[Plura-list] Neal Stephenson's "Polostan"

[Cory Doctorow]

Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/04/bomb-light/

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Next weekend (November 8-10), I'll be in Tucson, AZ: I'm the Guest of Honor at the Tuscon science fiction convention:

https://tusconscificon.com/

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Today's links

* Neal Stephenson's "Polostan": Raising the curtain on a post-cyberpunk sf series about the dawn on the nuclear age.

* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

* This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023

* 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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🍽 Neal Stephenson's "Polostan"

Science fiction isn't collection of tropes, nor is it a literary style, nor is it a marketing category. It can *encompass* all of these, but what sf really is, is an *outlook*.

At the core of sf is an approach to technology (and, sometimes, science): sf treats technology as a kind of crux that the rest of the tale revolves around. The Bechdel test invites us to notice that in most fiction, stories revolve around men - that it's rare for two or more non-male characters to interact with one another, and if they do, that interaction is triggered by a man.

The sftnal version of this would go something like this: "a story gets increasingly stfnal to the extent that interactions among characters either directly relate to a technology, or are triggered by the consequences of such a relation, or fears, plans or aspirations for same."

(Note that this implies that science fiction is a spectrum: things can be more or less science fictional, and that gradient reflects the centrality of a technology to the narrative.)

No one's work demonstrates this better than Neal Stephenson. Stephenson's work covers a lot of settings and storytelling modes. His debut, *The Big U*, was a contemporary novel lampooning academic life. Then came *Zodiac*, another contemporary novel, but one where science - in this case, extremely toxic polychlorinated biphenyls - take center stage. Then came his cyberpunk classic, *Snow Crash*, which was unambiguously (and gloriously) science fiction.

A couple of books later, we got *Cryptonomicon*, a finance novel that treated *money* as a technology, and, notably, did so across both a near-future setting and the historic setting of WWII. In addition to being a cracking novel, *Cryptonomicon* is exciting in that it treats the technological endeavors *of the past* in exactly the same way as it does the *imaginary* technological endeavors *of the future*. Here's Stephenson fusing his contemporary sensibilities with his deep interests in history, and approaching *historical fiction* as an sf writer, doing the sftnal thing to gadgets and ideas that have been around for more than two generations.

Stephenson's next novel was *Quicksilver*, the first book of the *massive* "System of the World" trilogy, in which the *extremely* historical events of Newton and Leibniz's quest to discover "the calculus" are given a sweeping, world-spanning sftnal treatment. As "system of the world" suggests, Stephenson uses this sftnal trick to situate a scientific advancement in the context of a global, contingent, complex *system* that it both grows out of an defines. This is the pure water of science fiction, applied *entirely* to real seventeenth century events, and it's definitive proof that sf isn't a trope, a style or a category - but rather, it is a way of framing and understanding the world.

You can think of Stephenson's career up to this point as a series of experiments in applying the stfnal lens to events that are progressively less historical (and, with *The Diamond Age*, events that are *atemporal* inasmuch as the book is set in a futuristic revival of the Victorian Age). Experiments that range over contemporary settings, and then contemporary settings blended with historical settings, then a deep historical sf trilogy.

(It's rather exciting that these books came out right as William Gibson was entering his own "predicting the present" decade, where he exclusively published sf about the recent past, a prelude to a series of sf novels set in a future so far from our present that the characters literally have no record of which events led up to their own circumstances):

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/10/28/the-peripheral-william-gibson-vs-william-gibson/

Having proved how successful an historical sf novel could be, Stephenson then bopped around with a lot of stfnal historical ideas, from the "transmedia" 12th century setting of the *Mongoliad* to a madcap time-travel book (*The Rise and Fall of DODO*). Stephenson's work since then have been pretty straightforwardly sftnal, which means that he's a little overdue for a return to historical sf.

That's where *Polostan* comes in, the just-published inaugural volume of a new interwar series about the birth of atomic science:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/polostan-neal-stephenson

Critics and even the publisher have called this a "spy novel" or a "historical novel" but it is neither of those. What *Polostan* is, is a science fiction novel, *about spies in an historical setting*. This isn't to say that Stephenson tramples on, or ignores spy trope: this is absolutely a first-rate spy novel. Nor does Stephenson skimp on the lush, gorgeously realized and painstakingly researched detail you'd want from an historical novel (Stephenson has long enjoyed a fruitful collaboration with the brilliant researcher Lisa Gold, whom we can thank for much of the historical detail across his body of work).

But the overarching sensibility of this work is a world full of people who revolve around technology. You'd be hard-pressed to list more than a handful of actions taken by the characters that aren't driven by technology, and most of the dialog either concerns technology, or the actions that characters have taken in relation to technology. It's unmistakably and indelibly a science fiction novel.

It's great.

*Polostan* raises the curtain on the story of Dawn Rae Bjornberg, AKA Aurora Maximovna Artemyeva, whose upbringing is split between the American West in the early 20th century and the Leningrad of revolutionary Russia (her parents are an American anarchist and a Ukrainian Communist who meet when her father travels to America as a Communist agitator). Aurora's parents' marriage does not survive their sojourn to the USSR, and eventually Aurora and her father end up back in the States, after her father is tasked with radicalizing the veterans of the Bonus Army that occupied DC, demanding the military benefits they'd been promised:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army

After the efforts of Communist organizers in the Bonus Army were mercilessly crushed by George S Patton, Aurora ends up living in a Communist commune in Chicago, where she falls into a job selling comfortable shoes to the footsore women who visit the Century of Progress, as the 1933 World's Fair was known:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_Progress

At the Century of Progress, Aurora sits at the junction where many global currents are mixing: she is there when Mussolini's air armada lands on Lake Michigan to the cheers of thronged fascist sympathizers; and also when Neils Bohr lectures on the newly discovered - and still controversial - neutron. She is also exposed to her first boyfriend, a young physicist from New York, who greatly expands her interest in nuclear physics and also impregnates her.

This latter turn in her life sends Aurora back into the American west, where, after a complex series of misadventures and derring-do, she embarks on a career as a tommy gun-toting bank robber, part of an armed gang of her cowboy shirttail cousins.

All of this culminates in her return sojourn to the Soviet Union, where she first falls under suspicion of being an American spy, and then her recruitment as a *Soviet* spy.

Also: she plays a *lot* of polo. Like, on a horse.

This isn't just an unmistakably sftnal novel, it's also an unmistakably *Stephensonian* novel: embroidered, discursive, and brilliantly expositional:

https://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/my-favorite-bit/my-favorite-bit-cory-doctorow-talks-about-the-bezzle/

It is funny, it is interesting, it is even daffy in places. It's sometimes absolutely horrifying. It skips around in time like a subatomic particle bouncing around in a theoretical physics model. It creates and resolves all manner of little subplots in most satisfying ways, but also ultimately exists just to tee up the main action, which will come in future volumes. It's a curtain raiser, and like any good opening number, it hooks you for what is to come.

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🍽 Hey look at this

* Why So Few Matt Levines? https://gwern.net/matt-levine (h/t User Mag)

* L.A. County sues Pepsi and Coca-Cola over their role in ongoing plastic pollution crisis  https://www.yahoo.com/news/l-county-sues-pepsi-coca-202106790.html (h/t Slashdot)

* New York Times Tech Workers Go on Strike https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/business/media/new-york-times-strike.html

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🍽 This day in history

#20yrsago UK Public Service Publisher: a BBC for everything else? https://web.archive.org/web/20050309032840/https://www.ofcom.org.uk/media_office/latest_news/nr_20041103?a=87101

#20yrsago Pope endorses wanking, screwing https://web.archive.org/web/20060209083158/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/10/31/wvat31.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/10/31/ixnewstop.html

#15yrsago Gopher protocol reborn https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/11/the-web-may-have-won-but-gopher-tunnels-on/

#15yrsago Tell the FCC to say no to Hollywood’s terrible “Selectable Output Control” kill-switch https://web.archive.org/web/20091108001731/https://publicknowledge.org/action/say-no-to-soc

#15yrsago More on secret copyright treaty: your kids could go to jail for noncommercial music sharing https://web.archive.org/web/20091105223851/https://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4511/125/

#15yrsago Love of Shopping is Not a Gene: exposing junk science and ideology in Darwinian Psychology https://memex.craphound.com/2009/11/04/love-of-shopping-is-not-a-gene-exposing-junk-science-and-ideology-in-darwinian-psychology/

#15yrsago Science fiction as a predictor of the present https://web.archive.org/web/20091107095510/http://tinhousebooks.com/blog/?p=410

#15yrsago Secret copyright treaty leaks. It’s bad. Very bad. https://web.archive.org/web/20091103214101/https://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4510/125/

#10yrsago Cybercrooks sell stolen rewards points at 99.9% discount https://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/11/thieves-cash-out-rewards-points-accounts/

#10yrsago Ferguson’s no-fly zone created to ground news-choppers https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/02/360991500/ap-no-fly-zone-in-ferguson-meant-to-keep-media-out

#10yrsago 21K Kansans’ votes will be suppressed this election https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article3504228.html

#10yrsago Pianist wants bad review taking down under EU “right to be forgotten” rules https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10/31/pianist-asks-the-washington-post-to-remove-a-concert-review-under-the-e-u-s-right-to-be-forgotten-ruling/

#10yrsago My grandmother, the poisoner https://web.archive.org/web/20141105041851/https://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/my-gandma-the-poisoner-0000474-v21n10

#5yrsago White supremacists record video at the new, bulletproof Emmett Till memorial sign https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/03/us/emmett-till-memorial-white-supremacist-group-video/index.html

#5yrsago Teen uses external cameras and projection-mapping onto the a-pillar to “solve” blind-spots https://gizmodo.com/14-year-old-genius-solves-blind-spots-1839540078

#5yrsago The public spent $10b for Trump’s wall (so far); smugglers are cutting it with $100 saws and $10 blades https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/smugglers-are-sawing-through-new-sections-of-trumps-border-wall/2019/11/01/25bf8ce0-fa72-11e9-ac8c-8eced29ca6ef_story.html

#1yrago Big Tech's "attention rents" https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/03/subprime-attention-rent-crisis/#euthanize-rentiers

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🍽 Upcoming appearances

* TusCon (Tucson), Nov 8-10
https://tusconscificon.com/

* International Cooperative Alliance (New Delhi), Nov 24
https://icanewdelhi2024.coop/welcome/pages/Programme

* ACM Conext-2024 Workshop on the Decentralization of the Internet (Los Angeles), Dec 9
https://conferences.sigcomm.org/co-next/2024/#!/din

* IA et “merdification“ d’internet: peut-on envisager un nouveau web? (Remote), Dec 12
https://www.unige.ch/comprendre-le-numerique/conferences-publiques1/cycle-5-2024-2025/ia-et-merdification-dinternet-peut-envisager-un-nouveau-web/

* ISSA-LA Holiday Celebration keynote (Los Angeles), Dec 18
https://issala.org/event/issa-la-december-18-dinner-meeting/

* Cloudfest (Europa Park), Mar 17-20
https://cloudfest.link/

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🍽 Recent appearances

* Enshittification Was a Choice (SOSS Fusion)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCSelmMUO0c

*  Maximum Iceland Scenario - Data Caps, 3rd Party Android Stores, Nuclear Amazon (This Week in Tech)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5MkCwktKz0

* Speciale intervista a Cory Doctorow (Digitalia)
https://digitalia.fm/744/

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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 middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

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🍽 Colophon

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

* Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Friday's progress: 848 words (76255 words total).

* 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 FEB 2025

Latest podcast:
  Spill, part four (a Little Brother story) https://craphound.com/littlebrother/2024/10/28/spill-part-four-a-little-brother-story/

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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