Makers is written by Cory Doctorow, that cape and goggles-wearing editor of Boing Boing, and author of such novels as Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Little Brother. This latest volume touches on many of the topics Doctorow has become famous for obsessing over: intellectual property rights and open source, the tension between individual and institution, his emotionally complicated relationship with Disney, how technology is gradually changing our culture, transhumanism, and ordinary people who make really cool shit.

The novel is set in that fifteen minutes into the future that is Doctorow's forte, at a time when Silicon Valley has begun to disintegrate more subtly than Detroit, but perhaps as thoroughly. At a press conference, Landon Kettlewell, the CEO of a newly merged Kodak/Duracell (termed "Kodacell" by a snarky tech journo), announces a bold new direction for the company: he plans to scout talented people from all over the country who make cool stuff, fund them, and find a way to quickly monetize their ideas time and time again. Many are skeptical, but business writer Suzanne Church — who once covered the Detroit scene and finds herself increasingly, if unconsciously, disillusioned with the Bay Area — is intrigued by Kodacell's new endeavor. After a few flirtatious interactions with Kettlewell (a maverick of an executive who insists that the people close to him call him by absurd nicknames like "Kettlebelly" and "Kettledrum"), Church finds herself embedded with Kodacell and flies to a depressed Florida suburb to meet Kodacell's first idea tank. There she finds Perry Gibbons and his obese sidekick Lester Banks, a pair of scavenger-artists who design elaborate mechanical art pieces for wealthy collectors: simple difference engines that spew M&Ms, crews of robotic Elmo dolls reprogrammed to drive cars. Perry and Lester are pros at repurposing technology, though they've never had an eye for the practical. They are soon joined by Tjan, a Kodacell moneyman who helps them develop products with mass appeal, rapidly get them to market, and then start the process all over again when imitators flood the market.

The first portion of Makers reads very much like a manifesto. The characters make enough pretty speeches about moral capitalism that I sometimes suspected it was being ghostwritten by an undead, philosophically reformed Ayn Rand. But the gleeful moneymaking of those early chapters isn't about the glory of the high-powered executive or developing a greed-is-good social code; it's about giving people power over their own destinies, giving people the ability to build things, to take pride in their communities (all communities — not just those located in major cities), and the notion that in order to sell things to people, you need to make sure they have the money to buy them. Thanks to Suzanne's vivid chronicles of Perry and Lester's innovations and Kodacell's early success, they all find themselves at the center of a New Work movement. Former cubicle jockeys flee their metropolises for smaller cities and suburbs and get their hands dirty — serving their neighbors and themselves instead of just serving their corporate masters — in an ephemeral golden age of American innovation.

But it quickly becomes clear that good ideas and wide-eyed idealism alone won't save America, and Makers shifts from manifesto to novel, albeit a novel still very concerned with the social problems plaguing America. The country's obesity problem takes an abrupt term with the development of the so-called "fatkins" treatments, where Russian biotechnology clinics reshape corpulent bodies as generically fit Adonises and tweak their metabolic systems to require metric tons of empty calories. As the treatments catch on, the fatkins become one of the nations' dominant cultures, with their own restaurants, dating styles, and demographic box. There is a great deal of frustration with government intrusion, especially concerning a shantytown of squatters who view their brand of community building as a new frontier. And there's similar frustration with the legal system, the need for intellectual property and formalized institutional structures, though it's coupled with the recognition that foregoing these legal protections carries dangerous consequences.

It's a dense, and always interesting reading experience, even if it has its warts. Subtlety has never been a virtue of Doctorow's novels, and Makers is no exception. The story has its villains, and even when they possess the capacity for redemption, a good deal of mustache-twirling goes on. Suzanne Church has a Dagny Taggert knack for making brilliant men fall in love with her, and though our other heroes are flawed, they seem in many ways the perfect models of idea men and executives.

The most frustrating aspect of Makers, however, may be the most honest. We see the rise and fall of various projects and innovations over the years, and Doctorow fills his world with wondrous technologies and forward-thinking people. But when things fall apart, as they periodically do, it's often because of interpersonal issues, because disagreements get in the way of big, brilliant ventures. It's not a crack at Doctorow as a writer; it's just that he's so adept at raising our spirits and making us believe in these superhuman people that when they fall prey to the ugly foibles of the real world, it's a bit of a letdown. Affection and optimism, even when a bit overblown, is a better look on him, and the most engaging portions of Makers are the ones that harness that.

Still, Makers is a book for the lovers of technology, for the gleeful optimists more than the cynics. It's for the people who love the kooky engineering projects you see on Boing Boing, for the people who believe that, as the poster says, "The future belongs to the few of us still willing to get our hands dirty." It's for the people who can't wait to own a 3D printer, and who believe that while technology has its missteps, it's going to change our lives in wonderful and unexpected ways. It's for the people who hate Disney's corporate tactics, but still get a thrill at the idea of visiting the Magic Kingdom; for the people who believe that, even if they can't change the world, they can at least improve their little corner of it. It's for the people who think that, while the future may not be all jetpacks and hover cars and all the world's people people singing Kumbaya, we as individuals have the power to make it awesome in its own right.

Makers is currently out in hardcover, but you can read the serialized novel for free on Tor.com.

Professor Paulie Panther arrives in Boney Borough, a near-future Levittown constructed after an unnamed war, after a strange plant appears near the local high school. Paulie is a rugged individualist, a poet, a botanist, and a drug-addict, a combination that qualifies him to update another professor's textbook on the hallucinogenic properties of North American plants. He soon realizes that inhaling the fumes from the plants causes him to feel the emotional and physical sensations of those around him. At first, it seems like an opportunity to make the connections that have eluded him all his life, but he soon realizes his personality could be swallowed by the town's growing hive mind. What follows is a long, strange trip into post-war nostalgia, small towns as superorganisms, and the question of whether individuality truly makes us happy.

Body World earned Shaw an Eisner nomination for best digital comic (though he ultimately lost out to the online version of Carla Speed McNeil's Finder) and, more recently, an Ignatz nomination for Outstanding Online Comic, and Pantheon plans to release a print version next year.

[Body World]

The year is 2040, and Southern California is pretty much the same — only more so. The weather is hotter, and water is in more demand than ever, especially since the destruction of the Hoover Dam. Racial tensions continue to seethe and, despite ubiquitous surveillance, violent crime is more popular than ever. California's prison population and the annual cost of keeping each prisoner alive has tripled since the beginning of the century. After years of doing nothing useful and still not getting any results, the Legislature privatizes most of the prisons. One of these new companies, ValCorp/KRK Holdings, has lobbied aggressively for changes in state law and now has an exciting new financial opportunity for some of its incarcerated clients.

In 2040, felons with a life without parole conviction, for example kidnapping for ransom or murder with special circumstances (California Penal Code § 190.2, if you're curious), can look forward to an average of fifty-four years of soul-crushing deprivation and crappy food, punctuated by the occasional gang rape. Actuaries figure the cost to keep them housed, fed, clothed, and healthy from incarceration until death is a whopping 36 million dollars each. Market research shows that up to 90% of the inmates in question would rather have been executed than serve their entire terms.

So a private firm, Nautilus Casualty and Property (a ValCorp subsidiary), comes up with a way to solve everyone's problems: the life term buyout. How does it work? Glad you asked. The prison owners are required to keep a portion of that $36M as a reserve to ensure liquidity. Nautilus is prepared to turn over some of that reserve – say, six million dollars tax-free — for the prisoners to distribute however they see fit, as soon as they sign the papers and prematurely terminate their life sentences.

Yes that means lethal injection, and you can't take it with you, but hey — think of the good that money could do for your family, or that of your victim(s). Or you could do something for the community: build a Rec Center for the kids in the old neighborhood, an old folks' home, set up scholarships, or donate it to any charity or organization you want. The lives that have been taken can never be replaced, but now you have the opportunity to make a positive change in the world, to make your life mean something. So how's about it, Killer? What do I need to do to convince you to sign here...today?

And that's pretty much Martin Kindred's new job as Life Term Buyout Facilitator. At first he's shocked by the idea but decides by giving these murderers a shot at a sort of redemption, he'll find meaning in his life too. The metric fucktons of cash he makes off each buyout doesn't hurt either. His best and possibly only real friend Charlie Rhodes, Private Investigator, rolls his eyes at Martin's justifications and is certain all this cannot end well. Charlie, as well as many of Kindred's close family, acquaintances, and even his new bosses were, or are, LAPD officers. Martin grew up with their pragmatic if bitter worldview, so he understands it well... even if he finds it at odds with his own idealisim. Charlie agrees to do some freelancing for Nautilus, digging through information to make sure the buyout candidates have no ulterior motives; not for the cash, as much as to keep his naive younger friend out of trouble.

Of course there's no lack of trouble. From the get-go, organizations spring up to protest the buyouts and harass Martin and his family. Foremost among them is Priceless Life, made up from the strange bedfellows of religious fundamentalists, lefty Social justice activists, and pro-life extremists. It can only be a matter of time before one of them pulls out a copy of The Anarchist's Cookbook. The buyouts further grab the world's attention when a famous Hollywood director convicted of murder, Carl Marks, opts for Nautilus' "Golden Needle," in order to spout his radical politics from the bully pulpit one last time. Martin's marriage is hanging by a thread, and he tries to convince himself he's doing the right thing. When a murder plunges life into further turmoil, Martin Kindred faces a complete nervous breakdown, if not worse, as he desperately digs for the truth about his job and himself.

For all the drama and high-concept,Buyout is a remarkably understated and thoughtful novel. The story is rife with dark humor but Irvine reserves the sharpest of his satiric barbs for the voice of "Walt Dangerfield", self-appointed Gonzo Journalist /Greek Chorus, whose daily podcasts that introduce each chapter and serve as exposition for the world of 2040 at large. At first glance, the cover art reminded me of Richard K. Morgan's very cool Market Forces (I know, I know, don't judge a book...) But you won't find cartoony evil corporations or blockbuster action here. Nor is the technology portrayed much flashier than what we see around us now. Martin wrestles with ethical dilemmas and social issues, not gun-festooned cyborgs. Buyout lacks many of the obvious trappings of a genre novel, but it does what any well-written Science Fiction book should. It makes you think; about life and death, ethics and society, justice and loyalty — and about the cynic and the idealist, and how sometimes they can be the same person.

Published last month by Del Rey, Buyout is in bookstores now. You can purchase Buyout from Amazon, or support your local independent bookseller.

Commenter Grey_Area is known to the next generation of law enforcement, as Christopher Hsiang. Similar to Diogenes, he walks the street with lantern raised high looking for a decent book.

Historian and Nerve.com columnist Ken Mondschein wrote an excerpt from his imagined 2026 history book America: The First Quarter Millennium, which reflects on the historical context of Obama’s election and the achievements of his administration:

Electoral victory, however, does not always translate into successful governance. Historians have attributed Obama's success in his two terms as President to any number of factors — his reversing the ruinous economic policies of the New Right; his use of technology to transform a patrician, republican system of representative government into a responsive, flexible direct democracy; his ability to convince a country with a frontier mentality of the value of social welfare. But Obama's success was rather due to the way he embodied transformation. The ostracism and fear of blacks was the single greatest impediment to American progress. Obama, by the simple fact of his being, breached this seemingly impregnable mental stronghold, and demonstrated the truth of the motto e pluribus unum.

Adam Cutsinger at FutureBlogger, writing from 2014, focuses on the science policies of the Obama administration. President Obama reverses Bush’s ban on stem cell research, but it’s his speech on the use of nanotubes that advances scientific research in the US, earning him the nickname "Nanobama":

“It has never been in doubt, among scientists, and engineers, since the first “harvest,” if you will, of the tiny, hollow fibers, known as nanotubes, which are smaller than hairs, and stronger than steel, that their potential to revolutionize technology, in all aspects, in science, in engineering, in industry, in transportation, for medicine, and the treatment of the many health problems we face, for the infrastructure, for computers, satellites, for the exploration of our oceans, and for the exploration of space, is beyond any major advancement in the history of science. We cannot, and must not, stand in the way of progress, toward a safer, healthier world, at a time when we face so many serious challenges. America needs to show the world, we are not afraid of the future. We still have hope. It is important for us to focus, on the problems of the present, so that when we arrive in the future, we are prepared for it. We mustn’t let fear keep us in the dark ages. Humanity can’t afford it.”

I’m sure that, as the weeks go on, we’ll be seeing more near-future science fiction from people outlining their hopes for the next several years. And, it will be exciting to see not only what social and political changes writers will conjure up, but also what possible advances in science and technology they hope to see under Obama.

Image is John Hart’s Nanobama sculpture made from carbon nanotubes.

The crux of Stross's argument is that it takes so long for a novel, or even a work of short fiction, to reach publication that, by the time it's published, many of the assumptions or hypotheses the author made while writing it are already incorrect. Hence, the work is dated before anyone gets a chance to read it. He uses events in the past few years to illustrate his point, inviting us to imagine how we might have envisioned a 2019 United States in pre-Katrina 2006, then how we might have envisioned it in pre-fiscal crisis 2007, and how we would imagine it today:

Now extend the thought-experiment back to 1996 and 1986. Your future-USA in the 1986 scenario almost certainly faced a strong USSR in 2019, because the idea that a 70 year old Adversary could fall apart in a matter of months, like a paper tiger left out in a rain storm, simply boggles the mind. It's preposterous; it doesn't fit with our outlook on the way history works. (And besides, we SF writers are lazy and we find it convenient to rely on clichés — for example, good guys in white hats facing off against bad guys in black hats. Which is silly — in their own head, nobody is a bad guy — but it makes life easy for lazy writers.) The future-USA you dreamed up in 1996 probably had the internet (it had been around in 1986, in embryonic form, the stomping ground of academics and computer industry specialists, but few SF writers had even heard of it, much less used it) and no cold war; it would in many ways be more accurate than the future-USA predicted in 1986. But would it have a monumental fiscal collapse, on the same scale as 1929? Would it have Taikonauts space-walking overhead while the chairman of the Federal Reserve is on his knees? Would it have more mobile phones than people, a revenant remilitarized Russia, and global warming?

Stross concludes on the disheartening note that if the current fiscal crisis results in too much upheaval in the U.S. and E.U., his next novel (a follow-up to his near-future Halting State, set in the year 2023) will already be so dated that he will have to market it as fantasy. Can you even guarantee the U.S.A. and E.U. will still exist in 2023? Stross's complaints may provide an argument for more direct writer to consumer distribution, but it also suggests that speculative fiction somehow fails unless it is predictive of an actual possible future. Yesterday's speculative fiction may be today's alternate history, but it can still inform the way we examine the world we do end up living in.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Living through Interesting Times [via Reddit]

Why did you decide to move from far-future tales like Learning the World to near-future ones like The Execution Channel? Do you think that near-future writing is more politically or socially relevant?

I decided that after writing the Engines of Light trilogy, then Newton's Wake and Learning the World, I'd done everything I wanted to do, for the moment, in space opera; and meanwhile had accumulated a whole new decade's worth of fury about the world as it is now and the way it's going. Certainly near-future writing can make more immediate political comment, but far-future tales can be just as direct. Learning the World raises as a question the possibility that we may have, as Darwin put it, 'a secure future of great length'. Which, if you think about its implications for the present, is fairly political, because the default assumption is that we don't.

Do you think near-future novels are considered more "literary" than far-future ones by readers and critics?

That's what I've found - The Execution Channel has had more mainstream reviews than any of my other novels. But it isn't so much near-future as a matter of writing SF while appearing to write something else - well, the mainstream writers are writing something else! But I wanted to write something that looked like a techothriller but keeps faith with SF - a book where the lab doesn't burn down at the end. But not to worry, I'll be back to the far future sometime, if we're spared (as we say in Scotland).

Are there any political philosophers you consider to be science fictional? I'm thinking of how Karl Marx talks a lot about things happening in his future Utopia - fishing in the afternoon and philosophizing in the evening and all that. But there's obviously a lot of these sorts of speculations going on in any political philosophy that cares about the future. Any political theory or theorist in particular that you find compelling as SF?

Actually, Marx talks very little about future society. Even that famous quote comes from an unpublished work. Marx's most science-fictional vision is of 'the automatic factory' - for Marx, reducing the amount of time spent in boring, unfulfilling work is the basis for human freedom. Freedom begins when the working day ends. It's all very current and it's all right there in Capital. I've speculated elsewhere that Marx's approach to society - look at what's emerging, look at the technology, look at the underlying conflicts that these bring out - may have in some vulgarised form actually inspired the emergence of science fiction itself. Science fiction is an adventure playground in the materialist conception of history.

But in my own case, the political philosophers whose ideas most directly give rise to SF are the libertarians. Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia more or less compels you to think science-fictionally: how would this work? (Or not work, as the case may be.) You start imagining a crazy quilt of societies, and for me it was not far from there to something like Norlonto in The Star Fraction. Then there are the ecologists, but I can only imagine dystopias about them ...

When is science fiction a form of political intervention?

That's a tricky one. At one extreme, the answer could be 'almost always' because by presenting any picture at all of the future (or other possible worlds, or alien civilizations, etc) the writer is making certain assumptions about what can and can't change in society and in human (or human-like) behaviour. At the other, the answer could be 'only when it's written by mainstream writers' because only they tend to have the approach of 'Hmm, let's address an issue of pressing current concern using this garish prop set and crude tool-kit left lying around by science fiction' and produce some crass, clunky polemic. But seriously, I suppose the answer depends on the intention of the writer, which can be more, or less, conscious and more, or less subtle. These are different axes, by the way! The book I'm reading at the moment, Paul McAuley's Cowboy Angels, is a good example of being both conscious and subtle.

Image from the cover of MacLeod's first novel (set in a near future!), The Star Fraction.