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Moxyland
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Product Description
Review
"full of unselfconscious spiky originality, the larval form of a new kind of SF munching its way out of the intestines of the wasp-paralysed caterpillar of cyberpunk." - Charles Stross "This fast-paced sci-fi trip has intriguing characters, big ideas, a new lexicon... and serves as a global warning." - GQ "A TECHNICOLOR JAZZY ROLLERCOASTER RIDE INTO A DAZZLING HELL." - Andre Brink "Tell your English teacher you want to read Moxyland or you'll shoot up your school." - NAG Online
Review
Bold, inventive, believable, deeply engaging and overtly, sublimely political, Moxyland will draw to itself a wide and appreciative audience
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Waiting for the Next Revolution,
By
This review is from: Moxyland (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
One of the main themes of this book is summarized by a character we never meet, a name on a web message board:
"Call it mass-scale compassion fatigue or selfish genes or the obvious conclusion capitalism has always been headed for, but the reality is people don't give a flying f**k, they've seen all the old strategies before, they're tired and worse, they're boring, and if there's one thing our culture doesn't stand for...it's boredom". (p126) Couple a shallow, hedonistic society with the 'Politics of Fear', a dystopian near-future reminiscent of more recent William Gibson; set the whole thing in South Africa and you've pretty much got the scene. Told in the first person by four characters - Tendeka the revolutionary, Lerato the disaffected programmer, Toby the post-punk would-be reporter and Kendra, photographer and 'trend-setter', I thought it was going to be a bit of a grind as the narrative switched back to cover the same events from each character's point of view. But it doesn't. Instead, each character takes up the story from the point at which the previous character left off. That's great - keeps the narrative going nicely - but it also seems to mean that the characters are, by and large, fairly interchangeable. Although each uses language in his/her own way, they're not really fully formed people. The technology is, for the most part, scarily believable and I can easily imagine social control agencies (such as the SAPS - 'South African Police Service') very much wanting some of the gadgets portrayed. But in some ways, the book also looks back. Although one of the characters is quite rude about Joseph Conrad, there is a kind of 'Secret Agent' theme going too. Saying all that, it is a really good read. But, finally, I have to admit I found it pretty depressing, in very much the same way that Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four doesn't leave much room for optimism. Maybe that was the aim - maybe that is the most realistic view to take in our dawning 'Brave New World'. All in all, though, this is an author to watch.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Near-future SF nearly works,
By
This review is from: Moxyland (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Writing successful near-future SF is a tricky business. You risk not getting it right for the hardcore SF fans for whom it's 'not SF enough', and alienating the more casual reader 'because it's too weird'. There's also the danger that the author doesn't quite know what to do with central idea and hedges their bets in terms of how far to push the elements of the plot that separate science fiction from literary fiction.
Getting it right can produce some truly impressive work. I'm thinking particularly of Ian McDonald, whose 'Brasyl', 'Cybereabad Days' and 'River of Gods' are mind-spinning books where near-future tech has shifted society in a direction which is recognisably still of our world, but just out of reach enough for it to feel alien and disconcerting. Lauren Beukes has had a good go at following this McDonald-like path, and the thriller elements of her novel are well-drawn, but she's rather hamstrung by the other side of the equation: making 'Moxyland' a youth novel which can be read by mobile-tech literate people of 2010. There is also the analogy with apartheid with youth disenfranchisement which feels a little too heavy-handed. For these reasons 'Moxyland' falls short of being classic SF, but there is the germ of a good SF writer here provided Beaukes is willing to let go the reins a little more.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Some interesting ideas but strains credibility,
By
This review is from: Moxyland (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Many current and recent references were recognisable in the story, from MMORPGs to Second Life to blogging and numerous technological developments.
However, one central premise is that access to everything is centralised and your phone becomes your life, your money, your access key, and a source of punishment if you break the rules. While being cut off from online access is increasingly seen as a severe sanction (and even a breach of human rights), it's still a huge leap from people's attachment to their iPhones and Blackberrys to everyone being legally mandated to only access their connections through an authorised, tracked device with integrated electroshock. Really, while far-fetched, the dark events towards the end are undoubtedly much more interesting than the beginning, but my overall impression is of trying to pack in as many unoriginal ideas as possible from other sources along with as many current tech themes as they could come up with, all combined in first-person dialogs from as many different characters as possible. This results in a jumpy, implausible result that is occasionally quite interesting but not consistent enough to recommend.
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