[Plura-list] Ian McDonald's "Hopeland"

Tue May 30 04:04:47 EDT 2023

Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/30/electromancy/

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I'm in Nottingham tonight (May 30) for a 6:30PM event for my novel *Red Team Blues* at Waterstone's with Christian Reilly (MMT Podcast):

https://www.waterstones.com/events/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/nottingham

Tomorrow (May 31) at 6:30PM, I'm at the Manchester Waterstones with Ian Forrester:

https://www.waterstones.com/events/in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow/manchester-deansgate

Then it's London, Edinburgh, and Berlin!

http://redteamblues.com

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Today's links

* Ian McDonald's "Hopeland": A novel so eerily good it almost made me angry.

* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

* This day in history: 2013, 2018, 2022

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

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🐹 Ian McDonald's "Hopeland"

Have you ever read a novel that was so *good* you almost felt *angry* at it? I mean, maybe that's just me, but there is one author who consistently triggers my literary pleasure centers so hard that I get spillover into all my other senses, and that's Ian McDonald, who has a new novel out: *Hopeland*:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765375551/hopeland

Seriously what the *fuck* is this amazing, uncategorizable, unsummarizable, weird, sprawling, hairball of a novel? How the *hell* do you research - much less *write* - a novel this ambitious and wide-ranging? Why did I find myself weeping uncontrollably on a train yesterday as I finished it, literally squeezing my chest over my heart as it broke and sang at the same moment?

*Hopeland* is a climate novel, and it's not McDonald's first. *Hearts, Hands and Voices* (published in the US as *The Broken Land*) is a climate novel (that also happens to be about the Irish Troubles). So is his stunning debut, *Desolation Road*, which I picked up at a mall bookstore in 1988 and *lost my mind* over:

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/07/02/ian-mcdonalds-brilliant-mars-book-desolation-road-finally-back-in-print/

But those were climate novels written in the early stages of the discussion of the gravity of the anthropocene, and so climate change was more setting than anything else. In *Hopeland*, the climate is more of a character - not a protagonist, but also not a minor character.

The true stars of *Hopeland* are members of two ancient, secret societies. There's Raisa Hopeland, who belongs to a globe-spanning, mystical "family," that's one part mutual aid, one part dance music subculture, and one part sorcerer (some Hopelanders are electromancers, making strange, powerful magic with Tesla coils.

We meet Raisa as she is racing across London in a bid to win a rare, open electromancer title. She is on the brink of losing, but then a passerby pitches in to help: Amon Brightborne, part of another mystical family whose stately, odd manor in the English countryside can only be reached by people who can work the "gateway," which makes the road disappear and reappear. Amon is a composer and DJ who specializes in making music for very small groups of people - preferably just one person - that is so perfect for them that they are transformed by hearing it.

Amon's intervention in Raisa's bid for electromancy unites these two formerly disjoint families, entwining their destinies just as the world is forever changing, thanks to the decidedly un-magical buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere. They have a romance, a breakup, a child. They are scattered to opposite ends of the Earth - Iceland and a tiny Polynesian island.

Their lives are electrified. Literally. On her passage to Iceland, Raisa confronts a ship-destroying megastorm, speaks its true name, and sends it away before it can sink the container ship - captained by a Hopelander who gives her free passage - that she is sailing on. In Iceland, she falls in with more Hopelanders, tapping a thermal vent to create a greenhouse cannabis farm, which begets a luxury salad greens business, then an electricity plant that attracts cryptocurrency weirdos like shit draws flies.

Amon, meanwhile, is sinking into drunken ruin on his island paradise, where he becomes a kind of mascot for the locals, who respect his musical prowess. The island is sinking, both figuratively and literally, as its offshore king, hiding in a luxury mansion in Sydney, drains its aquifers for the luxury bottled water markets and loots its treasuries to fund his own high lifestyle.

McDonald takes a *long* time getting to this point. This is a *500 page novel*, and the build to this setup takes nearly 300 of them. Every word of that setup is *gold*. McDonald's prose often veers into poetry, or at least poesie, and he has this knack for seemingly superfluous vignettes and detours that present as self-indulgences but then snap into place later as critical pieces of a superbly turned narrative. How the *fuck* does he do it?

How does he do it? How does he deliver a sense of such *vastness*, a world peopled by vastly different polities and populations, distinctly different without ever being exoticized, each clearly the hero of their own story, whether they live on a tiny island or captain an American battleship?:

I mean, cyberpunk - the tradition McDonald most obviously belongs to - was always about a post-American future, but no one ever managed it the way McDonald did. He delivered a superb, complex, Indian future in 2004's *River of Gods*:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/06/12/ian-mcdonalds-brilliant-new-novel-river-of-gods-bollywoodpunk/

And then did the same in Brazil with 2007's *Brasyl*:

https://memex.craphound.com/2007/04/30/ian-mcdonalds-brasyl-mind-altering-cyberpunk-carioca/

And Turkey in 2011's *Dervish House*, a novel of mystical nanofuturism set in an Istanbul that is so vividly drawn that you feel like you can reach through the page and touch it:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/07/12/ian-mcdonalds-dervish-house-superb-novel-of-the-mystical-nano-future-of-istanbul/

Those were ambitious books, but *Hopeland* puts them to shame. It draws on so many threads - music and art, climate justice, mysticism, electrical engineering, economics, gender politics - and has such a huge cast of finely drawn characters. By all rights, it should collapse under its own weight. I mean, seriously - who can write multi-page passages *describing imaginary music* and make it *riveting*?

McDonald is just so damned good at writing love-letters to *places* that then them into characters in their own right. The first third of *Hopeland* treats London that way, bringing it to gritty life in the manner of Michael de Larrabeiti's classic Borribles trilogy:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/01/16/the-borribles-are-back/

Or, for that matter, China Miéville's debut novel *King Rat*, itself out in a fancy new Tor Essentials edition with an introduction by Tim Maughan, who absolutely bullseyes the appeal of Miéville's novel of underground music, mystical societies and urbanism:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250862501/kingrat

(It shouldn't surprise you to learn that Miéville is a giant Borribles fan:)

https://www.tor.com/2014/03/13/the-borribles-excerpt-introduction-china-mieville/

I have loved Ian McDonald's work since I picked up *Desolation Road* in that mall bookstore when I was 17. One of the absolute highlights of my writing career was writing an introduction for the 2014 reissue of *Out On Blue Six*, a book that mashes up David Byrne's solo projects, Orwell's *Nineteen Eighty-Four*, Huxley's *Brave New World* and Dick's *Do Androids Dream* in a madcap dystopian comedy:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/01/20/out-on-blue-six-ian-mcdonalds-brilliant-novel-is-back/

I've read everything I could find about how he manages these giant, weird, intricately constructed novels, like this fascinating 2010 interview about his research process:

https://web.archive.org/web/20100726181934/http://www.cclapcenter.com/2010/07/an_interview_with_ian_mcdonald.html

But despite it all, I find myself continuously baffled by how manages it, but each book just *stabs* me. For one thing, he's *such* a good remix artist. His three-volume, essential retelling of Heinlein's *The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress* starts with *Luna: New Moon* (2015):

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/09/22/ian-mcdonalds-luna-new-moon-the-moon-is-a-much-much-harsher-mistress/

Which substantially out-Heinleins Heinlein, adding thickness and rigor to the tropes Heinlein tossed in as throwaways. Then, he topped himself with the sequel, *Luna: Wolf Moon* (2017):

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/03/28/ian-mcdonald-returns-to-the-harshest-mistress-in-luna-wolf-moon/

Before bringing it all in for a screaming landing that tied up the hundreds of threads he pulled on in the course of the previous two volumes with the conclusion, *Luna: Moon Rising* (2019):

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/05/16/luna-moon-rising-in-which-ian-mcdonald-brings-the-trilogy-to-an-astounding-intricate-exciting-and-satisfying-climax/

In each volume, McDonald proved - over and over - that he understood precisely what Heinlein was trying to do, then outdid him, and, in so doing, *shredded* Heinlein's solipsitic, simplistic, seductive argument about a libertarian utopia.

Perhaps this is McDonald's greatest gift: his ability to rework others' ideas, tropes and tales, without ever trying to hide his influences, and then vastly outdoing them. That's certainly what was going on with his wild-ass, deiselpunk YA trilogy, which started with 2011's *Planesrunner*:

https://memex.craphound.com/2011/12/06/planesrunner-ian-mcdonalds-ya-debut-is-full-of-action-packed-multidimensional-cool-airships-electropunk-and-quantum-physics/

One important McDonaldism: being deadly serious about his whimsy. The books are all *very* whimsical, but never frivolous. To get a sense of what I mean here, consider his 1992 graphic novel *Kling Klang Klatch*, a deadly serious comic book about the Klu Klux Klan, told entirely through adorable teddybears in a noir cityscape, whose dialog is heavily salted with Tom Waits lyrics:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/01/24/ian-mcdonalds-kling-klang-klatch/

No, really. And it's *fantastic*.

Back to *Hopeland*. It's a climate novel, because what else could you write in this time of polycrisis? The book is vast enough to convey the scale of the crisis. The storms that ravage the world are both personified and realized, a terror to compare to any literary monster or Cthuhoid entity. But it's called *Hopeland* for a reason, because it's a book about *hope*, not nihilism, a book about confronting the crisis, a book about solidarity and love, about overcoming difference, about challenging the way things "just are."

That's why I was crying and holding my heart yesterday on the train. The hope. What a ride.

One of the reasons I was in such a hurry to read this novel now is that I'm appearing on a panel with McDonald this coming Saturday, June 3, at Edinburgh's Cymera festival, along with Nina Allen, author of the new novel *Conquest*:

https://www.cymerafestival.co.uk/cymera23-events/2023/4/4/connection-interrupted-with-nina-allan-cory-doctorow-and-ian-mcdonald

I'm so looking forward to it. I've written a couple dozen books since I read my first McDonald novel as a teenager, and while I still have no idea how McDonald does it, there's something of his work in every one of my books.

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🐹 Hey look at this

* How Spotify Rigged the Music Market https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ5z_KKeFqE

* Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great https://www.wired.com/story/molly-white-crypto-scams/

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🐹 This day in history

#10yrsago DIY turd-transplants https://web.archive.org/web/20130608030455/http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2013/05/29/why-diy-fecal-transplants-are-a-thing-and-the-fda-is-only-part-of-the-reason/

#10yrsago I Love New York people censor I Coffee Cup New York logo, want to send them a bill https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/nyregion/new-york-challenges-a-coffee-shop-logo.html

#10yrsago Schools and the cloud: will schools allow students to be profiled and advertised to in the course of their school-day? https://web.archive.org/web/20130603053407/http://www.safegov.org/media/48269/safegov_ponemon_uk_school_survey.pdf

#10yrsago Danish “Gangnam Style” mayors threatened with copyright lawsuit by Universal https://torrentfreak.com/universal-music-tells-gangnam-parody-mayors-pay-42000-by-tomorrow-or-else-130530/

#10yrsago RIP, Henry Morgentaler, Canadian abortion pioneer https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/dr-henry-morgentaler-s-death-highlights-abortion-divide-1.1344197

#10yrsago Science fiction story in the form of a Twitter bug-report https://web.archive.org/web/20130527235924/https://twitter.bug.quietbabylon.com/

#5yrsago Design fiction, speculative design, and “creepiness” https://www.wired.com/story/the-creepy-rise-of-real-companies-spawning-fictional-design/

#5yrsago The TSA has a secret enemies list of people who’ve complained about screeners https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/17/us/politics/new-watch-list-tsa-screeners-.html

#5yrsago Spectacular read: a profile of Anna Sorokin, a con-artist who convinced New York that she was a high-rolling socialite trust-funder https://www.thecut.com/article/how-anna-delvey-tricked-new-york.html

#5yrsago Puerto Rico’s Hurricane Maria death toll is 70 times higher than the official count https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1803972

#5yrsago An analysis of all those Internet of Things manifestos sparked by the slow-motion IoT catastrophe https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3173574.3173876

#5yrsago Quantifying the massive premium paid to people who work in “bullshit jobs” https://popularresistance.org/the-more-valuable-your-work-is-to-society-the-less-youll-be-paid-for-it/

#5yrsago White Americans abandoned democracy and embraced authoritarianism when they realized brown people would soon outvote them https://web.archive.org/web/20180528185731/http://svmiller.com/research/white-outgroup-intolerance-democratic-support/

#5yrsago Ad brokers are selling the fact that you visited an emergency room to ambulance-chasing lawyers https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/25/613127311/digital-ambulance-chasers-law-firms-send-ads-to-patients-phones-inside-ers

#5yrsago Efail: instructions for using PGP again as safely as is possible for now https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/how-turn-pgp-back-safely-possible

#5yrsago EFF on Cockygate: trademark trolls vs romance literature https://www.eff.org/takedowns/author-trademarks-cocky-earns-ire-romance-writers-everywhere

#1yrago Apple's Cement Overshoes https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/30/80-lbs/#malicious-compliance

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🐹 Colophon

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

* Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, WAITING FOR EDITORIAL REVIEW

* The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, WAITING FOR EDITORIAL REVIEW

* Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. ON SUBMISSION

* Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION

* Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. ON SUBMISSION

Latest podcast: The Swivel-Eyed Loons Have a Point https://craphound.com/news/2023/05/14/the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

Upcoming appearances:

* Red Team Blues event with Christian Reilly (Nottingham), May 30
https://www.waterstones.com/events/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/nottingham

* Red Team Blues event with Ian Forrester (Manchester), May 31
https://www.waterstones.com/events/in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow/manchester-deansgate

* UCL Peter Kirstein Lecture, Jun 1 (London):
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/peter-kirstein-lecture-2023-featuring-cory-doctorow-registration-539205788027

* Cymera Festival, Jun 3 (Edinburgh)
https://www.cymerafestival.co.uk/cymera23-events/2023/4/4/connection-interrupted-with-nina-allan-cory-doctorow-and-ian-mcdonald

* Red Team Blues with Martha Lane Fox at the British Library, Jun 5 (London):
https://www.bl.uk/events/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-techno-thriller

* Rightscon, "Interoperability: from buzzword to a map of solutions," Jun 6 (Costa Rica):
https://www.rightscon.org/program/

* Re:publica keynote, Jun 7 (Berlin)
https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp23-keynote-von-cory-doctorow-rebecca-giblin-kreative-arbeitsmaerkte-und-monopole

* Otherland event for Red Team Blues, Jun 8 (Berlin)
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow-autorenabend.html

Recent appearances:

* How To Save News Media From Our Tech Overlords (Canadaland)
https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/888-how-to-save-news-media-from-our-tech-overlords/

*  Most AI is not artificial or intelligent (with James Bridle)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPvHjvZz7l0

* This Machine Kills
https://soundcloud.com/thismachinekillspod/257-red-team-blues-ft-cory-doctorow

Latest books:

* "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com

* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59 (print edition: https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

* The Internet Con: A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech, Verso, September 2023

* The Lost Cause: a post-Green New Deal eco-topian novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias, Tor Books, November 2023

This work - excluding any serialized fiction - is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

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