I didn't like this book at all. It is a utopian sermon stuck in the middle of a body-horror captivity narrative with a clunky good-triumphs-over-evil sledgehammer at the end. If you had to suffer through the likes of Rousseau's Emile1 or the other guy's Candide in school and found them arrogant, preachy, and divorced from reality, The Shockwave Rider is not for you.
The story begins with an unconscious man in a cell having his memories laid bare for the surveillance of government officers. We experience the man's life as a series of flashbacks along side the interrogators. Occasionally, the interrogators must bring the man back to consciousness lest his personality fragment or some such nonsense.
While the man is awake, he engages in a heady philosophical debate with his captors about the nature of government and society, in which both of them are far too certain of their own opinions--especially given the current dismal state of things. You get the sense that that author is a little high on his own stash.2
As much as Brunner may have sucked at telling us about his utopia, his predictions of the dystopia are accurate to an unfortunate degree.
One of his genius speculations is the idea that the government constantly runs nation-wide prediction markets where citizens bet on likely outcomes of a wide assortment of questions (and the government carefully designs the questions and subtly tweaks the outcomes to exert a maximum of control over their populace).
There, top-rank analysts constantly monitored the national Delphi pools to maintain a high scoial-mollification index. Three times since 1990 agitators had nearly brought about a bloody revolution, but each had been aborted. What the public currently yearned for could be deduced by watching the betting, and steps could be taken to ensure that what was feasible was done, what was not was carefully deeveed.
And every once in a while, Brunner makes an observation so on point, it stops you in your tracks:
But you’re in government. Your continuance in power has always depended on the ultimate sanction: ‘if you don’t obey we’ll kill you.’
He pegs economists as people "wearing a sewn-on badge in bright green and white saying underpower!--one of the people who on principle declined to use up their full power allotment and did their utmost to prevent others from using theirs." Which, honestly, is a pretty accurate description of the field these days.
He even captures a sensation I have about Bitcoin but have never been able to put in words before:
“You know, I always wondered what democracy might smell like. Finally, I detect it in the air.” “Curious that it should arrive in the form of electronic government,” Sweetwater murmured.
The idea that a better society should arrive in the form of electronic money is very curious indeed.
All the same, if you're thinking of reading a cyberpunk classic, I would skip this one.

Footnotes

  1. If you have never been cursed with opening the pages of this particular wordy woe, consider yourself lucky. It basically says--in the most boring and philosophical manner--that the best way to raise children is to have an open marriage,
  2. I am deeply suspicious of writers who spend a lot of time telling us how a theoretical world might work but can't even summon the energy to write an actually engaging story that puts me in that world. The only believable parts of Brunner's world are the dystopian elements.
40 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 9 Feb
I keep picking this up getting a few pages in and then getting distracted. It has no grip that I've found yet.
It was recommended in Designing an Internet because it was the first book to describe a computer worm. It also introduces CBDCs rather early but those might've appeared elsewhere first.
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The worm plays an important role, but I think I missed the cbdc. The prediction markets (called Delphi pools) are a very cool dynamic. And maybe the cbdc was part of the "paid-avoidance zones" (areas where people accept a govt payment to live with fewer technological amenities).
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Is it written with post-modern stylistic ticks?
Great review, thanks for posting.
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Yes! I normally enjoy such things, but in this case it felt like he was trying too hard.
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a [REVIEW] post... yuhoo 😆
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Is cross-posting to multiple territories possible yet? Because I think it probably belongs in ~BooksAndArticles, but would consider cross post to ~AGORA if it was possible.
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It will be much appreciated, hopefully the feature will be released soon. Your work also much inspires us all!
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Wonderful review on a book I personally would have expected to enjoy. I may give this one a wide-berth for a while on the basis of your write up though…
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I might have overreacted a tiny bit. He does explore some pretty interesting ideas about technology and society, especially when you figure he was writing in the late 1970s I just don't like feeling preached at in fiction.
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I think there are some excellent books that fit the worthy future government novel category; ‘1984’, ‘Brave New World’, ‘Fahrenheit 451’, ‘A Clockwork Orange’ etc and not to mention science-fiction versions. Your write up makes me think of an inverted ‘News From Nowhere’ barely concealed smugness (although I’m not sure that’s the right word). I may prefer a little more subtlety I suspect.
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