Name: Kerry Gibbons's review of Infomocracy by Malka Older
Item: Infomocracy
Rating: 3
Author: Kerry Gibbons

Malka Older

It's been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, pioneered the switch from warring nation-states to global micro-democracy. The corporate coalition party Heritage has won the last two elections. With another election on the horizon, the Supermajority is in tight contention, and everything's on the line. With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues. For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing struggle against the pax democratica. For Mishima, a dangerous Information operative, the whole situation is a puzzle: how do you keep the wheels running on the biggest political experiment of all time, when so many have so much to gain? Infomocracy is Malka Older's debut novel. PRAISE FOR INFOMOCRACY “A fast-paced, post-cyberpunk political thriller... If you always wanted to put The West Wing in a particle accelerator with Snow Crash to see what would happen, read this book.” —Max Gladstone, author of Last First Snow "Smart, ambitious, bursting with provocative extrapolations, Infomocracy is the big-data-big-ideas-techno-analytical-microdemoglobal-post-everything political thriller we've been waiting for." —Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings "In the mid-21st century, your biggest threat isn’t Artificial Intelligence—it’s other people. Yet the passionate, partisan, political and ultimately fallible men and women fighting for their beliefs are also Infomocracy’s greatest hope. An inspiring book about what we frail humans could still achieve, if we learn to work together." —Karl Schroeder, author of Lockstep and the Virga saga

A Novel

Infomocracy

Kerry Gibbons

Didi Chanoch

The Max Gladstone blurb for this book is "If you always wanted to put The West Wing in a particle accelerator with Snow Crash to see what would happen, read this book," and I it's as good a single line pitch as any for it. 

Older does an incredible job creating a believable future, with complex politics and tech and a society that is different than any we know, and yet is clear descendant of our world. I'm usually a character guy, and while this book has many diverse, interesting, and distinct characters, I'd call that part a bit of a weakness as compared to the incredible world building. Apart from journalist/spy/analyst/cop Mishima (this is all her single job, not a variety of different things she does), the characters, while cool and interesting, are a little thin. 

But this is mostly a shortcoming compared to the the worldbuilding, a task Older handles incredibly deftly. This is a book of ideas. One of the things I loved about INFOMOCRACY is that isn't a dystopia. The future's not perfect, to be sure, but it is the result of a multi year attempt to make things better. To create better systems. The degree to which that attempt has been successful is what much of the story concerns itself with, and that is a noble concern. 

INFOMOCRACY is a tight, fast moving, energetic novel about the latter part of this century, and it is the kind of book many SF fans have been waiting for. It is likely to find its way to many awards and Best Of lists and it should.

Cindy Lieberman

What if election results were suspect? What if corporations had their own voting blocs? This novel takes place in a future where voters tend to migrate to more homogeneous areas and global power is a function of who has the most votes. There is a lot of interesting (and depressing, post Jan 6, 2021) end-of-democracy and pseudo-Democratic activity, secrecy, and “who can be trusted?” intrigue. But it’s definitely more of an intellectual exercise than a thrilling emotional ride. Nevertheless, interesting comments on politics and a fun, futuristic convenience in the personal “crow” airship-conveyance-cum-apartment-in-the-sky. 3.75 rounded up.

I have to say I’m guessing this book would be better if in printed format rather than audiobook. I didn’t quite manage to catch up with what was happening and who all the characters were until about halfway through. 

Interesting idea but I thought the execution was a little stunted.

Karim Nas

I'm tempted to give this title a 3-stars rating because I didn't really enjoy the story arc. But the cyberpunk future it depicts is truly unique and original, so it merits a one star bonus.

Ben Nathan

One of the cooler "near" future sci-fi ideas I've come across in a long time. It's a mixture of hopeful and cynical in a way that I relate to greatly. Good characterization, very smart writing. I'm definitely looking forward to the other books in the series.

Shreerag Plakazhi

It's always a pleasure to read good literary sci-fi that does not rely on severe exposition to get its point across. This is a debut? Unbelievable. No first time writer deserves to be this good. It's great, you are unlikely to be disappointed.

Rachel

I received a free copy from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Being a bit of political junkie, I really enjoyed taking a break from the nonsense that is American politics right now with this captivating polisci-thriller, Infomocracy. In this world, states no longer matter, it is all about centenals, or micro-democracies, and getting the super-majority of the world. Information is available to all at all times and it is regulated. The world is preparing for the upcoming election and people are hoping for change. Mishima works for the bureaucracy of Information, she makes sure people have accurate information and monitors the campaigning the parties do and the reactions of voters. Meanwhile Ken works for a political party, Policy1st, who hopes to gain more centenals, and possibly become the new super-majority. Mishima and Ken's paths cross and they have to trust each other and work together when voting and all information streams come to a halt. 

The book is very fast paced, which made getting use to the world tricky at first, but by half way in everything makes sense. The multiple perspectives from so many different characters was also confusing in the beginning, because you have to keep track of who is who and their role, but this also became easier as I read. I thought the characters, especially Ken and Mishima were well written and had depth to them. It did feel at times too much was going on, one thing after another, that sometimes things didn't feel resolved with one issue before there was another problem. Eventually everything makes sense, but while everything is unfolding in the plot it did become frustrating. Infomacracy is an enjoyable book, but readers will need to be willing to push through a bit before being hooked. I liked how multiple political views are shown and you can see how current parties and corporations fit into the new system. I felt that was an important part of the world building that was left unsaid is that yes the electoral system is very different from what we have today, but you can absolutely see how we got to this point in Infomocracy because it is still kind of similar. 3.5 rounded to 4.

Liz Griffin

Fascinating political, near-future speculative fiction. There’s just enough futuristic technology to make it Sci Fi, but the political drama and micro-government concepts have a lot of present relevance. I definitely want to read more by this author!

Bryan Alexander

(We read this for our online book club. The follow notes are extracted from my blog posts. Check them out for comments from other readers.)

This is a splendidly imaginative novel, building up a fascinating world, criss-crossed by subtle characters and a wry sense of humor.  It is the perfect sf novel to read for an America crazed by a wild election.  Compared to our other readings about the future, if Water Knife was about climate change and Ready Player One concerned emergent gaming and virtual worlds, Infomocracy is about where politics and big data could go together.

I appreciate Malka Older's willingness to connect with us via Twitter and on her blog.

1: Plot Summary

The plot follows three characters as they seek to understand and influence a global election.  Ken is "an undercover political operative" (3) attached to a political party, tracking what seems to be a disturbing campaign.  Domaine is a subversive, seeking to overthrow the global election order.  Mishima is a workaholic who works for the Information corporation/utility, traveling the world to make sure things are operating smoothly.

 Two start a relationship with each other. Several major political debates occur, with leading governments’ candidates presenting. Yoriko becomes a more important character. A major earthquake strikes. Political assassinations are attempted.

The global election happens, but Information goes down, and skulduggery occurs, with all sides scrambling for advantage and/or democracy, and the election hacked and revised. Mishima becomes even more of an action hero, Ken slides into working for a new employer, and Domaine gets in trouble. A new Supermajority appears.

2: It's A World Crazed By Elections, And Yet It's Not 2016

The world of Infomocracy is one of many micro-democracies (10), where today's nations have been broken up into 2,207  centenals (first named on page 1, numbered on 33), which are "collection[s] of one hundred thousand neighbors... whether... spread over hundreds of miles in the tundra or crammed into a couple of overdeveloped blocks in Dhaka" (8).  Centenals tend to be fairly homogeneous, with "greater concentrations of like-minded - and, on occasion, racially or ethically alike - constituents" (28).  People sometimes move from one centenal to another if they don't like how its politics have turned out.  You can also visit a centenal to take advantage of its policies (72); it's a world of very free movement (28).  These centenals remind me of the bolo'bolo idea.

How did this happen?  One character claims it was a United Nations idea, supported by national governments (53).  The book's publisher says Information played a role (see below).  Some regions aren't part of the micro-democracy revolution, like "Saudi Arabia, in Switzerland, in holdouts of the former USA and PRC and USSR" (75). The North Korea we now know “fell” at some point, amidst “missile strikes” (108). The microdemocracy is still only 20 years old, meaning governments can target older voters who remember the previous world (ours) of nations and war (280). Powerful point about political transformation. Felons can vote, even from jail (309) – how unAmerican. We also learn that the transition from nations to centenals involved threats of nuclear war (333).

Through these centenals people vote for political parties (also called "corporates", 12, and "governments", 4) ; a party which wins a Supermajority (9) can effectively lead the world.    This change happened "twenty years ago" (20).  The world's third (71) planetary election is soon to happen .

The most prominent political parties are: Heritage, which begins the novel in a leading position, represented by William Pressman (13); Liberty, for free markets, but also seemingly for territorial expansion and war, and represented by Johnny Fabré (9, 43); Policy1st, aimed at simply translating people's wishes directly into policies (8); PhilipMorris, the tobacco and more company (22); 888 (35); Starlight (75).   Thirty-three of them are big enough to get a spot on planetary debates (71). Other political parties include 1China (8), Asia's Return (21), RosarioPrimero (22), Sony-Mitsubishi (24), "what's left of the European Union" (4), UNICEF (47), "SavePlanet and Economix" (50), Free2B (72), plus "moderate Islamic governments... [or] YouGov or Oranje or SecureNation"(38), AllFor1 (83); ChouKawaii “a single-centenal government specializing in fanfic and cute characters” (108); Anarchy, “the radical antielection group” (168), AfricanUnity (196), AlThani (must be drawn from this Qatari ruling house) (210). We learn that SecureNation is “made up almost entirely of military personnel and their families” (261). The splendidly named Reginald Baste represents YouGov (152). 

It's a very internationalized world, both in descriptions and what we see of characters.  So far we've seen various locales in Africa, east Asia, and Indonesia. That includes the presence of untranslated words from non-English languages (126, 137).

Climate change is doing its work: “The main Information hub for New York City is in the heart of the Bronx, which seemed inconvenient for many years until seawater started to eat away at the edges of Manhattan” (242). The Maldive Islands are now known as “the Adapted Maldives” (268).

Information is omnipresent, a kind of Google-Facebook-Wikipedia-NSA company that finds, processes, and shares, well, information to everyone.  People seem to trust it pretty absolutely, either because of public scrutiny or Information's own quality assurance (34, 40). Its information-gathering isn't perfect yet (20).  Yet there is skepticism about people actually using this service well: "you know what they say: you can give a voter Information, but you can't make him think." (38)  Cable news is no more - whew! (41)  Saudi Arabia blocks Information (54). Information runs the debates (84). People can display their medical information publicly, including birth control and disease data (94). Information really relies on people doing work, rather than AI (for example, 112).It also reminds me now of Wikipedia, with its massive amounts of human work, and their governance structure: “Information prides itself on its flat, consensus-based organization with no single person at the top of the hierarchy”… plus some emergent bureaucracy (315). Domaine accuses Information of exploiting child labor (144).

Social media seems omnipresent as well, although not named as such.  If your social media presence is especially interesting, one hotel chain will give you a good discount, so long as you make yourself visible for meals (64ff).  There's a fun idea about this hinted here: "social networks (a publicly traded commodity) (51).  Does that mean people can buy and sell shares in other people's social media presence?

Technologies: feeds are everywhere, recording events and people, being consumed by everyone.  People can adjust them in various ways, such as blocking data that can make one nervous (18), meta-tracking the most popular feeds (23), or selecting random input (23).  You can look for feeds that recorded you (69).

Mobile devices are also everywhere, as people can wear real-time translators, apparently nestled in one's hair, and controlled by a ring (5).  Portable devices advise users on food choices by analyzing meals, then comparing them to what they know of the user's health (18, 65). Other instruments analyze people's bodily signs of emotion, "those intimately measured connections trembling just below his skin" (52).  It's all experienced through augmented reality, which users can either consume privately or show to other people (18).

Some even have "antennae" on their persons, in case of, well:
microfilaments that run from his earpiece, hooking voer his ear and following his fair to the nape of his neck.  Their wake-up twitch is designed to raise the hairs on the back of his neck to mimic, physiologically, the feeling of being watched, in case the wearer is too drunk to remember the significance of the twitch. (39) 

AR is how people connect with each other remotely, as when Mishima "has a few meetings to project into" (25).  People can also project data into the air around them, or onto surfaces (37, 53).  Users can experience multiple AR layers at the same time (56).  AR signs indicate the borders between centenals (47).

Data is huge in this world.  In fact, I'm tempted to call Infomocracy the first great novel about big data.  For example, political operatives and voters alike perceive politics in part through spreadsheets tracking policy positions and parties (25):
Citizens can even see a personalized grid with specific outcomes of each government for them: how much they would pay in taxes, for example, of changes in the funding projected to go to their kids' schools, or the probability that their local bar will be shut down. (26)
Some people can travel in what's mysteriously called a "crow" (25).  I can't tell if that's an airship or something else, although it seems like a plane/helicopter/balloon mix. Related to it is the tsubame, which is even more lightly described, but the name means “barn swallow” in Japanese (138). Is it a smaller plane? There are some big tech projects, like one to carve a tunnel through the Earth's mantle, apparently (23), and could link Tokyo with Taipei (88) or Paris with Dakar (149). 

There are also fun inventions, like the "crowdcutter":Mishima activates her crowdcutter and it springs from its microcrimped home in the clasps on her dress, a transparent vinyl shell shaped like a shark fin that lets her scythe through the mass of people" (12; thanks to Steven Kaye for pointing that out). 

More technology: people can run software offline for privacy (82). There is a “new blood glitter that subtly highlights the veins beneath the skin, apparently the latest craze of the uberrich” (89). 3d printers still exist (94). There are “nuclear-powered water heaters and food-cookers” (97), along with self-heating jackets (114). Speaking of clothing, people can design clothing ideas, then request bids from designers (132). Security can ask for users to identify themselves in “both audio and visual” media (121). People can see other people using digital information based on their eye movements (158).

Even more technology: a healing pad applied to wounds which “rebuild[s] muscle” (201). Crows are part of public transit (223), and we learn that they “are designed to fly at the lowest altitude possible that enables a straight line between the origin and destination” (230). There is the Lumper, a device which “permanently disable[s] all metal firearms within its effective radius”, which seems to have disarmed the world in a huge way and maybe made the infomocracy happen (231). Some teakettles are nuclear powered (284).

People can run diagnostics on their minds, yielding rich infographics about their personality (258). Interesting security idea, a physical display: “complicated iridescent armbands that are nearl[ly] impossible to forge” (238).

We see people creatively use older technologies, or improvise new ones, when the internet goes down. The Liberty centenals have their own local networks accessed by their own hardware (298). Plus the retro telegraph (213)!

Design: people shape conference rooms to encourage certain behaviors, using a music of lighting, music, scent, and wind effects (245-6). Interactive fiction has developed (333). Food culture is interesting, largely vegetarian, plus a touch of insects for protein (335).

Economics: people would like for startups to succeed, but entrenched companies just keep winning (87).

3: A Lit Prof Tears It Apart

Older has a lot of fun with what Eric Rabkin refers to as "transformed language", the way science fiction tweaks or creates new language to reflect a different world.  So we get "domino centenals" (1), "vidlets" (3), "narrative disorder" (6), "fire-writing" and"crowdcutter" (12), "crow" (25), "mandygerrying" (28), "glintelligentsia' (65), "gronkytonk" music (72).  Domaine describes changing his worldview not as seeing the light, but as "he saw the dark" (52).

So far the book seems to enjoy the centenal structure, although there are hints it could collapse or mutate.  At least one character appreciates their localism:
"Where people want to live isn't an ideology," Shamus says.  "How they want to lvie.  Whom they want to live with.  It's only an ideology when they try to tell other governments to do the same thing." (30)
The book's first paragraph is an ambitious performance, cramming a lot of stuff in a few sentences.  It echoes cyberpunk, with a hint of Neuromancer's famous opening line and a sense of rapid change and decay ("two tiny towns, one of which no longer exists", "what used to be Japan").  It nails us right in the future, "proclaim[ing] 21ST CENTURY", "more than sixty years" in with the first sentences.  And it wryly undoes itself with questions and mockery ("Who does that?").   We're dropped in Asia (pachinko, "what used to be Japan", kanji characters).  Observation is a key theme.  We also see Ken as a busy observer, not an actor.

"centenal" sounds like "sentinel".  What are these organizations guarding?

Domaine: first named in the act of refusing and questioning.  I'm intrigued by the homonym of "domain", but not sure what to make of it.

Mishima: her name is that of the classic 20th century writer and cult figure Yukio Mishima.   Should we expect her to launch a doomed coup?  She's also first named as an object of desire, which fits Yukio's status as sex symbol.  "Mishima!  [Domaine] wonders if it's her first or last name" (27).

William Pressman is just a great name for a politician. Johnny Fabré is the head of the devious Liberty party.  Is his name a call-out to this French insect specialist?  It seems a stretch, but a fun one, and appropriate, if so.

Nice shout-out to one of my favorite scenes in Watchmen (23).

I'm not sure about the numbers.  If a centenal holds 100,000 people, and there are 2,207 of them, that yields 220,700,000 members worldwide, which is a small portion of the likely global population.  Was there a major die-off?  Is my math wrong?  Or is the microdemocracy movement just a global minority, since refuseniks come from some pretty populous places ("Saudi Arabia, in Switzerland, in holdouts of the former USA and PRC and USSR", 75).

Later on Ken named centenals with identifying numbers, like 3539082 (62).  If those a strictly numerical, then the highest name would yield a global population of 353,908,000,000.  That's far too high. 

Several passages made me smile, like Mishima’s entertainment options:

Instead of looking at him, she wants to curl up with Jane Eyre, or a highly compressed season of The Wire, or Crow Wars V, but she can’t because she’s too polite (or embarrassed) to use content in front of a guest. (202)

“use content” is a great phrase. Or this sketch of Suzuki, who has a “well-oiled, slightly oily mind” (253). Drestle is a fun name, especially for a bad guy.

It’s a very post-Western novel. Most of the action takes place in Asia and the Middle East. We visit Paris and New York, but those are only stops, not colonial anchors of power.

In retrospect it seems like the first quarter of the novel did heavy world-building and scene-setting work. The next quarter built up tension gradually through the Liberty war conspiracy plot, our characters’ interactions with each other, and the classic energies of an election. Then the second half went into a higher gear.

I like the way the end of the novel doesn’t stop political development, but points to future possibilities, like shifting political units from 100,000 people down to groups of 10,000. “Nano-democracy, there’s calling it” (366). That moves towards the bolo’bolo model I mentioned previously.

The conclusion is also nicely open-ended as our point of view characters don’t grasp the full story. Mishima even has a nearly Phil Dick-like scene of imagining all kinds of plots and schemes that she can neither prove nor disprove. I do wonder about Domaine, who seems left hanging.

Jason Long

Read Infomocracy, the first book in Campbell Award finalist Malka Older's groundbreaking cyberpunk political thriller series The Centenal Cycle, a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Series, and the novel NPR called "Kinetic and gripping." • A Locus Award Finalist for Best First Novel • The book The Huffington Post called "one of the greatest literary debuts in recent history" • One of Kirkus' "Best Fiction of 2016" • One of The Washington Post's "Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2016" • One of Book Riot's "Best Books of 2016 So Far" It's been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, pioneered the switch from warring nation-states to global micro-democracy. The corporate coalition party Heritage has won the last two elections. With another election on the horizon, the Supermajority is in tight contention, and everything's on the line. With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues. For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing struggle against the pax democratica. For Mishima, a dangerous Information operative, the whole situation is a puzzle: how do you keep the wheels running on the biggest political experiment of all time, when so many have so much to gain? Infomocracy is Malka Older's debut novel. THE CENTENAL CYCLE Book 1: Infomocracy Book 2: Null States Book 3: State Tectonics PRAISE FOR INFOMOCRACY “A fast-paced, post-cyberpunk political thriller... If you always wanted to put The West Wing in a particle accelerator with Snow Crash to see what would happen, read this book.” —Max Gladstone, author of Last First Snow "Smart, ambitious, bursting with provocative extrapolations, Infomocracy is the big-data-big-ideas-techno-analytical-microdemoglobal-post-everything political thriller we've been waiting for." —Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings "In the mid-21st century, your biggest threat isn’t Artificial Intelligence—it’s other people. Yet the passionate, partisan, political and ultimately fallible men and women fighting for their beliefs are also Infomocracy’s greatest hope. An inspiring book about what we frail humans could still achieve, if we learn to work together." —Karl Schroeder, author of Lockstep and the Virga saga At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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Infomocracy by Malka Older

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