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<2022-01-19 Wed>
Please note that the following review contains one or two ***SPOILERS***
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Well, this gemlog is off to a rollicking good start, isn't it? I mean, two posts in 18 days, and this one is going to be pretty short, just a quick review of Cory Doctorow's 2020 novel Attack Surface.
Which, to be honest, I haven't actually finished reading yet. But just a few pages left to go so ...
Doctorow knows how to keep me turning the pages, I'll give him that. A thoroughly entertaining book, very much in line with the two earlier novels in the series, Little Brother and Homeland. Covers similar themes, too, although from, I would say, a more jaded perspective.
In the first couple of books, tech-savvy, street smart hackers were able to handily outwit the brute force methods of their oppressors by creatively remaking off-the-shelf hardware and software. Open source and Makerspaces save the day! It was an appealing perspective to those of us who care about such things.
In Attack Surface, Doctorow appears to be walking that back a bit. Now he seems to be saying, however smart you think you are, the spooks are smarter. Repressive regimes /will/ grind you into the dust with their advanced surveillance systems and robot drones, and the only remedy is ... organizing protest marches ... ? Or perhaps I should say conjuring them out of thin air, since it appears that large groups of protestors will turn up spontaneously whenever required.
There are a /lot/ of protest marches in this book. Admittedly, Doctorow is good at describing them, but perhaps there didn't need to be quite so many. It got a little silly toward the end.
The central character, Masha Maximov, is one of the absolute best things about the novel. She is conflicted in a really interesting way, and seemingly bent on a path of self-destruction ... by day, she builds the surveillance systems that oppressive governments use to keep their dissidents under control, and by night she helps said dissidents outwit those systems, as a salve to her conscience. A conceit worthy of that master of spy fiction, John le Carré, and in his hands no doubt it would have led to some kind of profound and tragic resolution. In Doctorow's hands ... well let's say the resolution was not to me the most convincing part of the book. I just don't think it's possible to make that many powerful enemies and live happily ever after.
What was most convincing, and most enjoyable, were the technical details with which Doctorow peppers his narrative. Now, I'm no surveillance or security expert so what convinces me might not convince someone more knowledgeable. But based on what I do know, Doctorow appears to have done his homework, and the details really contribute to the atmosphere of paranoia that pervades the novel.
So ... recommended, with reservations. Doctorow describes himself as an "author and activist." At the risk of taking a cheap shot, I'll say that I really enjoyed the parts of the book that were written by the author, but the parts written by the activist get a little preachy at times. And worse, they tend to bend the narrative in ways that at times seem forced to make a point rather than tell a story. That gets a bit tiresome, much as I might agree with many of the points stated.
Postscript: I have now finished the book. Nothing in the last few pages makes me want to revise anything I wrote above.
Post-postscript: Attack Surface bugs me because in Doctorow's world the protestors are always on the good guy team. Given the idiot's caravan currently honking away in Ottawa, not to mention some other fairly recent events, this seems even more naive than "open source saves the day!"
Attack Surface was published on 2022-01-19