“Belated Reviews” is a series of ill-timed critical looks at books, movies, games, etc., that I’m too busy/uninterested/poor to check out at the time of their release.
Released: September 4th, 2012
Read: October, 2012
Talk about belated - it’s been nearly two years since I posted a new entry to this series. Then again, it’s been at least that long since I’ve felt the need to expound upon a piece of entertainment that my regular readers (all six of you) might not otherwise find. With that said, let’s take a look at Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross’ singularity magnum opus.
If you’re not familiar with the concept of “the Singularity”, it’s the idea that technological advancement will eventually reach a point of such rapid progress that humanity will find itself suddenly and irreversibly given tools of great power, like the ability to create sentient machines, or to upload our consciousness itself to digital versions - the stuff of sci-fi dreams. The comparison to the theological rapture concept is perhaps more apt than the authors intended: the Singularity is a frequent talking point of 21st century prophets like Ray Kurzweil, who rather naively think that technology will be the savior of the human race.
The story of Rapture of the Nerds takes place after a fictional Singularity, in which the majority of humans have abandoned their physical bodies and uploaded their consciousness to The Cloud, a massive and nearly limitless quantum computer made out of most of the mass of the inner solar system. The protagonist, Huw Jones, lives in Wales, trying to stick to a purely human experience with the other Earth-dwellers in “meatspace”.
Conflict arrives in the form of a jury selection, where Huw is tasked with determining what to do with some of the technology The Cloud sends to their old-fashioned forbears on Earth. Through a series of rather unlikely events, he’s introduced to a technological parasite, kidnapped by both religious fundamentalists and deviants, attacked by a continent-sized ant colony, and eventually uploaded to the cloud himself. Throughout the story Huw is bombarded by new and almost entirely alien experiences, his very mind and body surrendered to the external forces that act upon him. The fact that he’s got unresolved mommy and daddy issues doesn’t help.
Rapture is more a series of hypothetical tableaus than a story in the classical sense: snapshots of far-out possibilities that satisfy the science fiction reader by being at least vaguely possible extensions of current technological trends. When people are uploaded to The Cloud, they shed their physical bodies for avatars that are as malleable as any forum handle, and even their brain functions are customized and duplicated like files on your computer desktop. In a particularly interesting example, cloud-dwelling humans can be “rooted” like a Unix system and essentially remote controlled.
Make no mistake, the ideas presented in Rapture, every one at least distantly associated with some facet of current scientific and social trends, are fascinating. The modifications that characters in The Cloud can make to themselves and their surroundings makes for an amazing sandbox, set to a counterpoint of familiar battles with bureaucracy and ego. Just as interesting is the post-singularity world created by Doctorow and Stross, a modern take on Eurasia that spans an entire solar system. (That said, a large portion of the earth-bound story reveals deep, unwavering and ugly prejudice on the part of both authors towards Americans and religious devotees in general.)
But a sandbox is all it is - the story shifts so quickly between settings and situations that actually sorting out the causal relationships between the beats is nigh impossible. Like a pretentious art film set to prose, Rapture rushes towards conceptual set pieces with no real regard for progression, or for what its characters will do next. With the exception of the protagonist, the characters are uniformly one-dimensional, making motivations hard to justify. The central love story (such as it is) is popularly frustrating, as the protagonist repeatedly declares his love for Bonnie without ever really giving any reason for his sudden and isolated outpourings of emotion.
The ending is particularly disappointing. In a book filled with fantastic extrapolations, the climax is flat, a reconciliation of Huw’s flaws that seems only barely connected to the shattering experiences he’s had. As a character Huw “learns his lesson”, but does little with the revelation afterwards. In the end he’s simply a vessel for the reader to take a whirlwind trip through a post-Singularity setting.
Rapture of the Nerds may still be worth a read if you’re a true Singularity believer, or if you’re simply fascinated by the post-modern mythology that’s being built up around the humanist ideal (like yours truly). I began reading it on the web, where’s it’s been posted by the authors for free, but eventually got so wrapped up in the ideas that I bought it on Kindle. That said, the ideas presented will stay with you - the characters and story won’t. Also note that the subjects presented aren’t for the squeamish or easily offended; Rapture of the Nerds would get an easy “X” rating from the MPAA. 5/10.
