Paperback, 272 pages
Published Sept. 5, 2022 by Capitán Swing.
Four short stories about the near future and the dystopia we're building for ourselves.
Los mejores relatos son el primero y el tercero, aunque el segundo y el cuarto no se quedan muy atrás, siendo todos ellos excelentes. Como reza el subtítulo son cuatro distopias muy actuales que en algunos casos podríamos estar ya viviendo.
This is a collection of four short stories (or is it novellas, between 60 to 100 pages each) whose main theme you can see on the cover.
Each story extrapolates into the not-so-distance future a set of worst-case scenarios.
The first story will be familiar with to those of us who followed the hilarious saga of the $400 juicer that could only be used with the by-subscription pre-juiced juice. In this case, the culprit is a toaster that can only be used with brand bread, which is more expensive than regular one. But the twist here is that subsidized apartments in a luxury condo are loaded with such locked appliances which allow the landlords to recoup the cost of being forced to provided subsidized housing, by getting a cut of the money generated by the locked appliances. In the tradition of much of Doctorow's characters, a few young people then …
This is a collection of four short stories (or is it novellas, between 60 to 100 pages each) whose main theme you can see on the cover.
Each story extrapolates into the not-so-distance future a set of worst-case scenarios.
The first story will be familiar with to those of us who followed the hilarious saga of the $400 juicer that could only be used with the by-subscription pre-juiced juice. In this case, the culprit is a toaster that can only be used with brand bread, which is more expensive than regular one. But the twist here is that subsidized apartments in a luxury condo are loaded with such locked appliances which allow the landlords to recoup the cost of being forced to provided subsidized housing, by getting a cut of the money generated by the locked appliances. In the tradition of much of Doctorow's characters, a few young people then start jailbreaking the appliances, which is when things go South. [There is a whole additional refugee angle to this which matters as well.]
The second story could be renamed "Superman [I mean, in the book, The American Eagle] tries to solve racism" but fails because some problems cannot be solved individually, even by a superhero. More than anything else, the superhero fails at being an ally (whereby his white membership gets revoked, as it was always contingent, as the black man he's trying to help tells him... but he didn't listen).
The third story, which bears the title Radicalized, feels like Reddit meets the insurance industry, and has garnered some praise for showing that "violence works". Kill a few health insurance execs, get Medicare-for-All, as long as it's white guys doing it.
The last story involves a hedge fund wiz, who clearly read Ayn Rand, who has built himself a compound to wait out the collapse of civilization and invited 30 other people he selected to join him. Once they all hole up, obviously, things go downhill.
Doctorow is not a subtle writer. He is rather heavy-handed about the points he tries to make. However, except for the first story, the ideas underlying the other ones are not new (the old Twilight Zone series had a few on the same themes). And the first one is very similar in template to previous work from him as well. So, it's a quick read but the stories, though short, tend to be repetitive, and again, the point of each story becomes clear rather quickly.
