New Zealand Listener - 09.07,2019

50 LISTENER SEPTEMBER 7 2019

BOOKS&CULTURE

by SAMUEL FINNEMORE

I

f transhumanism has to begin

somewhere, it might as well be with

a slice of tarte tatin. The temptation

of the apple dessert is a casual sensory

pleasure for middle-aged tech bil-

lionaire Richard “‘Dodge” Forthrast – who

realises partway through that he’s just

broken a nil-by-mouth order for a medical

procedure and brushes it off as precau-

tionary advice. It isn’t, and the disastrous

results trigger a will that makes Dodge the

accidental pioneer of a digital afterlife.

There’s a pleasing irony in Dodge being

a returning character, having featured in

an earlier Stephenson novel, Reamde, as

the magnate behind a blockbuster online

game. He is reawakened decades after

brain-death as an uploaded amnesiac

consciousness.

Named “Egdod”, he’s the first digi-

tal soul to inhabit a virtual space that

becomes known as Bitworld. The mindset

of a game developer runs deep, though,

and Dodge/Egdod effectively writes

Bitworld’s primordial rules from scratch,

sketching its outlines for what feels like

aeons before other souls arrive with ideas

by DAVID HILL

A

ramshackle family live near the

rubbish tip on the fringe of a

scrubby, grubby 1970s Aussie

town. Solo mum with two

teenagers has just moved in with new

man. New man proves controlling and

sinister. So far, so formulaic.

Then the unnamed adolescent daughter

fights back. Not with words: as the story

starts, she hasn’t spoken for 17 days. It

becomes 30 days ... 50 days ... more. But

her deeds yell at you. New man is a petrol-

head, so she sets out to take him and his

cars apart, as well as dropping sewing

needles into the carburettors of those he’s

under-the-counter fixing. This far, that

startling.

In a household where women are acces-

sories (even on TV, they know to let men

speak first) and where new man dead-

bolts everyone inside each night, the girl

is a bolshie, near-feral truant, a thief and a

freedom fighter. She executes non-random

acts of vandalism with appalling results.

She climbs from her room in the darkness,

walks alone on the silent road, sidles into

people’s houses. All the while, the hectic

life inside her head tears on. The char-

acters are nearly all anonymous: “father

man ... mother ... brother ... fat lady”.

Challengingly gifted Carrie Tiffany turns

them into near-archetypes in this short

and potent novel, with an ending to make

your jaw unhinge.

Our dysfunctional family set out

on a road trip to the far-off coast. It’s

a fortnight of driving there and back,

thousands of kilometres along straight,

shimmering blacktop patrolled by “plain,

working birds”.

They sleep in lay-bys lit by passing

headlights; pass through other small

towns where square old ladies in white

bowls dresses walk up the streets; find a

Uploaded

to the

hereafter

Cyberpunk pioneer

Neal Stephenson

invokes Milton and

Dante in his epic tale of

digital life after death.

Random acts

of unkindness

A teenage girl’s silent

war against her

mother’s new man

harmonises humour

and darkness.

The girl is a bolshie, near-

feral truant, a thief and

a freedom fighter, who

executes non-random

acts of vandalism with

appalling results.

Neal Stephenson: a wild brew

of ingredients delivered with

apparently effortless skill.