Consuming Cyberpunk

“…despite all the Information available, people tend to look at what they want to see.”

Infomocracy and Null States, the first two books in the Centenal Cycle series by Malka Older, could be the scariest post-cyberpunk series I’ve read. In it, micro-democracy has proliferated across the globe. The governments of choice being, for the most part, megacorporations. Borders have shifted and changed in the world, reflecting a physical change reflecting how much of society operates on social media today: curating their spaces to consolidate people with the same (among other things) ideologies.

When the borders settled, groups of 100,000 people—called a centenal—vote in the corporation of their choice using another megacorporation-like system, aptly called Information. The ‘corp that gets the most votes, netting the “supermajority,” wins the global election as though it were a federal election, except that it’s global. Otherwise, the granular control of a centenal is left to the ‘corp voted in.

This is, of course, a very reductive explanation of the system.

One of the strengths in both Infomocracy and Null States is Malka’s attention to detail. This system of governance, as well as every facet of the fiction in fact, all feel incredibly well-realized and researched. Infomocracy can feel overwhelming in that regard sometimes. It is so unlike anything I have written that the text needs to do a lot of heavy lifting, communicating, and breaking down complex philosophy, politics, and other interlocking systems that are integral to understanding the world.

“Systems include their by-products; it all comes from the pattern of incentives they create. It’s how they make people think, how they make people behave.”

This is why both books were, in a way, incredibly terrifying to me. Malka spends time on all details, both small and large, such that it becomes impossible not to trace the reasoning behind micro-democracy evolving from society as we know it. Part of why it is so believable is that “democracy,” at least, as it is practiced currently, feels like it’s short-lived. At the same time, the idea that corporations will end up being in control seems correct to me. The world envisioned in the fiction then, in no small part due to micro-democracy, ends up conjuring a mixture of emotions. But, strangely, micro-democracy coupled with corporations is…optimistic in many ways, too. This different application of democracy which caters to the realities we are facing currently, becomes eerie in its inevitability.

Infomocracy does this while also threading a globe-trotting, thriller type conspiracy that unfolds within the now well-established micro-democracy system the reader is learning about. It ends up feeling a bit like a techno-thriller paired with political intrigue. The cracks in the system are beginning to be exploited, a powder-keg situation unraveling as it bounces from perspective to perspective.

While the thriller aspect to the book felt well done to me, the problem I encountered was that the world being communicated to me far outstripped the thriller plot unfolding, in terms of my interest. To the point where it felt, to me, like a sub-plot. I’m not sure how you fix that when you have to hold the reader’s hand explaining the setting. There are futuristic technologies involved as well, expounding the information that needs to be conveyed. Almost everything about an average person’s life experience in the setting is altered from today, a tremendous undertaking.

However, Null States does not have this problem. With much of the world established, it hits the ground running. An Information agent is assigned to a suspicious investigation in which a governor has died. During the course of their inquiry, the fiction feels more grounded than Infomocracy had. A globalized plot is still presents, stemming from the initial events and works to tie together a couple other predominate characters, all of whom are relevant to the events of the first book. This shift from having to explain the world to a more consistent human perspective—including some characters that expose the problems within the system—made for a more exciting plot. It springboards off the first novel wonderfully to create a richer, more rewarding experience in just about every way.

‘minimally traceable,” Shamus corrected him; “nothing is one hundred percent untraceable”—to Policy1st.’

Reflecting on both of these books, there are a few things my mind consistently wanders to regarding my consumption of the Centenal Cycle so far:

I think most often, I find myself a little bit awed at how deep the investment in the setting feels to me, most notably in micro-democracy itself as a sort-of living experiment, but the same can be said for each aspect of the setting, I think. The attention to detail is astounding sometimes. Especially because these details actively work to expose the flaws and vulnerabilities. Showcasing them quite predominately at times.

It feels like some kind of active exercise in what the spirit of critique is. Something rarely experienced in this day of age in social media. To display such affection and then examine it, interrogating something you’ve created—feels like something rare and genuine and novel, especially in cyberpunk/post-cyberpunk fiction. There is a sense that Malka is willing to burn it down, if that is where the experiment leads.

“…those may be exactly the people who pose the greatest threat to the system: the people who can still remember, with rancor and longing and the inevitable distortions of time, what things were like before.”

The characters all feel well-realized and often break tropes or archetypes. They are also intersectional and people of colour. On Malka’s Twitter, her pinned tweet is this: “I write for the people whose names get underlined in red by Microsoft Word”. I think that’s as apt and succinct as you can be about how the fiction feels. There is a starkly contrasted difference between the marginalized and the privileged. The numerous points of view produced in the fiction are as diverse as you’d expect them to be in the future. All the pitfalls of punk and punk-adjacent fiction are not present, either.

When it is all placed together, I think what I’ve read in these two books is the most interesting and progressive piece of post-cyberpunk fiction. It is aware, sharp, and incredibly smart. It is easy to imagine these books as formative works for people working in the genre going forward. And I can’t wait to find out how it ends.

“…democracy is of limited usefulness when there are no good choices, or when the good choices become bad as soon as you’ve chosen them, or when all the Information access in the world can’t make people use it.”