Not Your Everyday Science Fiction Novel...
Since I was born my science fiction crazy father has forced me unwillingly to watch every science fiction movie ever made since my birth along with some made even earlier. He also tried hard to get me to read science fiction but that is where I drew the line; no one tells me what to read and I am not reading that nonsense. After I married my husband he also found my dad’s genre of science fiction quite odd, he is Middle Eastern and as a whole I found most men from the Middle East really aren’t into science fiction like Americans. Infomocracy is different though, it is the unique blend of sci-fi for my dad, technological gadgetry and politics for my husband and social activism, human rights for myself. It is disturbingly good in paralleling the conundrum of US politics we now find ourselves in and this quirky fast moving cyber punk idea of micro-democracy that Older paints a picture of.
Infomocracy mainly focuses on two characters, Mishima and Ken. Mishima is the female version of Megan Fox, exuding sex appeal, powerful and men falling over themselves to be with her. She is a quick study, tech savvy and driven in her job at Information as a secret agent. She is tasked with finding patterns in data showing poor electioneering, or information tampering. Information is labeled as a “nonpartisan internet monopoly that controls the network infrastructure for global microdemocracy (Peper, p.2). Microdemocracy in Older’s book is explained as the new system for guaranteeing all citizens free from oppression by majority. The world is now no longer divided by invisible borders, but by centenals of 100,000 citizens that can vote for their own microdemocracy from among over 200 different candidates/groups. Some centenals of course are closer to each other than others; in Japan you can go to a different block and it is a different centenal with probably a different party i.e. different rules, and or regulations because of dense crowding. A lot of the story is focused on Far East and Southeast Asia. Other areas are sparsely populated and therefore larger geographic spaces (deserts in China are mentioned as low priority centenals because of the travel involved and the far off connection of citizens which do not allow for uniform voting like dense areas.)
Every 10 years a worldwide election takes place and a supermajority is decided as well. This is the unusual facet of the story because Older never explains the benefits of a supermajority victory for groups that achieve this win. It is alluded to be of importance to the reader, but not explained explicitly. Mishima notices unusual activity with a certain group named Liberty that shows that they may be trying to achieve supermajority in illegal ways. She alerts her supervisors who seem to not put her evidence as an important find. While looking for clues and investigating leads she meets Ken, a campaign worker for a group called Policy1st. He is looking for activity and information covertly to help his company gain more centenals. The book in the beginning shows them both criss crossing the world in search of data as part of their jobs. Domaine is a 3rd more minor character, which defies the system by trying to change it. He feels that there is apathy among voters, it is being orchestrated by those out of touch with voters and it is not important to “just participate,” but change the system altogether.
The reader comes to agree with him later on in the book as we are informed of corporate sponsors who represent centenals, Philip Morris the tobacco company is one, and even with the large number of choices, over 200, still a few groups end up controlling the majority.
Chapter 9 in xml
The passage that I think really turns the story on its head is when a natural disaster hits the two main characters. Ken and Mishima develop a personal connection after meeting each other a few times by chance and they go back to her crow (a futuristic home/car/plane of the future that can go anywhere needed to complete her secret agent missions) so they can be alone and hook up. Soon after, the crow is jerked furiously back and forth and they realize that they are in the middle of an earthquake. It is an awkward moment for both of them as they are naked, they don’t know each other that well, and they are experiencing a cataclysmic event where neither one knows what to do. The most jarring thing that happens is the disconnection from Information, their source of unending connection with others, and current news. They do not know how many people have been affected, what the ramifications will be for the upcoming election since there is no “wifi” so to speak, or how large an area it has hit. It seems as though the two characters develop a deeper connection because of this event and Mishima, the untrusting, investigator superwoman finds herself opening up to Ken more.
Ken ends up at the end of the story becoming this confident, trustworthy individual for Mishima to rely on as slowly her circle of trusted mentors begin to crumble. The theme I gathered from Older’s novel were many,and it is hard to choose the ones that resonated with me the best, the most salient seemed to be the idea of our own vulnerability to natural disasters and cyber security issues. Both of these parallel current trends today and they are the result of government mismanagement. Examples given are Katrina in New Orleans. The US government knew that a large hurricane could create transportation problems for residents making it hard to get out (Peper, p.9). Japan also knew that if a tsunami hit and they lost power to the electrical grid as well as generators that a nuclear meltdown was imminent (Peper, p.9). These disasters could have been prevented if governments had prioritized rights of all citizens as valuable. In the US you are only valuable, if you pay for it.
Older gave a compelling interview after the release of Infomocracy in which she discusses where she came up with the idea for this novel, her life’s work and her views on democracy today and its role for the future. She comments that she felt writing a science fiction novel forces us to question our assumptions about the future of democracy and changes how we see the world (Peper, p.3). Science fiction in the US is a big seller, most of the most profitable movies to date have been of the genre of science fiction: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., and Back to the Future are a few examples.
Older knows how to tap into the heartbeat of what is important to readers today and she uncovers nuances of the idea of democracy. She comments in her interview that she feels democracy requires some important things in which our society is lacking. An educated electorate, participation among citizens, and a solid base of human rights that the majority cannot overrule (Peper, p.5). Older seems to have formed her world views on the relief efforts she worked on as a humanitarian aide. She was working at an NGO when the tsunami hit southeast Asia, unexpectedly. She learned that relief efforts are mostly coordinated at the local level within communities, and not so much by governments. The governments come in later to assist with rebuilding but cannot logistically assist right after a disaster; that takes days or weeks to organize. Disaster affects the most vulnerable the worst: the poor, disabled, and the marginalized (Peper, p. 9). Older writes rootlessness and despair well, as she descends from a Cuban refugee mother, and a Jewish Ukranian father.
I hope Older knows that yes I read my first science fiction novel and it wasn’t horrible. I didn’t even get popcorn and that’s ok. From her interview with Scout she quotes something that resonated with me and which I will ponder for days to come: “American democracy was never quite democracy.” She is right about that, and Infomocracy gives us some concepts and ideas to put into our mind to help us come to a future discussion on the shortcomings of our system now.
Bibliography
Peper, Eliot. https://scout.ai/story/what-does-the-future-of-democracy-look-like
