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Moxyland
 
 
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Moxyland [Kindle Edition]

Lauren Beukes (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
Print List Price: £7.99
Kindle Price: £5.49 includes VAT* & free wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet
You Save: £2.50 (31%)
* Unlike print books, digital books are subject to VAT.

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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."
- André 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
See all Product Description

Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 400 KB
  • Print Length: 384 pages
  • Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
  • Publisher: Angry Robot (9 Jun 2011)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.ą r.l.
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B0055D8VCG
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • X-Ray: Not Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #42,644 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Waiting for the Next Revolution 11 Dec 2009
By Diziet TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (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.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Near-future SF nearly works 6 Jun 2010
By Robert Frampton VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (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.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars The near future, with sharp edges left bare 28 Nov 2009
By Mr. R. Ellor VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
Not an easy or fluffy book to read this. It is set in the South Africa of the near future, prior to the coming singularity where man and machine are joined and corporate behemoths rule the globe.

Various characters tell their tales in chapter format as the story unfolds, of a society where technology has teeth and citizens are part of the advertising food chain. There is an undertone throughout the book that this story is set just prior to some seismic upheaval in science that will further blur the boundaries, but it isn't proving to be an easy birth as there exists both direct control and active resistance to corporations managing the lives of the protagonists. Mobile phones are the key to living in this evolving world, and they can bite back with pacifier circuitry resembling a taser that can be activated to stun the user.

If you like cyberpunk sci-fi, then this will definitely be up your literary street. For others, it isn't tech-heavy but does have a degree of futuristic street-slang which isn't difficult to interpret. Very snappily written, with those rough edges of the emerging society left beautifully bared and an excellent piece of work.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars Flat, dissatisfying and paranoid
2 dimensional, annoying, nasty characters, little thought given to different perspectives of the given society, uses the 1984 ending (it's actually all the government, didn't you... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Pen-name
5.0 out of 5 stars READ THIS BOOK!
An astonishingly good book ... a powerfully impressive alternative look at the ways we pay for the consequences of our actions.
Published 5 months ago by Me
2.0 out of 5 stars Meh!
This book is founded on ruminations about near-future tech. However, any points that the Author might be trying to make are drowned out by too many similar-feeling viewpoints. Read more
Published 9 months ago by M. S. Richards
3.0 out of 5 stars Good central idea, but a laborious read
There is a good concept through this book and that is that your phone becomes your life and indeed you become defined by your phone. Read more
Published 16 months ago by CoolJules
5.0 out of 5 stars Moxyland, by Lauren Beukes
A fantastic and fantastically dystopian book. Nice and dark with some fascinating characters, a sense of humour, and not just the same obvious good/bad guys that you might find... Read more
Published 20 months ago by elkippy
5.0 out of 5 stars More accessible than Zoo City
A struggling photographer turned "sponsorbabe", a spoiled rich kid with his own streaming reality broadcast channel, a wannabe anarchist, and a corporate programmer - all these... Read more
Published 22 months ago by S. Horrigan
4.0 out of 5 stars So sorry, you have died. But at least you tried!
Beaukes hasn't made life easy for her readers, mainly because this book is written in a language decorated with neologisms she judges right for her very young protagonists,... Read more
Published 23 months ago by Eileen Shaw
5.0 out of 5 stars Thought-provoking dystopia
After reading and loving Zoo City, when I made one of my rare visits to a brick-and-mortar bookstore - rare out of self-protection really; I can't resist buying at least one book... Read more
Published on 11 April 2011 by W.M.M. van der Salm-Pallada
5.0 out of 5 stars Moxyland
This book is funky and fresh. I loved the hip lingo and vibe of the characters. I also liked the localness of the Cape Town setting and the menace of the advertising world. Read more
Published on 1 Jan 2011 by Suzy
3.0 out of 5 stars Gibskins
Skins rewritten by William Gibson? Hollyoaks on soma? Why do all cultural artifacts these days feel like bits of other cultural artifacts shunted together, the fictional equivalent... Read more
Published on 14 Sep 2010 by Alan Hansen
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