Upgrade by Blake Crouch

Published by Ballentine on July 12, 2022

It’s obvious to rational people that any number of existential crises threaten human survival, from climate change to bioweapons to environmental destruction. Upgrade asks whether boosting human intelligence would solve those problems. One side of the debate suggests that a genetic upgrade, unleashing full human potential, would make unintelligent people realize that the planet cannot sustain humanity’s current behaviors. The other side suggests that the problems are not caused by stupidity but by selfishness and greed, attributes that might well survive a genetic upgrade.

The protagonist, Logan Ramsay, works for the Gene Protection Agency. His mother was a brilliant geneticist who attempted to make a blight resistant strain of rice by introducing a genetically engineered virus that would be spread by locusts. The virus mutated and wiped out much of the world’s food production, creating a worldwide famine. Logan worshipped his mother but lacked her brilliance. He was working with her when the famine spread. That connection was enough to earn him a prison sentence. His knowledge of genetics was enough to get him a job at the GPA when his sentence ended.

Genetic experiments have been outlawed, but rogue geneticists continue to meddle with DNA. Logan’s team is raiding a gene lab when he stumbles into a trap. A virus infects his body, leading to an upgrade of genes that control intelligence, perception, muscle development, and other bodily systems. Logan doesn’t quite turn into Superman, but he’s smarter and stronger than everyone else. Why that happened is a mystery I won’t spoil.

Logan’s sister has also been upgraded. She wants to make the virus more easily transmissible, upgrading all humans to save the planet from human stupidity. Unfortunately, about 13% of the population exposed to her version of the virus will die. Well, you can’t save the planet without breaking a few eggs.

The novel becomes a thriller as Logan tries to locate his sister and thwart her plot. As the two antagonists try to kill each other, they are momentarily troubled by memories of good times growing up, but one advantage or disadvantage of the upgrade is the ability to compartmentalize emotion, switching it off as might a sociopath.

An epilog begins with a touching moment before it morphs into a preachy essay. Fortunately, most of the novel doesn’t linger over humanity’s drive to kill itself. Readers turn to thrillers to escape from reality, not to become depressed by it.

Upgrade offers a fair amount of escapism with fast moving action scenes. The novel reads like a treatment for a movie. In addition to chase scenes, shootouts, and several explosions, the story features familiar action movie elements: a misunderstood protagonist who tries to do the right thing while he’s being chased by government agents who view him as a criminal; the protagonist’s forced separation from his wife and daughter to keep them safe; siblings torn apart by differing loyalties.

A screenwriter making a movie version of Upgrade might delete some of the novel’s heavy-handed preaching. Or a studio might have Morgan Freeman come in at the end to give the preaching some gravity. Either way, I would probably enjoy the movie, just as — despite the epilog — I enjoyed the novel.

RECOMMENDED

Winter Work by Dan Fesperman

Published by Knopf on July 12, 2022

Most of spy fiction’s best novels are set in the Cold War. Winter Work comes at the end of that war. The Berlin Wall has been down for about four months. East Germany is transitioning to unification. The Stasi offices are closed; files that were not burned are being ransacked or sold.

Emil Grimm is a former Stasi officer who is now unemployed. He had a desk job, running the Stasi operation to spy on NATO. He worries that the unified Germany will prosecute him for treason, as if he had some duty to be loyal to West Germany when he was a citizen of East Germany. His more urgent concern is how to pay for his wife’s medical treatment until reunification brings her into (West) Germany’s system of free healthcare. Emil’s wife is dying of a progressive disease and can no longer move.

Emil has a dacha outside Berlin and an apartment in the city, closer to his shuttered headquarters. One of his neighbors, Lothar Fischer, is also a Stasi officer. On his morning walk, Emil discovers Lothar’s body. The Stasi are already there, supposedly investigating, but they are soon chased away by the local police, who feel empowered to do their jobs now that the Stasi are no longer a thing.

Lothar apparently shot himself. Emil knows he was murdered. Emil also knows that Lothar was up to something. Emil knows that because he was up to something with Lothar.

On the novel’s other front, the CIA’s DDO is trying to get in bed with a Russian who wants to sell the identities of all the former Stasi agents. Claire Saylor (a key characters in The Cover Wife) has been contacting former Stasi agents to see if they have information they want to sell. She’s going behind her boss’ back to get off-the-books help from Clark Baucom, a retired CIA agent. The DDO assigns another agent to keep her under control. That agent also has a central role in The Cover Wife, making Winter Work the origin story of their teamwork.

Claire and her partner take an interest in Emil. That interest leads to conflict with the Russian and to escalating tension as the story nears its climax. The action is never over-the-top — this isn’t a tough guy novel — but the risks faced by the novel’s central characters create fear that the reader shares.

Dan Fesperman is a reliable spy novelist. Winter Work is rooted in Cold War history, as Fesperman explains in his acknowledgements. I don’t usually read acknowledgements, but Fesperman’s explanation of CIA and Russian activities soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall adds interest to the story.

Given the horrible reputation of the Stasi, it’s intriguing that Fesperman makes Emil a sympathetic figure. As Claire notes, Emil is “an adversary who has already been defeated.” He doesn’t seem to deserve further punishment, particularly the kind of punishment that will be awaiting him if he’s caught. Emil’s disabled wife encouraged him to form a sexual bond with her caretaker. Emil’s devotion to both of them, the fact that he didn’t actually order anyone’s death as a Stasi agent, and his remorse for being on the wrong side of history make it possible for the reader to hope he survives. In the tradition of strong spy novels, Winter Work illustrates how fuzzy the line between good guys and bad guys can become in the shadowy world of espionage.

RECOMMENDED

Happy (US) Independence Day!

The Great Man Theory by Teddy Wayne

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing on July 12, 2022

Like Loner and Apartment, The Great Man Theory is about a man whose true nature is at odds with his self-image. Paul is a 46-year-old academic, an instructor (demoted from lecturer for budgetary reasons) at a private New York City college for rich kids who can’t get into NYU. Paul has never been able to make the jump to professor, largely because of his limited publication history. He teaches writing but his own obscure essays are rarely published, likely because few people would want to read them. That’s fine with Paul, because anything that appeals to the masses is too trendy or superficial for Paul’s refined sensibilities.

Paul prides himself on eschewing technology (his mobile phone isn’t a smart phone) and won’t let his daughter Mabel watch significant amounts of television or have a phone with a screen. Paul is writing a book, The Luddite Manifesto, about the negative impact of social media and digital communications on attention spans, civility, and intellect. He has a publishing contract with an academic publisher and hopes the book will put him on track to a better academic job.

To make ends meet until he can conjure the life he believes he deserves, Paul becomes a rideshare driver, a gig that requires him to purchase a cheap smartphone. After an internal struggle, he begins leaving comments on a left-leaning news site, justifying his participation in social media as research for his book. To justify his thrill at receiving likes, he begins to post long comments as an antidote to the brief comments that (in his view) dumb down discourse. He gains a certain following, all while telling himself that he is elevating the digital form by posting meaningful analysis.

Paul’s is the story of a deteriorating life. He has a talent for shooting himself in the foot. Adderall doesn’t help him write as much as he thinks it does. To save money, he moves in with his mother but soon damages his relationship with her. He then damages his relationship with his daughter, his ex-wife, his employer, his colleagues, and his publisher.

Paul isn’t necessarily an evil person (or not until the novel ends), but he’s judgmental and a hypocrite. He fails to recognize any of those traits, in part because he is convinced that his critical judgments are reasonable and warranted. He bashes his students and the entire generation to which they belong because they don’t read printed books. He accuses them of expressing themselves in soundbites instead of nuanced thought. When a student writes a clever essay (in images and soundbites) that pushes back, Paul gives her an unwarranted D out of spite. The novel suggests that critics who view social media as dumbing down the populace should listen to the perspectives of bright young people who are no more dumbed down than boomers who grew up watching television.

Paul criticizes fellow liberals as elitist without bothering to learn about the work they are quietly doing to make society better. Yet Paul is not fundamentally different than his “elitist” friends; their tastes are the same and Paul’s meager resources stem from professional failure, not from sacrifice. But Paul doesn’t listen to his friends, his students, his daughter, or anyone else. He’s too busy being self-absorbed.

Paul isn’t necessarily creepy, but he gives off a creepiness vibe. It comes through when he insists on applying lotion to his daughter’s body, when he feels sad that, at age 11, she no longer wants to sleep in his bed, when he wants to sit in his parked car with a student to help her with an essay. The student — the one who got a D — may have misconstrued Paul’s intent (their conversation is ambiguous) or may be retaliating for a bad grade when she complains about harassment, but the truth is never entirely clear.

The Great Man Theory pokes fun at academia, bigots, Trump, and liberals who are too quick to judge others for not rigidly adhering to liberal doctrine. Wayne skewers schools that tell professors to avoid assigning books that have “trigger words,” schools that presume the fragility of marginalized students and fear disturbing them — as if education should never disturb students, never challenge students to understand the context in which a writer like Richard Wright or Mark Twain might have used a trigger word.

The novel lampoons the anti-feminist attitude of a woman who produces a show for a conservative media organization, a job she only has because of feminism. The producer is irate when Paul asks her to pay for one of the expensive dinners they’ve had. She earns several multiples of Paul’s income but wonders if she can date a man who isn’t capable of taking care of her. Paul dates her because he imagines he might get booked as a guest (with a host who might be modeled after Hannity) so he can offer unexpected but well-reasoned arguments from a liberal perspective. It isn’t much a plan but Paul isn’t good at distinguishing realistic from foolish plans.

As the story nears its resolution, it becomes clear that the ending will be dark. The nature of the darkness is foreshadowed a bit, but the details are surprising.

While the story is apparently meant to be dark comedy, it is more amusing than funny. Still, my interest in Paul’s self-destruction never wavered. The Great Man Theory isn’t a particularly insightful dissection of the idiotic culture wars that divide America, but Teddy Wayne does offer some insight into how people who take themselves too seriously — people who love their own minds but don’t bother to consider how their words and actions might affect others — can become the kind of people they claim to despise.

RECOMMENDED

The City Inside by Samit Basu

Published by ‎ Tordotcom on June 7, 2022

Samit Basu creates an astonishingly detailed near future in The City Inside. It is so detailed that the story is sluggish. Far too much time passes before the outline of a plot leaks through the background data. Still, the background is impressive.

Basu imagines a future India dominated by the Flow: live streams that allow fans to follow social media stars through their carefully orchestrated daily lives. Real World meets live streaming You Tube. Fans get customized Flows depicting different versions of a Flowstar’s life to match their interests. The biggest Flow star in India at the moment is Indi, whose Flow is managed/directed by his ex-girlfriend, Joey Roy. Her job title, fittingly, is Reality Controller. She hires Indi’s writers, casts his friends, manages the different versions of reality that are served to different fans. Some fans think Indi is a serious gamer; others believe he is an artist. Most just watch him hanging out with friends and being charming.

Joey is the best Reality Controller in a competitive industry but she’s beginning to hate her job. Her employers are mid-level oligarchs. Unlike many, Joey can pay her bills, but she belatedly realized she made a huge mistake by staying in Delhi.

The background is tech heavy. People wear smart tattoos that communicate with a personal AI who is even more annoying than Alexis. Joey’s personal AI is Narad, a combination of work assistant and life coach that defines itself as a happiness sherpa, constantly noting when Joey feels stressed and offering mantras or an appointment with a therapist. Fans live their lives vicariously through Flows, as do many of today’s consumers of celebrity news and viewers of reality television.

In the political background are riots, dysfunctional government that betrayed India’s founding principles, and natural disasters enabled by global warming. Water mercenaries hijack water trucks. Discriminatory citizenship laws have cemented division. “India is about staying the same but acting like you’re going to change soon,” a character explains. We learn little about India’s Years Not to Be Discussed because they aren’t discussed, but mass graves are discovered in their aftermath. Some sort of purge occurred during the Years that convinced people to remove their opinions from social media. Joey’s father lost his job over a Facebook rant while her mother failed to recognize that “it was a loyalty-based economy now.” She “hadn’t been able to adjust when an oligarch bought her ad agency.” Joey urges her parents to be cautious because people are still disappearing after saying the wrong things. Technology (even a toothbrush) is listening to every word; privacy no longer exists, a road paved by social media. Joey spends much of her time figuring out how to protect her parents and minor characters, although why they need protection is not always clear.

Several characters contribute their personal melodramas to the story. Tara is recruited to be Indi’s new love interest but she wants to be a Flowstar, not a sidekick. Tara views herself as an intellectual but doesn’t mind her gig as Indi’s new girlfriend because he’s good in bed. She has no reason to be concerned when hidden cameras in his bedroom catch him shagging another woman unless the scenes end up on the Flow and make her look bad. The cameras don’t bother Indi much (any publicity is good publicity, as Paris Hilton proved), even when the video suggests sexual violence (he’s certain his fans will forgive him). When new writers decide that Indi needs a girlfriend who is more Hollywood than Bollywood (they’re trying to make Indi an international star despite the view that in the West, he’ll be just another immigrant), Tara is offered the role of the new girlfriend’s best friend. Tara assumes the audience will adjust. One point of the story seems to be that social media followers are easily manipulated.

Rudra is in Joey’s orbit despite (or because of) his estrangement from his wealthy family. He will be confronted with a difficult choice when he is invited back into the fold. As is true of Joey, his choice is whether to sell out or fight the power.

The story is heavy with exposition and lectures. Near the story’s end comes Joey’s lengthy plea for more diversity and inclusion in this imagined world. Diversity and inclusion are good in any world, but this is one of many bits of extended dialog that substitute for a plot. To the extent that the story is more than its background, it follows Joey through a slice of her dissatisfied life until she finally decides that she could be something more subversive than a Reality Controller for meaningless Flowstars. It’s a long walk to that destination. I’m recommending The City Inside for its elaborately constructed near-future Delhi rather than the meager story that unfolds inside the city.

RECOMMENDED