Golden State

Over the last few years, I've seen the idea tossed around that there is gap between what modern totalitarian states actually are and how they function and what most people think totalitarian states look like and consequentially represent them in fiction. Specifically, we seem to be stuck in the middle of the last century; that is, within the anxieties of the Cold War. Golden State illustrates this very well. Indeed, the works people keep telling me it most resembles (and it does)-- Orwell's 1984, Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and PK Dick's The Minority Report-- were first published in 1949, 1953, and 1956 respectively. Of course, building on and referring to an established canon is fine, even expected, and in my experience usually enhances a reading of a book. The problem is that Golden State doesn't do any building, just referring; it's retrofuturist by accident, rather than by design. There's no commentary, just rehashing of what we have all already been told about oppressive societies as imagined in the past. I just... do not understand why we're heralding what effectively reads as a piece of Cold War fiction as so relevant to today's political landscape. I told myself I wasn't going to yell about plot stuff because others seem to have it covered but: (view spoiler)[ it really would have been sufficient (and actually intriguing) to have Arlo tell Ratesic that he has no special abilities, that all people are made uncomfortable by lying and have the ability to speculate, and that the power of Speculation is propaganda project that enables the police to do whatever the hell they want, but no, Ratesic's inability to discern lies from truths at crucial plot moments remains unresolved. Also, while others have remarked that the ending is weird and unsatisfying, I would like to add that the reason it feels that way is that it's a complete disruption of the themes as the author developed them. Dystopian fiction and noir share a strain of fatalism, and up until the last thirty pages Winters is playing these genres straight. We were all led to believe that it would end with Ratesic reaffirming his love for Big Brother. (hide spoiler)]

What if there were no such thing as Fake News? If it were actually illegal to speak falsehoods or even to masquerade opinions as facts? That’s what it’s like to live in the Golden State in this novelized though experiment. Citizens hail each other using approved call-and-response greetings such as, “The earth is round,” and “Yes, and the moon orbits the earth.” Truth is validated by all the surveillance video recordings captured by the State and the daily log books maintained by its citizens. Lazlo is a Speculator in service to the state. His ability to sense lies and untruths helps enforce the laws. One day, he and his new partner sense an anomaly in what looks like an accident. As they investigate, they learn that the truth may not be as clear as day.

Great premise, but the ending feels anticlimactic and empty.

When I read Underground Airlines, I said the book was amazing but the ending went sideways. Golden State is good, though not as good as UA, and the ending also goes sideways. It draws on the standard detective novel tropes: hard-bitten, tragedy-touched, bad at love, gruff man who knows things; a new partner who is young, idealistic, and talented; a mystery that is more than it originally seems, etc. The sci-fi world building adds new twists, and the nature of truth is character alongside the story. And through chapter 23, I’m in. Then comes the ending, out of nowhere and to nowhere. The first 23 chapters do not get satisfactorily resolved. It feels like there was a trilogy somewhere but we just got 80% of the first book and the ending of the third in a single spine. Even if the central mystery remains a mystery, the ending doesn’t need to go off the way it does.

We are in the Golden State, where everyone speaks the truth, records their daily activities, and are monitored everywhere. But this is a good thing, because we tell each other facts as a form of greeting. There are Speculators, those with the power to sense a lie, and Lazlo Ratesic is one of these. He's been a Speculator for 10 years, and always worked alone. Until today, when he is assigned Aysa Paige to mentor. She has an even greater gift for lies. She can sense when objects are wrong or missing, and this skill helps with the case that they are sent out on. This was a very well crafted world, where all of this monitoring is justified at all times, and talked about in such a positive way that you can see the brain washing that has been carried out on the inhabitants of the Golden State, which is set in California. This is a post apocalyptic tale, with you only finding out this at the very end of the book, but isn't something that impacts the tale. I really enjoyed this book, and would thoroughly recommend it. It would be classified as sci-fi for the lie detection powers, and because it's post apocalyptic. Golden State is out now, and is available on Amazon, and everywhere else you can find books! It was published on 24th January this year. I was given this book for free in return for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley and to Random House, and Cornerstone (the publishers) for this book. Check out my GoodReads profile to see more reviews!

Ben H. Winters has penned a brilliant piece of speculative fiction that instantly engages and intrigues, but which quickly transforms into something entirely different about two-thirds of the way in. While this shift may appeal to many, I found it incredibly frustrating and I can't help but feel that a great story was largely spoiled by somewhat trite and ordinary post-apocalyptic "overspeculating." Winters is obviously immensely capable and quickly proves that he has the chops to believably present a detailed world only half-familiar to our own, which features just enough thoughtful and convincing characters of substance to tempt an emotional connection from the reader. The book starts off as a thrilling murder mystery that unravels masterfully to reveal ever-increasing stakes for the protagonists and, in fact, the entire society that Winters has manufactured. That society is given a meaty context that teases a brutally honest allegorical criticism of our current world: post-truth, filled with fake news and kaleidoscopic accounts of "fact" that polarize and factionalize the United States of America at its core. Winters' Golden State (both a new world order and an "enlightened" condition of existence) can be seen as perhaps an antidote or a poison pill used to reroute the trajectory of today's untreatable information manipulation, but it is also a sober warning of the dangers of autocratically removing relativity and of regulating objective "truth" in a species that is founded upon biological and social imperatives for subjectivity. This is fascinating stuff, and watching the mechanics of it unfold against the backdrop of a blossoming state-level conspiracy makes for some heady reading. Until the jarring shift from near-future speculation to post-apocalyptic literary masturbation, that is. At this very point, the moment in which the protagonist is exiled from the Golden State, we are likewise exiled from the story which has been built thus far. Many of the intricacies that have been attentively constructed are simply dropped in favor of a hazy, multi-layered reality-slip where the reader is purposely misled deeper into the Hero's mind, which is itself rapidly losing both containment and cognizance of what truth really is and, furthermore, what it really means. If this queer story device is meant to represent another layer of allegory demonstrating the innate subjectivity of truth (and, therefore, the narrative thrust of the story itself), it could be considered another stroke of Winters' brilliance in crafting the blocks of a dynamic, multi-tiered story. Disappointingly, it also comes off to me as exasperating – killing the momentum right when the getting was particularly good, seemingly in order to set up a mundane textual bridge for the sequels. Counter to my criticisms, my wife shrewdly pointed out that the beauty in not knowing the "real truth" of what happens, what has happened, or what will happen is a high point for many readers. And that is yet another layer of subjective metaphor (perhaps) superbly woven into this book, and directly on-point with its theme. Or maybe it's just a coincidence. Or damned blind luck. But that's not what the Speculative Service in the Golden State would say. A couple of my favorite passages: "Behind us, a woman stands very close to the wall, her head bent forward and pressed against the bricks of the building, her hands pressed flat against it. A load-bearing citizen, using the strength of her body to hold up the State." (pp. 84-85) "'Thank you. Thank you...for the world we have built, in which everything is known and can be known, in which everything that is so is known to be so, and has been known and will be known tomorrow.' Because just imagine – just imagine the alternative, the world in which a man encounters some scrap of information...any of the small and large pieces of information a person encounters in the course of a day or a lifetime, personal or political, substantive or trivial – and then the next hour or the next day he hears something different, and it is impossible, literally impossible, to know which version is the real one." (pp. 90-91)

Winters strikes again with a really cool idea executed rather well. The ending was a bit of a whimper, but everything about this was engrossing. I wanted more of the world at the end and to get a better idea of the why. I could have gone for about 3 more chapters making that a bit more clear.

Was prepared to give this five emphatic stars but the ending fizzled out for me unfortunately. I wanted . . . I don't know, just something else to happen.

Fascinating novel about a near-future society's attempt to eradicate lying from human nature. A must-read if you are concerned by the battle over truth and fiction currently playing out in the world.

Hmm. Got a little too philosophical, maybe. Felt like the ending was bolted on. Who was the monster, anyhow?