[Plura-list] The true post-cyberpunk hero is a noir forensic accountant
Cory Doctorow
doctorow at craphound.com
Wed Apr 17 07:38:30 EDT 2024
Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/17/panama-papers-fanfic/
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I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel *The Bezzle*! Catch me TONIGHT (Apr 17) in CHICAGO, then Torino (Apr 21), Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/16/narrative-capitalism/#bezzle-tour
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Today's links
* The true post-cyberpunk hero is a noir forensic accountant: Blair Fix, Henry Farrell and Maria Farrell know more about Marty Hench than I do.
* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
* This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019
* Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
* Recent appearances: Where I've been.
* Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
* Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
* Colophon: All the rest.
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🌈 The true post-cyberpunk hero is a noir forensic accountant
I was reared on cyberpunk fiction, I ended up spending 25 years at my EFF day-job working at the weird edge of tech and human rights, even as I wrote sf that tried to fuse my love of cyberpunk with my urgent, lifelong struggle over who computers do things *for* and who they do them *to*.
That makes me an official "post-cyberpunk" writer (TM). Don't take my word for it: I'm in the canon:
https://tachyonpublications.com/product/rewired-the-post-cyberpunk-anthology-2/
One of the editors of that "post-cyberpunk" anthology was John Kessel, who is, not coincidentally, the first writer to expose me to the power of literary criticism to change the way I felt about a novel, both as a writer and a reader:
https://locusmag.com/2012/05/cory-doctorow-a-prose-by-any-other-name/
It was Kessel's 2004 *Foundation* essay, "Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality," that helped me understand litcrit. Kessel expertly surfaces the subtext of Card's *Ender's Game* and connects it to Card's politics. In so doing, he completely reframed how I felt about a book I'd read several times and had considered a favorite:
https://johnjosephkessel.wixsite.com/kessel-website/creating-the-innocent-killer
This is a head-spinning experience for a reader, but it's even wilder to experience it as a *writer*. Thankfully, the majority of literary criticism about my work has been positive, but even then, discovering something that's clearly present in one of my novels, but which I didn't consciously include, is a (very pleasant!) mind-fuck.
A recent example: Blair Fix's review of my 2023 novel *Red Team Blues* which he calls "an anti-finance finance thriller":
https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/05/13/red-team-blues-cory-doctorows-anti-finance-thriller/
Fix - a radical economist - perfectly captures the correspondence between my hero, the forensic accountant Martin Hench, and the heroes of noir detective novels. Namely, that a noir detective is a kind of unlicensed policeman, going to the places the cops can't go, asking the questions the cops can't ask, and thus solving the crimes the cops can't solve. What makes this *noir* is what happens next: the private dick realizes that these were places the cops *didn't want to go*, questions the cops *didn't want to ask* and crimes the cops *didn't want to solve* ("It's Chinatown, Jake").
Marty Hench - a forensic accountant who finds the money that has been disappeared through the cells in cleverly constructed spreadsheets - is an unlicensed *tax inspector*. He's finding the money the IRS can't find - only to be reminded, time and again, that this is money the IRS *chooses not to* find.
This is how the tax authorities work, after all. Anyone who followed the coverage of the big finance leaks knows that the most shocking revelation they contain is how *stupid* the ruses of the ultra-wealthy are. The IRS *could* prevent that tax-fraud, they just choose not to. Not for nothing, I call the Martin Hench books "Panama Papers fanfic."
I've read plenty of noir fiction and I'm a long-term finance-leaks obsessive, but until I read Fix's article, it never occurred to me that a forensic accountant was actually squarely within the noir tradition. Hench's perfect noir fit is either a happy accident or the result of a subconscious intuition that I didn't know I had until Fix put his finger on it.
The second Hench novel is *The Bezzle*. It's been out since February, and I'm *still* touring with it (Chicago tonight! Then Turin, Marin County, Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver, etc). It's paying off - the book's a national bestseller.
Writing in his newsletter, Henry Farrell connects Fix's observation to one of his own, about the nature of "hackers" and their role in cyberpunk (and post-cyberpunk) fiction:
https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-accountant-as-cyberpunk-hero
Farrell cites Bruce Schneier's 2023 book, *A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules and How to Bend Them Back*:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/06/trickster-makes-the-world/
Schneier, a security expert, broadens the category of "hacker" to include anyone who studies systems with an eye to finding and exploiting their defects. Under this definition, the more fearsome hackers are "working for a hedge fund, finding a loophole in financial regulations that lets her siphon extra profits out of the system." Hackers work in corporate offices, or as government lobbyists.
As Henry says, hacking isn't intrinsically countercultural ("Most of the hacking you might care about is done by boring seeming people in boring seeming clothes"). Hacking reinforces - rather than undermining power asymmetries ("The rich have far more resources to figure out how to gimmick the rules"). We are mostly not the hackers - we are the *hacked.*
For Henry, Marty Hench is a hacker (the rare hacker that works for the good guys), even though "he doesn’t wear mirrorshades or get wasted chatting to bartenders with Soviet military-surplus mechanical arms." He's a gun for hire, that most traditional of cyberpunk heroes, and while he doesn't stand against the system, he's not for it, either.
Henry's pinning down something I've been circling around for nearly 30 years: the idea that though "the street finds its own use for things," Wall Street and Madison Avenue are among the streets that might find those uses:
https://craphound.com/nonfic/street.html
Henry also connects Martin Hench to Marcus Yallow, the hero of my YA *Little Brother* series. I have tried to make this connection myself, opining that while Marcus is a character who is fighting to save an internet that he loves, Marty is living in the ashes of the internet he lost:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/07/dont-curb-your-enthusiasm/
But Henry's Marty-as-hacker notion surfaces a far more interesting connection between the two characters. Marcus is a vehicle for conveying the excitement and power of hacking to young readers, while Marty is a vessel for older readers who know the stark terror of *being hacked*, by the sadistic wolves who're coming for all of us:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I44L1pzi4gk
Both Marcus and Marty are explainers, as am I. Some people say that exposition makes for bad narrative. Those people are wrong:
https://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/my-favorite-bit/my-favorite-bit-cory-doctorow-talks-about-the-bezzle/
"Explaining" makes for *great* fiction. As Maria Farrell writes in her Crooked Timber review of *The Bezzle*, the secret sauce of some of the best novels is "information about how things work. Things like locks, rifles, security systems":
https://crookedtimber.org/2024/03/06/the-bezzle/
Where these things are integrated into the story's "reason and urgency," they become "specialist knowledge [that] cuts new paths to move through the world." Hacking, in other words.
This is a theme Paul Di Filippo picked up on in his review of *The Bezzle* for *Locus*:
https://locusmag.com/2024/04/paul-di-filippo-reviews-the-bezzle-by-cory-doctorow/
> Heinlein was always known—and always came across in his writings—as The Man Who Knew How the World Worked. Doctorow delivers the same sense of putting yourself in the hands of a fellow who has peered behind Oz’s curtain. When he fills you in lucidly about some arcane bit of economics or computer tech or social media scam, you feel, first, that you understand it completely and, second, that you can trust Doctorow’s analysis and insights.
Knowledge is power, and so expository fiction that delivers news you can use is novel that makes you more powerful - powerful enough to resist the hackers who want to hack *you*.
Henry and I were both friends of Aaron Swartz, and the *Little Brother* books are closely connected to Aaron, who helped me with *Homeland*, the second volume, and wrote a great afterword for it (Schneier wrote an afterword for the first book). That book - and Aaron's afterword - has radicalized a gratifying number of principled technologists. I know, because I meet them when I tour, and because they send me emails. I like to think that these hackers are part of Aaron's legacy.
Henry argues that the Hench books are "purpose-designed to inspire a thousand Max Schrems - people who are probably past their teenage years, have some grounding in the relevant professions, and really want to see things change."
(Schrems is the Austrian privacy activist who, as a law student, set in motion the events that led to the passage of the EU's General Data Privacy Regulation:)
https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/15/out-here-everything-hurts/#noyb
Henry points out that William Gibson's *Neuromancer* doesn't mention the word "internet" - rather, Gibson coined the term *cyberspace*, which, as Henry says, is "more ‘capitalism’ than ‘computerized information'... If you really want to penetrate the system, you need to really grasp what money is and what it does."
Maria also wrote one of my all-time favorite reviews of *Red Team Blues*, also for Crooked Timber:
https://crookedtimber.org/2023/05/11/when-crypto-meant-cryptography/
In it, she compares Hench to Dickens' *Bleak House*, but for the modern tech world:
> You put the book down feeling it’s not just a fascinating, enjoyable novel, but a document of how Silicon Valley’s very own 1% live and a teeming, energy-emitting snapshot of a critical moment on Earth.
All my life, I've written to find out what's going on in my own head. It's a remarkably effective technique. But it's only recently that I've come to appreciate that reading what *other people* write about my writing can reveal things that I can't see.
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🌈 Hey look at this
* Stanford Law-4051/Comm-363 Governance of the Internet https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yBvPMk0gXNLZWkMXnZnJb7oD3AO3DwxdAHghqifihec/edit#heading=h.lv9s24vvf46k
* Trampoline Unionism https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/trampoline-unionism
* Civil rights groups decry effort to punish US federal inmates for social media use https://www.reuters.com/world/us/civil-rights-groups-decry-effort-punish-us-federal-inmates-social-media-use-2024-04-01/ (h/t Gregory Charlin)
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This day in history
#20yrsago The RIAA's Clean Slate “amnesty” euthanized https://web.archive.org/web/20040517135600/https://blogs.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/001435.php
#20yrsago 1995 web-hosting rates https://web.archive.org/web/20040421110701/http://1c4.net/
#15yrsago UK wine-sellers declare that wine has horoscopes, advise wine-drinkers to avoid certain moon-days https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/apr/18/wine-lunar-calendar-tesco-supermarkets
#10yrsago Army comes clean about its recruitment AI, accidentally discloses info about pedophile- and terrorist-catching chatbots that roam the net https://spacenews.com/pepsi-drops-plans-to-use-orbital-billboard/
#5yrsago The Antitrust Case Against Facebook: a turning point in the debate over Big Tech and monopoly https://memex.craphound.com/2019/04/18/the-antitrust-case-against-facebook-a-turning-point-in-the-debate-over-big-tech-and-monopoly/
#5yrsago The sovereign nation of Iceland has finally invalidated the European trademark on “Iceland,” formerly held by a British discount grocery chain https://www.techdirt.com/2019/04/17/end-absurdity-iceland-country-successfully-invalidates-trademark-iceland-foods-grocer/
#5yrsago Dentistry’s evidentiary vacuum allows profiteering butchers to raid our mouths for millions https://memex.craphound.com/2019/04/18/dentistrys-evidentiary-vacuum-allows-profiteering-butchers-to-raid-our-mouths-for-millions/
#5yrsago 1% of England owns half of England https://whoownsengland.org
#5yrsago Effective July 15, British porn consumers will be required entrust their sexual tastes to private companies’ badly secured databases https://www.wired.com/story/porn-block-uk-wired-explains/
#5yrsago We lost the fight for balance in the EU’s Copyright Directive, but here’s what we won https://felixreda.eu/2019/04/not-in-vain/
#5yrsago John Oliver tackles the Sacklers: the litigious, secretive billionaires whose family business engineered the opioid crisis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qCKR6wy94U
#1yrago How tech does regulatory capture https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/18/cursed-are-the-sausagemakers/#how-the-parties-get-to-yes
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Upcoming appearances
* The Bezzle at Anderson's Books (Chicago), Apr 17
<a href="https://www.andersonsbookshop.com/event/cory-doctorow-1">https://www.andersonsbookshop.com/event/cory-doctorow-1</a>
* Torino Biennale Tecnologia, Apr 21
https://www.turismotorino.org/en/experiences/events/biennale-tecnologia
* The Bezzle at Book Passage Corte Madera (Marin County), April 27
https://www.bookpassage.com/event/cory-doctorow-bezzle-martin-hench-novel-corte-madera-store
* Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (Winnipeg), May 2
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-tickets-798820071337
* Wordfest (Calgary), May 3
https://wordfest.com/2024/event/wordfest-presents-cory-doctorow-2/
* Massy Arts (Vancouver), May 4
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/solo-reading-cory-doctorow-the-bezzle-tickets-876989167207
* Tartu Prima Vista Literary Festival, May 5-11
https://tartu2024.ee/en/kirjandusfestival/
* Tim O’Reilly and Cory Doctorow on “Enshittification” and the Future of AI, May 14
https://www.oreilly.com/live-events/tim-oreilly-and-cory-doctorow-on-enshittification-and-the-future-of-ai/0642572001651/
* "Finding the Money" screening (LA), May 15
https://www.laemmle.com/film/finding-money?date=2024-05-15
* Media Ecology Association keynote (Amherst, NY), Jun 6-9
https://media-ecology.org/convention
* American Association of Law Libraries keynote (Chicago), Jul 21
https://www.aallnet.org/conference/agenda/keynote-speaker/
* The Bezzle at Anderson's Books (Chicago), Apr 17
https://www.andersonsbookshop.com/event/cory-doctorow-1
* Torino Biennale Tecnologia (Apr 21)
https://www.biennaletecnologia.it/evento/come-sfuggire-al-merdocene-e-costruire-un-internet-migliore/
* The Bezzle at Book Passage Corte Madera (Marin County), April 27
https://www.bookpassage.com/event/cory-doctorow-bezzle-martin-hench-novel-corte-madera-store
* Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (Winnipeg), May 2
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-tickets-798820071337
* Wordfest (Calgary), May 3
https://wordfest.com/2024/event/wordfest-presents-cory-doctorow-2/
* Massy Arts (Vancouver), May 4
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/solo-reading-cory-doctorow-the-bezzle-tickets-876989167207
* Tartu Prima Vista Literary Festival, May 5-11
https://tartu2024.ee/en/kirjandusfestival/
* Tim O’Reilly and Cory Doctorow on “Enshittification” and the Future of AI, May 14
https://www.oreilly.com/live-events/tim-oreilly-and-cory-doctorow-on-enshittification-and-the-future-of-ai/0642572001651/
* "Finding the Money" screening (LA), May 15
https://www.laemmle.com/film/finding-money?date=2024-05-15
* Media Ecology Association keynote, Jun 6-9 (Amherst, NY)
https://media-ecology.org/convention
* American Association of Law Libraries keynote, (Chicago), Jul 21
https://www.aallnet.org/conference/agenda/keynote-speaker/
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Recent appearances
* Deep Dive podcast
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0bS0DS1H7ghHkiyx4KzXBV?si=fe7242019e734d61
* Digital capitalism course: What is digital capitalism? (Transnational Institute)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCzWpEQcd7E
* The Scam Economy (Lost Dollar Business Club)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SChg9ZiY_bk
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Latest books
* The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).
* "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)
* "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
* "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. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.
* "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?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (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#/.
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Upcoming books
* Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025
* Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025
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Colophon
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. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025
* Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
* Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
Latest podcast: Capitalists Hate Capitalism https://craphound.com/news/2024/04/14/capitalists-hate-capitalism/
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.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.
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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
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