Kill Decision

Kill Decision

© 2012 Daniel Suarez

512 pages

Seemingly every day people within the United States are killed,  destroyed in apparent bomb attacks.  The victims have no obvious connections, but they are not random – nor were they bomb victims.  A new generation of cheap, lethal drones are waging an undeclared war on American soil, and no one knows who is behind them.    Enter Linda McKinney, a  young American scientist,  whose study of weaver ants in Africa was interrupted when she was kidnapped, shortly before her cabin was incinerated.    McKinney hasn’t been abducted by terrorists, however:  she is the last hope of a black ops organization hunting for the drones’ controllers.  The few leads they have indicate that the same people who stole software allowing for the drones’ facial recognition software also copied McKinney’s research into swarm intelligence.   

Kill Decision is a horse of a different color from Suarez’ other works: although still a mix of technothriller and science fiction,   there’s far less speculation here than in Change Agent and Freedom. Frankly,   the plot of Kill Decision seems like the sort of thing that could happen this afternoon.  I’ll admit to not being up to date on the latest drone technology, but given the current status of facial recognition technology,   machine intelligence, and the price of consumer electronics....the premise of Kill Decision is speculative only in the “What if this did happen” sense, and not the “What if this could happen” sense.      The novel follows the un-named group investigating the drone attacks as their efforts to get to the root of the problem only increase in the planned-for campaign being ramped up,  leading to  a prolonged action sequence where the chasee- and chaser swap places several times, with brief interludes between the bloody chaos.  

Although drones aren’t a particular interest of mine, Kill Decision succeeded in keeping my attention, in part because the drones’ behavior strongly mimics that of...weaver ants, complete with using chemical compounds for swarm communication.  The drones of Kill Decision have total autonomy behind their prescribed targets,  evaluating and taking care of unexpected threats on the fly. The drones combine the innate horror of swarm insects with the cold dread of being hunted most effectively,  especially when the team encounters the base of operations.  

Although I hadn't intended to read Suarez' remaining works, both of are beyond the near-future subgenre I most prefer,  having read so much of him recently has me itching to give one of them a try, if only to experience more of the author!

Related:
Drone, Mike Maden

Limited Wish

The universe is trying to kill Nick. Again. Last time, it was only leukemia. Now there are multiple visitors from divergent futures asking him for help breaking into a nuclear power plant, he's being stalked by a sociopathic mercenary, he's stumbling through one near-miss after another, and worst of all....the fate of the universe apparently depends on him going to a dance and leaving with the right date.   Ah, to be sixteen again!

Limited Wish is a follow up to One Word Kill, a SF novel interlaced with Dungeons and Dragons lore, and set in the mid-1980s.   Limited Wish continues that fusion, although there's not as much of the creepy mirroring of events and characters in the D&D campaign and the real world goings on.   The plot itself, however,  echoes the plot of the first book, and not accidentally; it's something to do with temporal mechanics. History not repeating itself but rhyming is a side effect of some paradox that's erupted.   What's different is that while last time Nick was told exactly what was going on,  this time his visitors from the future are just as confused as he is: in fact, the future-me from the last book pops up here, but it's an earlier him who is still trying to figure things out.

Although it's intended for younger audiences, I believe,  this series is fun so far.

What kills us VS what we're told to worry about

Dinosaurs, India, and the smartphone

We in the United States  recently enjoyed a three-day weekend, ostensibly for the purpose of honoring fallen soldiers, though I suspect for most it's just an occasion to shop and cook out before the summer heat becomes unbearable.  I took advantage of the time off to read a few books:  India Connected, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, and Change Agent, the latter of which has been  reviewed already.   A few more novels are in the offing, including Trouble is my Business (Raymond Chandler), Kill Decision (Suarez), Altered Carbon, and Limited Wish, the sequel to One World Kill.

First, the dinosaurs: as its title indicates, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a complete-as-possible history of our Saurian predecessors that focuses special attention on why and how they became such supersized creatures, as well as the demise of most of their kind.  I say most because Brusatte argues that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs, but are literally dinosaurs.   The development of feathers and particularly wings is addressed. The author believes wings first developed for display purpose, and feathers for insulation.   Although remains of feathers have not been found with any T-Rex fossils,  other tyrannosaurs (from small to large)  were feathered, so it's a fair bet that Rex was as well.

Next up,  India Connected. Global civilization is in the midst of change driven by the smartphone,  but nowhere does it have more explosive potential than in India.   The world’s largest democracy may be increasingly wealthy, but many millions of its people remain illiterate and impoverished.   Enter the smartphone, increasingly affordable even to the poorest.  Apps allow the rural villager to teach himself to read; they allow women  freedom to obtain information and look for opportunities for education, employment, and romance that would be otherwise warded away from them;  they allow those who can already read to learn new skills, like English and coding,   and they make it easier for people and India's vast democracy to function.   (And then there's dating..) 

Buddhist cyberpunk?

"As a child I’d believed there was an essential person, a sort of core personality around which the surface factors could evolve and change without damaging the integrity of who you were. Later, I started to see that this was an error of perception caused by the metaphors we were used to framing ourselves in. What we thought of as personality was no more than the passing shape of one of the waves in front of me. Or, slowing it down to more human speed, the shape of a sand dune. Form in response to stimulus. Wind, gravity, upbringing. Gene blueprinting. All subject to erosion and change."

Altered Carbon  


I can't say I expected to encounter the Buddhist doctrine of anatta (no-self) in a cyberpunk novel! 

Change Agent

Change Agent
© 2017 Daniel Suarez
417 pages

Deep into the 21st century,   global civilization has been transformed by bioengineering.  Consumer products  which were once manufactured are now grown, from knives to car bodies; the streets are illuminated not by bulbs, but by bacteria;  and lab-grown meat is common.  Although gene editing has also been used to cure several prominent diseases in human babies,   parents are increasingly interested in going beyond repair:  they want to make their children into  designer augments, with heightened intelligence, physical strength, and so on. Enter Kenneth Durand, who uses statistical analysis to figure out where "baby labs" are so that the police can shut them down.   But the many labs shut down by Durand's ingenuity aren't independent operations: they're all run by the same criminal enterprise, and they - -the Huli jing --  will  have their revenge in a most insidious way. A violent encounter at a train station leaves Durand writhing on the platform, and he wakes up weeks later -- after a prolonged period of intense pain and semi-consciousness -- to find himself transformed. His own genes have been edited to make him into the monster he was chasing.  Friendless and the subject of an international manhunt, a once pacifistic statistician  must find new strength within himself as he escapes police custody and descends into the underworld looking for answers and a way to reclaim his identity.

 First of all, there's a lot of really cool things going on in the background here.  Logistical drone lanes, for one: there are so many commercial drones that they've been given air lanes to travel in, just like airplanes.    Screen interfaces are largely a thing of the past;  as most people have the means to have images cast directly into their eyes. (This can be a nuisance, with the advertisements, but there are countermeasures.)  All this advanced technology makes Durand's life considerably more difficult after he's branded a criminal;  one push notification from the police and a crowdsourced manhunt makes it impossible for him to move in civilized society.   He does, however, have one asset:  the criminal whose body he's inhabiting happens to be incredibly intimidating, and since he wasn't expected to survive the transformation (the gang wanted the police to think their most-wanted man had  been assassinated) , there have been no countermeasures put in place to stop Durand from taking advantage of his appearance.  Once  the Huli jing realize he's escaped and on the move, another product of bioengineering is tasked with hunting him down.

Using CRISPR and succeeding technology opens up a world of possibilities, and Suarez explores both the good and bad. Durand's journey will culminate in discovering horrors he couldn't imagine people capable of,  though if he'd read Brave New World he wouldn't be so darkly surprised.   Both the worldbuilding, and Durand's struggle to hold on to his identity -- trapped in another body, forced into doing things he'd never otherwise do --  succeed in creating a fast-moving and immersive tale of tomorrow.

Better Off

Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology
© 2004 Eric Bende
256 pages

When Eric and Mary Bendes tied the knot, they chose to kick off their marriage in the traditional fashion: struggling together to make a go of a family farm.  Mary had romantic notions about homesteading, and Eric serious misgivings about the role of technology in human affairs. Together they moved to a quasi-Amish community not attached to a particular religious order, but composed of those too freethinking for the Old Order and too traditional for the modernized Mennonites.  Their mission: to spend a year living in technological simplicity, to discern how much gadgetry was really needed for a flourishing human life. 

Better Off tells the story of the Bendes’ adapting to life  within the community, both socially and technologically. Eric and Mary are outsiders, but so are a fair number of their new neighbors. They are surrounded by those who, like the authors of The Plain Reader, have yearned for a more meaningful life and found it in a community that minimizes those parts of modernity which are most disruptive.  Because it is a farming community,  tending to the family homestead is the major use of time. While this does involve manual labor, often the ‘work’ aspect – the monotony – is completely mitigated by the social aspect.  The members of this community rarely pay strict social visits: instead, relationships are established, built up, and maintained by working together.  Although Eric and Mary both  have their individual   jobs around the house, both are necessary to keep the farm itself functioning:  because they are operating without technology,  more work has to be done by hand. The lack of refrigeration, for instance , means that goods must be canned. The Bendes adopt fairly quickly to their new tech-lite life, aided by generous neighbors who find their new companions to be earnest in their intentions, quick to learn, and hard-working. Bendes is initially surprised to learn that the Minimites are not technophobes; they do not ban any form of mechanical aide on principle, but scrutinize an object’s effects on society before incorporating it.  Tool use is heavy,  but all require human  presence.  The lack of electricity in their community doesn’t require life to be miserable: it just prevents mindless automation.

I read this book years ago (2015) and have been mulling it over once again -- not that I'm tempted to give up technology,   but because society is steadily increasing its own digitalization, and in physical ways so that our homes and automobiles  are increasingly plugged in. Mechanical assistance,  which at least required some human role is now being replaced by total automation. There are dangers there --   more points of failure as things increase in complexity,  the detachment of people from their own lives, the constant generation and possible manipulation of information by smart devices -- but most  embrace things without a thought. It's one thing to become wholly dependent on something outside of ourselves, but we should at least be conscious of it -- and wary, in some cases.