Rating: 4/5, good
Infomocracy by Malka Older is a political science fiction thriller.
It’s about a near-future world where 20 years ago, the peoples of the world split off from traditional countries into small local voting blocks of 100,000 people known as centenals. The people in these centenals vote to choose which global government to join. The global governments seem to be based on either a corporation like PhilipMorris or political philosophy like Policy1st.
On top of that, there’s Information, a large nonprofit organization that controls and vets what information people can access on their handhelds. Information is used interchangeably for the organization and the global internet network they run. They publish neutral charts of what effects the policies of each government will have on people’s lives (raised or lowered taxes, etc), and try to control misinformation propagated by the various governments vying for centenals and the Supermajority.
In this world where people are simultaneously globally connected and locally splintered off, we meet our protagonists: Mishima, a superstar analyst and spy for Information, and Ken, an eager-to-please and personable campaign worker for Policy1st.
This book does do that thriller trope that I hate of “two hyper-competent people meet each other and immediately have sex”, but it didn’t bug me here as much as it did in other thriller novels because I thought Mishima and Ken were both complex characters with flaws and Older doesn’t dwell long on the sex scenes (in fact, they don’t have sex in the majority of their bedroom scenes). I also thought they had good chemistry and a lot of tenderness between them. There were a couple of times reading this I paused to think, “Hey, an emotionally competent thriller!”
This book jumps around a lot between far-flung places including Japan, France, Qatar, India, and New York. I enjoyed the globe-hopping and the small details about each place, though I think it could use more details. Often Older would name an exotic food but not really explain what it was or what it tasted like, so I had to either look it up or ignore it. The constant place and point-of-view shifting can get a little disorienting, but it also makes it feel more fast-paced, so I think ultimately it was a good decision.
The main negative about Infomocracy is that there are way too many characters that don’t get developed (at least not in this book). A lot of of the scenes take place in big office buildings and frequently coworkers are mentioned but not described or given much of a role in the story. I was taking notes and writing down character names as they showed up and looking back through my notes I have a lot of character names with no associated information about them.
The villains of this book are two global governments called Liberty and Heritage. Heritage is the current holder of the Supermajority (the uber-government) for 20 years in a row (elections for Supermajority are held every 10 years). War is illegal, but Liberty is trying to annex more centenals by means other than winning votes. Heritage is trying to go around Information’s regulations to expand and control more resources. Mishima and Ken work to catch them doing illegal things and get them thrown out of the running for Supermajority.
A lot of the conflict in Infomocracy takes the form of bureaucracy and campaign work, which can make it a bit boring, but there are a couple of fight scenes. Though, I think fight scenes are boring in general, so I skimmed those. They are kind of over-the-top, though, so if that’s your thing, you’ll probably enjoy them. In this future world, someone invented a machine that uses magnets to make metal guns unusable (plastic guns still work), so most of the fighting is done with katanas and other Kill Bill-esque weapons.
The political positioning and subterfuge are interesting, but I didn’t pick up on any strong themes or messages. It feels more like a thought experiment of “what would the world be like if everyone could choose their government on a local level but be connected to like-minded people on a global level”. The problem is, it’s never clearly explained what the Supermajority does or how much power it has over the individual centenals (or if it was, I missed it). Information seems to be the global police/peacekeepers and is a check on the Supermajority government, but I don’t know if there’s a check on Information. Infomocracy is very subtle and doesn’t leave you with a grand moral so much as many smaller lessons about how governing works in practice. You can definitely see Malka Older’s extensive real-world political experience coming into play.
All three books in the Centenal Cycle are already out (#3 came out in September). I’m tempted to continue the series, but I found it a little boring and I have a lot of reading to catch up on… I would recommend this book to people interested in politics/policy and fans of idea-driven scifi, and not quite as much for people looking for pure entertainment, though they might enjoy it anyway. Never know. 😉
* By the way, I really liked the invention of “crows” – kind of a cross between a trailer, a balloon, and a plane. Mishima has a company crow from Information that she uses as an apartment and a vehicle for international travel. They’re nuclear powered and kept moored to buildings by a long metal leash when not in transit. I want one so bad!
Post a Comment