, Welga, but since I don’t have personhood, I can’t be a slave.”
Questions, questions. The book asks plenty of those. The ideas are there that was the most exciting aspect for me. There were times I wished the story committed more to the power cords of Sci-fi action, but in the end, I found the conflict plenty effective.
The grandest of science fiction are the tales you can hold up like a mirror to the issues of today. Even more grand are novels that decades like still feel like they are that mirror. Look at Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar or Butler’s Parable books. I don’t know if Machinehood will have that kind of life. I suspect it will be in conversation during award season. The life of the novel may depend on how slow or fast this future hits us.
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