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Moxyland
A new paperback edition of Lauren Beukes's frighteningly persuasive, high-tech fable that follows four narrators living in a dystopian near-future.
Kendra, an art-school dropout, brands herself for a nanotech marketing program. Lerato, an ambitious AIDS baby, plots to defect from her corporate employers. Tendeka, a hot-headed activist, is becoming increasingly rabid. Toby, a roguish blogger, discovers that the video games he plays for cash are much more than they seem.
On a collision course that will rewire their lives, these characters crackle with bold and infectious ideas, connecting a ruthless corporate-apartheid government with video games, biotech attack dogs, slippery online identities, a township soccer school, shocking cell phones, addictive branding, and genetically modified art. Taking hedonistic trends in society to their ultimate conclusions, Lauren Beukes spins a tale of a utopia gone wrong, satirically undermining the idea of progress as society's white knight.
Kendra, an art-school dropout, brands herself for a nanotech marketing program. Lerato, an ambitious AIDS baby, plots to defect from her corporate employers. Tendeka, a hot-headed activist, is becoming increasingly rabid. Toby, a roguish blogger, discovers that the video games he plays for cash are much more than they seem.
On a collision course that will rewire their lives, these characters crackle with bold and infectious ideas, connecting a ruthless corporate-apartheid government with video games, biotech attack dogs, slippery online identities, a township soccer school, shocking cell phones, addictive branding, and genetically modified art. Taking hedonistic trends in society to their ultimate conclusions, Lauren Beukes spins a tale of a utopia gone wrong, satirically undermining the idea of progress as society's white knight.
321 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
About the author
Lauren Beukes
94 books3,108 followersLauren Beukes is an award-winning, best-selling novelist who also writes screenplays, TV shows, comics and journalism. Her books have been translated into 26 languages and have been optioned for film and TV.
Her awards include the Arthur C Clarke Award, the prestigious University of Johannesburg prize, the August Derleth Prize, the Strand Critics Choice Award and the RT Thriller of the Year. She’s been honoured in South Africa’s parliament and most recently won the Mbokondo Award from the Department of Arts and Culture, celebrating women in the arts for her work in the Creative Writing field.
She is the author of Broken Monsters, about art, ambition, damaged people and not-quite-broken cities, The Shining Girls, about a time-travelling serial killer, the nature of violence, and how we are haunted by history, Zoo City, a phantasmagorical noir set in Johannesburg which won the Arthur C Clarke Award and Moxyland, a dystopian political thriller about a corporate apartheid state where people are controlled by their cell phones. Her first book was a feminist pop-history, Maverick: Extraordinary Women From South Africa’s Past, which has recently been reprinted.
Her comics work includes Survivors' Club, an original Vertigo comic with Dale Halvorsen and Ryan Kelly, the New York Times-bestselling graphic novel, Fairest: The Hidden Kingdom with Inaki Miranda, and a Wonder Woman one-shot for kids, “The Trouble With Cats” in Sensation Comics, set in Mozambique and Soweto and drawn by Mike Maihack.
Her film and TV work includes directing the documentary, Glitterboys & Ganglands, about Cape Town’s biggest female impersonation beauty pageant. The film won best LGBT film at the San Diego Black Film Festival.
She was the showrunner on South Africa’s first full length animated TV series, URBO: The Adventures of Pax Afrika which ran for 104 half hour episodes from 2006-2009 on SABC3. She’s also written for the Disney shows Mouk and Florrie’s Dragons and on the satirical political puppet show,ZANews and Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s South African Story.
Before that she was a freelance journalist for eight years, writing about electricity cable thieves, TB, circumcision, telemedicine, great white sharks, homeless sex workers, Botswana’s first female high court judge, and Barbie as a feminist icon for magazines ranging from The Sunday Times Lifestyle to Nature Medicine, Colors, The Big Issue and Marie Claire.
She lives in Cape Town, South Africa with her daughter.
www.laurenbeukes.com
Twitter.com/laurenbeukes Instagram.com/laurenbeukes Facebook.com/laurenbeukes
Awards & Achievements
2015 South Africa’s Mbokondo Award for Women In The Arts: Creative Writing
2014 August Derleth Award for The Shining Girls
2014 Strand Critics Choice Award for The Shining Girls
2014 NPR Best Books of the Year Broken Monsters
2014 LA Times Best Books of the Year Broken Monsters
2013 University of Johannesburg Literature Prize for The Shining Girls
2013 RT Thriller of the Year for The Shining Girls
2013 WHSmith Richard & Judy BookClub Choice
2013 Exclusive Books’ Bookseller’s Choice for The Shining Girls
2013 Amazon Best Mysteries and Thrillers for The Shining Girls
2011 Kitschies Red Tentacle for Zoo City
2010 Arthur C Clarke Award for Zoo City
Her awards include the Arthur C Clarke Award, the prestigious University of Johannesburg prize, the August Derleth Prize, the Strand Critics Choice Award and the RT Thriller of the Year. She’s been honoured in South Africa’s parliament and most recently won the Mbokondo Award from the Department of Arts and Culture, celebrating women in the arts for her work in the Creative Writing field.
She is the author of Broken Monsters, about art, ambition, damaged people and not-quite-broken cities, The Shining Girls, about a time-travelling serial killer, the nature of violence, and how we are haunted by history, Zoo City, a phantasmagorical noir set in Johannesburg which won the Arthur C Clarke Award and Moxyland, a dystopian political thriller about a corporate apartheid state where people are controlled by their cell phones. Her first book was a feminist pop-history, Maverick: Extraordinary Women From South Africa’s Past, which has recently been reprinted.
Her comics work includes Survivors' Club, an original Vertigo comic with Dale Halvorsen and Ryan Kelly, the New York Times-bestselling graphic novel, Fairest: The Hidden Kingdom with Inaki Miranda, and a Wonder Woman one-shot for kids, “The Trouble With Cats” in Sensation Comics, set in Mozambique and Soweto and drawn by Mike Maihack.
Her film and TV work includes directing the documentary, Glitterboys & Ganglands, about Cape Town’s biggest female impersonation beauty pageant. The film won best LGBT film at the San Diego Black Film Festival.
She was the showrunner on South Africa’s first full length animated TV series, URBO: The Adventures of Pax Afrika which ran for 104 half hour episodes from 2006-2009 on SABC3. She’s also written for the Disney shows Mouk and Florrie’s Dragons and on the satirical political puppet show,ZANews and Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s South African Story.
Before that she was a freelance journalist for eight years, writing about electricity cable thieves, TB, circumcision, telemedicine, great white sharks, homeless sex workers, Botswana’s first female high court judge, and Barbie as a feminist icon for magazines ranging from The Sunday Times Lifestyle to Nature Medicine, Colors, The Big Issue and Marie Claire.
She lives in Cape Town, South Africa with her daughter.
www.laurenbeukes.com
Twitter.com/laurenbeukes Instagram.com/laurenbeukes Facebook.com/laurenbeukes
Awards & Achievements
2015 South Africa’s Mbokondo Award for Women In The Arts: Creative Writing
2014 August Derleth Award for The Shining Girls
2014 Strand Critics Choice Award for The Shining Girls
2014 NPR Best Books of the Year Broken Monsters
2014 LA Times Best Books of the Year Broken Monsters
2013 University of Johannesburg Literature Prize for The Shining Girls
2013 RT Thriller of the Year for The Shining Girls
2013 WHSmith Richard & Judy BookClub Choice
2013 Exclusive Books’ Bookseller’s Choice for The Shining Girls
2013 Amazon Best Mysteries and Thrillers for The Shining Girls
2011 Kitschies Red Tentacle for Zoo City
2010 Arthur C Clarke Award for Zoo City
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 525 reviews
August 30, 2020
”And it makes perfect sense. The process has to be managed. Fear has to be managed. Fear has to be controlled.
Like people.”
As people have become more disconnected from reality and spend more and more time in game worlds and social media, these sites have become sanctuaries, more “real” than real life. In the process, people have become so much easier to manipulate.
It is all about who controls the spin.
And about apathy.
Corporations in this dystopia are more powerful than governments. Allegiances to corporations are taken more seriously than any patriotism to countries. Orphaned AIDs babies are grabbed and thrown into corporate schools. Indoctrination and dependency are established early. This might be the future, but it isn’t the far future. I just read an article about the fact that the University of Phoenix wants to get into teaching lower grades. They want to provide an alternative to public school. They plan to have the students jacked into the internet all day, learning online.
The future becomes the present.
Lerato was one of those AIDs babies and now is trying to jostle her way to the top of a massive corporate structure where the higher you go the better the view. She is a brilliant programmer. She is promiscuous with preapproved men from the same corporation, which eliminates the need for signing reams of nondisclosure agreements. She looks down on those normal people who are unassociated with a corporation. I would guess that outlook was encouraged at the corporate school. She is set really. She understands the politics and knows that, even in a group of bright people, she is still a half a step ahead of the rest.
So how does a woman like this get hooked up with a bunch of revolutionaries?
Her connection is Toby. An ex-friend with benefits who has just been cut off by his “motherbitch,” and now he is trying to pick up some extra cash wherever he can. He is constantly streaming video to his podcast, so he is also always looking to make his life more interesting so he can attract more followers, syndicate his stream, and snare some sponsors. He is a bit of an ass, which is probably why his mother cut him off, but from my experience in social media, the bigger an asshole you are the bigger your following. When Tendeka, a rich boy revolutionary, contacts him needing his help, Toby doesn’t give a crap about the revolution. He cares about the added spice it will give his streaming.
They need a programmer's help, and that is where Toby connects Lerato to Tendeka. In that black corporate heart I’d like to think there lurks a bit of humanity, but in reality Lerato is thinking about changing companies and wants to leave with a backdoor she has written into the code that will allow her access into the company software. In other words, she is willing to help because it helps her.
They don’t need your face to know who you are. They know everything they need to know about you from your phone and from your footprints online.
Kendra is the last piece of this jumbled puzzle. She has sold her soul to a corporate sponsor, which is actually kind of sad because out of the four main characters in this book she is probably the only one who actually has a soul worth owning. She is a photographer, one who uses real film, nothing digital for her, and the film she is able to procure is old and unreliable, which actually helps to give her photos many more unexpected, artistic elements.
The corporation shot her up with nanobits that keep her from getting sick and give her beautiful body an added healthy glow. Their logo radiates beneath her skin. Worked into the potent mixture they give her is also an addiction to a new soft drink they want to market called Ghost. They want this lovely woman with ”hair streaked in fat chunks of copper and chocolate” to be seen drinking their product. Not only drinking it, but craving it. She is a walking advertisement.
She meets Toby and gets snared in the mess he seems hardwired to always find.
The police have dogs that are controlled by some of those same nanobits swimming around in Kendra’s blood. These modified dogs are used to secure people who have stepped outside of the rules. The police also have the ability to DEFUSE a person, which means locking up the chip in their phone and making it impossible for them to go online or even open doors in the physical world. It completely cuts them off from the online culture. Life becomes very real at that point.
Can you imagine if punishment entailed cutting off people from Facebook, Twitter, online gaming and gambling, and *gasp* Goodreads? Can you image the reaction? Mass hysteria, contemplations of suicide, people wandering aimlessly muttering to themselves, dramatic homicide rate increases, and prayers lifted to the demigod called INTERNET.
*Shudder* it is too terrible to consider.
One of the games that Toby accesses is called Moxyland, and the moment he enters, even though this is really supposed to be a kid’s game, the other more experienced players attack him, beating him up. They routinely thrash any new players. Mob mentality, we can’t seem to escape it even online. Our worst traits in real life appear online, only magnified by the power of ten by the anonymity that hiding behind avatars gives people.
The four main characters all come together in one desperate bid to try and change the world. The question will be, is resistance futile, assimilate or DIE?
Lauren Beukes looks like the nerdy cute girl next door, but in that mind lurks some dark, dark thoughts.
Lauren Beukes presents a dystopia that is not far from where we are now. I’ve been harboring fears for many years that corporations would give up any pretense of allowing governments to exist. This book was an all too real version of a future I hope I don’t have to see realized, but I worry that we are almost there now. While reading, I kept having flashbacks to early William Gibson novels, made more current with a flashy slang created by Beukes. Don’t let the slang bother you; I soon caught the groove. There is plenty of social commentary layered into the plot. This world she has created is not a stretch for the imagination, which makes it all the more terrifying.
Addendum: A few weeks ago my company had a Strategic Planning Session with a facilitator. The facilitator told us that she had a tattoo of her corporate logo on her arm and asked us what sort of tattoo design we would envision for our company logo. I thought it was odd, but after reading Moxyland, now I think it was the future finding me in the present.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
Like people.”
As people have become more disconnected from reality and spend more and more time in game worlds and social media, these sites have become sanctuaries, more “real” than real life. In the process, people have become so much easier to manipulate.
It is all about who controls the spin.
And about apathy.
Corporations in this dystopia are more powerful than governments. Allegiances to corporations are taken more seriously than any patriotism to countries. Orphaned AIDs babies are grabbed and thrown into corporate schools. Indoctrination and dependency are established early. This might be the future, but it isn’t the far future. I just read an article about the fact that the University of Phoenix wants to get into teaching lower grades. They want to provide an alternative to public school. They plan to have the students jacked into the internet all day, learning online.
The future becomes the present.
Lerato was one of those AIDs babies and now is trying to jostle her way to the top of a massive corporate structure where the higher you go the better the view. She is a brilliant programmer. She is promiscuous with preapproved men from the same corporation, which eliminates the need for signing reams of nondisclosure agreements. She looks down on those normal people who are unassociated with a corporation. I would guess that outlook was encouraged at the corporate school. She is set really. She understands the politics and knows that, even in a group of bright people, she is still a half a step ahead of the rest.
So how does a woman like this get hooked up with a bunch of revolutionaries?
Her connection is Toby. An ex-friend with benefits who has just been cut off by his “motherbitch,” and now he is trying to pick up some extra cash wherever he can. He is constantly streaming video to his podcast, so he is also always looking to make his life more interesting so he can attract more followers, syndicate his stream, and snare some sponsors. He is a bit of an ass, which is probably why his mother cut him off, but from my experience in social media, the bigger an asshole you are the bigger your following. When Tendeka, a rich boy revolutionary, contacts him needing his help, Toby doesn’t give a crap about the revolution. He cares about the added spice it will give his streaming.
They need a programmer's help, and that is where Toby connects Lerato to Tendeka. In that black corporate heart I’d like to think there lurks a bit of humanity, but in reality Lerato is thinking about changing companies and wants to leave with a backdoor she has written into the code that will allow her access into the company software. In other words, she is willing to help because it helps her.
They don’t need your face to know who you are. They know everything they need to know about you from your phone and from your footprints online.
Kendra is the last piece of this jumbled puzzle. She has sold her soul to a corporate sponsor, which is actually kind of sad because out of the four main characters in this book she is probably the only one who actually has a soul worth owning. She is a photographer, one who uses real film, nothing digital for her, and the film she is able to procure is old and unreliable, which actually helps to give her photos many more unexpected, artistic elements.
The corporation shot her up with nanobits that keep her from getting sick and give her beautiful body an added healthy glow. Their logo radiates beneath her skin. Worked into the potent mixture they give her is also an addiction to a new soft drink they want to market called Ghost. They want this lovely woman with ”hair streaked in fat chunks of copper and chocolate” to be seen drinking their product. Not only drinking it, but craving it. She is a walking advertisement.
She meets Toby and gets snared in the mess he seems hardwired to always find.
The police have dogs that are controlled by some of those same nanobits swimming around in Kendra’s blood. These modified dogs are used to secure people who have stepped outside of the rules. The police also have the ability to DEFUSE a person, which means locking up the chip in their phone and making it impossible for them to go online or even open doors in the physical world. It completely cuts them off from the online culture. Life becomes very real at that point.
Can you imagine if punishment entailed cutting off people from Facebook, Twitter, online gaming and gambling, and *gasp* Goodreads? Can you image the reaction? Mass hysteria, contemplations of suicide, people wandering aimlessly muttering to themselves, dramatic homicide rate increases, and prayers lifted to the demigod called INTERNET.
*Shudder* it is too terrible to consider.
One of the games that Toby accesses is called Moxyland, and the moment he enters, even though this is really supposed to be a kid’s game, the other more experienced players attack him, beating him up. They routinely thrash any new players. Mob mentality, we can’t seem to escape it even online. Our worst traits in real life appear online, only magnified by the power of ten by the anonymity that hiding behind avatars gives people.
The four main characters all come together in one desperate bid to try and change the world. The question will be, is resistance futile, assimilate or DIE?
Lauren Beukes looks like the nerdy cute girl next door, but in that mind lurks some dark, dark thoughts.
Lauren Beukes presents a dystopia that is not far from where we are now. I’ve been harboring fears for many years that corporations would give up any pretense of allowing governments to exist. This book was an all too real version of a future I hope I don’t have to see realized, but I worry that we are almost there now. While reading, I kept having flashbacks to early William Gibson novels, made more current with a flashy slang created by Beukes. Don’t let the slang bother you; I soon caught the groove. There is plenty of social commentary layered into the plot. This world she has created is not a stretch for the imagination, which makes it all the more terrifying.
Addendum: A few weeks ago my company had a Strategic Planning Session with a facilitator. The facilitator told us that she had a tattoo of her corporate logo on her arm and asked us what sort of tattoo design we would envision for our company logo. I thought it was odd, but after reading Moxyland, now I think it was the future finding me in the present.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
October 13, 2019
4.5 "dynamic dystopian DY-NO-MITE!!!" stars.
2016 Honorable Mention
My faith in dystopian literature is restored :)
Since high school I have been searching and yearning for books as good as 1984 and Brave New World.
This book came mighty damn close. This is Ms. Beukes' debut novel. She had previously been a South African journalist and many of you have read her The Shining Girls.
She is a writing dynamo. I am falling in love with South African writers this year. Earlier I discovered Malla Nunn who wrote the most wonderful police procedural and now Ms. Beukes.
This book scared the bejezus out of me as well as helping me reflect on the mess of our current world as well as making me cry for the "disaster" we are as a species. Powerful and highly stylized writing make this book a pleasure to read.
The story follows 4 twenty-somethings in urban South Africa as they try to usurp and rebel against a corporate right wing police autocratic state in various ways. One is an artist, another a DJ, another an activist and lastly a corporate whiz. They are all acquaintances/friends and their lives intersect in many interesting and fascinating ways.
The book builds slowly and the climax is so intense, frightening and plausible that I was quaking in my galoshes.
I am so happy that I have her bookBroken Monsters on my shortlist.
Ms. Beukes you are awesome and thank you for writing this amazing dystopian nightmare!!!
2016 Honorable Mention
My faith in dystopian literature is restored :)
Since high school I have been searching and yearning for books as good as 1984 and Brave New World.
This book came mighty damn close. This is Ms. Beukes' debut novel. She had previously been a South African journalist and many of you have read her The Shining Girls.
She is a writing dynamo. I am falling in love with South African writers this year. Earlier I discovered Malla Nunn who wrote the most wonderful police procedural and now Ms. Beukes.
This book scared the bejezus out of me as well as helping me reflect on the mess of our current world as well as making me cry for the "disaster" we are as a species. Powerful and highly stylized writing make this book a pleasure to read.
The story follows 4 twenty-somethings in urban South Africa as they try to usurp and rebel against a corporate right wing police autocratic state in various ways. One is an artist, another a DJ, another an activist and lastly a corporate whiz. They are all acquaintances/friends and their lives intersect in many interesting and fascinating ways.
The book builds slowly and the climax is so intense, frightening and plausible that I was quaking in my galoshes.
I am so happy that I have her bookBroken Monsters on my shortlist.
Ms. Beukes you are awesome and thank you for writing this amazing dystopian nightmare!!!
February 9, 2017
I really enjoyed this novel.
The setup was pure near-future SF with nice thriller/horror undertones, kinda a mix between Stross's Rule 34 with some vintage William Gibson, and finishing with a really nice twist. What was most scary about it was how realistic and how very *possible* it is.
But setup and plot is only part of what makes this book great. In the end, I can't help but think only wonderful thoughts about all the characters I got to live vicariously through. I've read Broken Monsters and loved it for it's characters, too. Both of these are very different beasts, of course, with this one being firmly SF, but I also loved her rich and vivid treatment of her characters. They are so completely memorable, even now, and can't help but be very impressed that she pulled it off again for such a new and varied cast, here.
Any tale is going to be extremely rich and memorable in direct proportion to how well the characters are drawn, and I can honestly say that I'm blown away. I loved these guys and gals. I'm also horrified. It's not like they were shining examples of anything except being people, with all the good and the bad, but I'm still left almost speechless by the results.
And the twist.
I can't wait to keep reading everything she's put out. I'm now officially hooked. Not only are the characters brilliant, but the plots are truly fine and the implications truly scary. I wasn't able to put the novel down and I was very engrossed. Total Entertainment. :)
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC!
The setup was pure near-future SF with nice thriller/horror undertones, kinda a mix between Stross's Rule 34 with some vintage William Gibson, and finishing with a really nice twist. What was most scary about it was how realistic and how very *possible* it is.
But setup and plot is only part of what makes this book great. In the end, I can't help but think only wonderful thoughts about all the characters I got to live vicariously through. I've read Broken Monsters and loved it for it's characters, too. Both of these are very different beasts, of course, with this one being firmly SF, but I also loved her rich and vivid treatment of her characters. They are so completely memorable, even now, and can't help but be very impressed that she pulled it off again for such a new and varied cast, here.
Any tale is going to be extremely rich and memorable in direct proportion to how well the characters are drawn, and I can honestly say that I'm blown away. I loved these guys and gals. I'm also horrified. It's not like they were shining examples of anything except being people, with all the good and the bad, but I'm still left almost speechless by the results.
And the twist.
I can't wait to keep reading everything she's put out. I'm now officially hooked. Not only are the characters brilliant, but the plots are truly fine and the implications truly scary. I wasn't able to put the novel down and I was very engrossed. Total Entertainment. :)
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC!
September 8, 2016
Upon finishing this book, I was in equal parts delighted (it rocks!) and dismayed: It was first published EIGHT YEARS ago and I didn't know about it until now? Luckily, it's just been reissued, so likely a lot more people will be discovering it. Hopefully, the marketing will be hitting the right target audience this time (the aesthetics of the covers this book has been issued with really don't fit the content well).
Basically, anyone who loves William Gibson should have this book forcefully shoved into their faces, and they should have to walk around with a book up in their face until they agree to sit down and read it. Immediately. It also brought to mind Daryl Gregory's 'Afterparty,' a bit. (Another great book!)
Our main character here is Kendra, a talented art photographer in a near-future, dystopian Johannesburg. However, talent doesn't mean she doesn't wrestle with her own demons. Her insecurities are part of why she's agreed to be a corporate 'spokesperson' for a popular soft drink - a procedure that involves being injected with nanotech that gives her a glowing 'tattoo' of the company logo, may provide here with medical benefits (if there aren't unforeseen side effects), and oh yes, gives her an addiction to the drink, which now affects her like a drug.
We also meet Lerato, a corporate climber of the desperately ambitious sort. In this future, corporate employees are strictly segregated from 'civilians,' and are expected to be loyal to their employers until death. Defection - or merely spilling proprietary information - can be punished by death. Nevertheless, Lerato knows she didn't get to where she is, from her childhood as an AIDS orphan, by following the rules. Maybe she even enjoys breaking rules for the thrill... she's certainly willing to do it for her party buddy, Toby...
Toby is a trust-fund brat who feels the world (especially, his mom) owes him everything, and his main goal is partying. He slums as a DJ at the city's hottest nightclubs and runs a sleazy podcast. His best friend is Tendeka - and the reader quickly sees what neither young man does: they fundamentally don't understand one another.
Tendeka is a hard-core social revolutionary. Everything he does is done with the ultimate goal in mind of opening people's eyes to the corporatocracy that surrounds them, and the fascistic control that they live under. After all, people can't really live without their cell phones and that essential link to social media, can they? They wouldn't be able to function. And in this future, all cell phones have a required feature, kind of like a Taser, that basically allows the police to electrocute you at will and cut you off from all your online resources. Tendeka is busy planning revolutionary actions - but he's also being directed, even pushed, by a mysterious online contact whose real identity he doesn't know. His zeal is his weakness.
Meanwhile, Toby just goes along with Tendeka's plans because they seem like fun pranks. He's got the resources, and the contacts (Lerato) to make them happen. But all of them are in over their heads, even if they don't realize it yet. And when Kendra meets Toby one night, she's bound to get pulled in too...
Did I say yet, this book is AMAZING? Go read it!
Many, many thanks to NetGalley and Mulholland Books for the eBook. As always, my opinions are solely my own.
Basically, anyone who loves William Gibson should have this book forcefully shoved into their faces, and they should have to walk around with a book up in their face until they agree to sit down and read it. Immediately. It also brought to mind Daryl Gregory's 'Afterparty,' a bit. (Another great book!)
Our main character here is Kendra, a talented art photographer in a near-future, dystopian Johannesburg. However, talent doesn't mean she doesn't wrestle with her own demons. Her insecurities are part of why she's agreed to be a corporate 'spokesperson' for a popular soft drink - a procedure that involves being injected with nanotech that gives her a glowing 'tattoo' of the company logo, may provide here with medical benefits (if there aren't unforeseen side effects), and oh yes, gives her an addiction to the drink, which now affects her like a drug.
We also meet Lerato, a corporate climber of the desperately ambitious sort. In this future, corporate employees are strictly segregated from 'civilians,' and are expected to be loyal to their employers until death. Defection - or merely spilling proprietary information - can be punished by death. Nevertheless, Lerato knows she didn't get to where she is, from her childhood as an AIDS orphan, by following the rules. Maybe she even enjoys breaking rules for the thrill... she's certainly willing to do it for her party buddy, Toby...
Toby is a trust-fund brat who feels the world (especially, his mom) owes him everything, and his main goal is partying. He slums as a DJ at the city's hottest nightclubs and runs a sleazy podcast. His best friend is Tendeka - and the reader quickly sees what neither young man does: they fundamentally don't understand one another.
Tendeka is a hard-core social revolutionary. Everything he does is done with the ultimate goal in mind of opening people's eyes to the corporatocracy that surrounds them, and the fascistic control that they live under. After all, people can't really live without their cell phones and that essential link to social media, can they? They wouldn't be able to function. And in this future, all cell phones have a required feature, kind of like a Taser, that basically allows the police to electrocute you at will and cut you off from all your online resources. Tendeka is busy planning revolutionary actions - but he's also being directed, even pushed, by a mysterious online contact whose real identity he doesn't know. His zeal is his weakness.
Meanwhile, Toby just goes along with Tendeka's plans because they seem like fun pranks. He's got the resources, and the contacts (Lerato) to make them happen. But all of them are in over their heads, even if they don't realize it yet. And when Kendra meets Toby one night, she's bound to get pulled in too...
Did I say yet, this book is AMAZING? Go read it!
Many, many thanks to NetGalley and Mulholland Books for the eBook. As always, my opinions are solely my own.
March 21, 2018
I am changing up my genres and trying new authors which was one of my reading resolutions for 2018. Moxyland takes place in Cape Town, South Africa, in a not-too-distant dystopian future. The story is told through 4 points of view, 2 men and 2 women. My major criticism is that one of the men (Toby) a dj/sorta you-tuber (but of course never called that)/gamer/cut off trust fund kid, uses "future-speak" slang words that I totally do not understand so I had a hard time following the story when he was speaking. Some words I just did not get at all, even presented in the context of the story. (Once again, you're old, Ma.)
This Cape Town is a police state run by a Big Brother type corporation. EVERYTHING is tied to your cell phone. Not only is your bank account accessed through it, physical access to your home, transportation, admittance to certain areas, all through your phone. The Police can taser you through your cell phone, then "disconnect" you, sending the police log out for everyone to read, leaving you homeless, with no money, and no means to get help.
I can't say anything more because to get into specifics would ruin the story. I will say I found this to be a scary scenario, a very plausible scenario, and definitely not centuries away. I finished the book last night and found myself thinking about it off and on throughout my day today. It really makes you think about a lot of things, about technology, and how dependent we are on it -- especially our children. The fact that this story is about very young adults is certainly telling.
I quote Lauren Beukes herself, "The thing is that it's all possible, especially if we're willing to trade away our rights for convenience, for the illusion of security. Our very own bright and shiny dystopia is only ever one totalitarian government away."
This Cape Town is a police state run by a Big Brother type corporation. EVERYTHING is tied to your cell phone. Not only is your bank account accessed through it, physical access to your home, transportation, admittance to certain areas, all through your phone. The Police can taser you through your cell phone, then "disconnect" you, sending the police log out for everyone to read, leaving you homeless, with no money, and no means to get help.
I can't say anything more because to get into specifics would ruin the story. I will say I found this to be a scary scenario, a very plausible scenario, and definitely not centuries away. I finished the book last night and found myself thinking about it off and on throughout my day today. It really makes you think about a lot of things, about technology, and how dependent we are on it -- especially our children. The fact that this story is about very young adults is certainly telling.
I quote Lauren Beukes herself, "The thing is that it's all possible, especially if we're willing to trade away our rights for convenience, for the illusion of security. Our very own bright and shiny dystopia is only ever one totalitarian government away."
June 13, 2015
7.11.14: I am shell shocked. I love and hate this book at the same time, I hate it because of what it is but I love it because of how it was put together, the story woven from four different threads into a whole. A full review is to come but for now, crap, for now I'm going to curl up in a ball and stare at a wall and think.
The Review:
rating: 4.75/5 (rounded up)
I loved this book more than I initially thought I would. I love her use of a futuristic slang. It was a bit difficult to get into it for the first few chapters but it transported me into another place and time. It was wonderful to submerge myself into Beukes' unique style.
Her characters are immature, self-absorbed, and cynical just like so many jaded young adults these days. I know people just like them (scary). Toby is a rich spoiled brat into drugs, video games, women, and living comfortably. Ten has ideals, he also has the desire to fight for those ideals. But he takes it too far and becomes a fanatic, a terrorist. Lerato is a corporate ladder climber. She hates corporations but is too comfortable in her lifestyle to do anything more than small anonymous sabotage and espionage. I think I understand her the most; being sucked in by the system, seeing her descent into becoming someone she doesn't recognize but not being able to let go of everything she has worked for. Yeah, I've been there before. And Kendra, who has always depended on someone, tries to gain independence without realizing that she's just moving from under one's dominion into another one even more dangerous.
This is a novel that, despite being character driven, is not in essence about the characters. This futuristic dystopia is a criticism of us, our society, corporate control, learned helplessness, directionless desire for change... So, these concepts aren't the most original, especially within cyberpunk but they are so popular because chillingly they could be our near future. And it does shed a different light on them. It is a psychological exploration of our collective mind, a commentary on the psyche of a generation.
I think my only issue was the setting. I loved it... Cape Town, South Africa. But it seems like Beukes didn't exploit such an exotic and unique location to its full potential. Yes, it could have been more vivid in that regard, but I still loved the ride and the ending left me shattered.
The Review:
rating: 4.75/5 (rounded up)
I loved this book more than I initially thought I would. I love her use of a futuristic slang. It was a bit difficult to get into it for the first few chapters but it transported me into another place and time. It was wonderful to submerge myself into Beukes' unique style.
Her characters are immature, self-absorbed, and cynical just like so many jaded young adults these days. I know people just like them (scary). Toby is a rich spoiled brat into drugs, video games, women, and living comfortably. Ten has ideals, he also has the desire to fight for those ideals. But he takes it too far and becomes a fanatic, a terrorist. Lerato is a corporate ladder climber. She hates corporations but is too comfortable in her lifestyle to do anything more than small anonymous sabotage and espionage. I think I understand her the most; being sucked in by the system, seeing her descent into becoming someone she doesn't recognize but not being able to let go of everything she has worked for. Yeah, I've been there before. And Kendra, who has always depended on someone, tries to gain independence without realizing that she's just moving from under one's dominion into another one even more dangerous.
This is a novel that, despite being character driven, is not in essence about the characters. This futuristic dystopia is a criticism of us, our society, corporate control, learned helplessness, directionless desire for change... So, these concepts aren't the most original, especially within cyberpunk but they are so popular because chillingly they could be our near future. And it does shed a different light on them. It is a psychological exploration of our collective mind, a commentary on the psyche of a generation.
I think my only issue was the setting. I loved it... Cape Town, South Africa. But it seems like Beukes didn't exploit such an exotic and unique location to its full potential. Yes, it could have been more vivid in that regard, but I still loved the ride and the ending left me shattered.
May 19, 2014
I ended up reading two of Beukes' books in fairly short order, but the first one last. They're not in a series, so that isn't the issue. What is is how assured her debut novel is. It really took my breath away, and the ending was so stunningly well-realized and dark as hell that it knocked me for a loop for a while.
Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
August 29, 2014
It starts with a shot. As soon as the needle pricks her skin, Kendra’s bloodstream is flooded with corporate-sponsored nanobots that will invade her system and harmonize with it, protecting her from disease, clarifying her skin, and even making her literally glow. They will also make her a part of a new viral ad campaign for the soft drink Ghost, give her an unquenchable craving for the product, and brand her with a ghost logo that glows beneath her skin. In Kendra’s world, selling one’s soul and identity to corporate industry is nothing new. Aidsbabies grow up in worker schools that are mined for talent by the corporations. Mobiles are tied to identities and equipped with “defusers” that can effectively taser the user at the behest of Corporate. The greatest punishment of all, however, is disconnection from the network. Losing your phone means losing your id chip, your ability to enter and exit doors, your ability to pay and purchase, your ability to receive or deliver news.
Unlike Kendra, Tendeka has no desire to bow down to corporate law. Inspired by a mysterious online contact, he decides to lead his own revolt against the corporate powers who have a stranglehold over the city. His actions will kick off a chain of events that will affect even the corporate-insulated Kendra.
The story is told from four apparently only tangentially-related perspectives, but as the story proceeds, the characters’ lives begin to intersect. Curiosity, boredom, and the promise of a good story lead Toby, an easy-going rich-boy podcaster, to provide Tendeka with rather half-hearted aid in his rebellion. When Tendeka’s project starts to require a bit of sophisticated hacking, Toby ropes in his old friend, Lerato, a programmer for a massive powerhouse corporation. Toby finally runs into Kendra, and again scenting a story, ends up dragging her into more trouble than she can possibly imagine.
Each of the characters provides a radically different set of motivations and perspectives. Kendra is the innocent, so “terrified of losing anything” that she spends her life trying to capture those fleeting moments on film. She is the only one of the four to follow the corporate edicts and literally swallow their dogma. Tendeka is initially unbending in his repudiation of the current system, considering it a “moral stand” worth the sacrifice of everything. Lerato grew up as an aidsbaby in a corporate working school and will do anything to get ahead and escape her past. She is willing to play the game but is always on the lookout for ways to cheat. Although his attitude is superficially similar to Lerato’s, Tendeka was born with a silver spoon and the assumption that the rules simply do not apply to him. While I found it rather difficult to fully sympathise with any of the characters, I do think they serve the narrative well. Moxyland is a story about perspectives, about media spin and the control of ideas and emotions, and these four disparate viewpoints add depth to the theme.
At the same time, I do think that Moxyland is a less mature effort than Zoo City, with a noticeably less well-developed world. Personally, I’m a bit sceptical that we’ll end up depending completely on phones; I’d predict bionics or at least computerized contact lenses would happen before all of the infrastructure is completely dependent upon mobile devices. The defusers, too, were a little problematic: why don’t people wrap their phones in insulation or at least drop them when they’re about to go off? It’s not like anything is physically attached. There were several other plot points and aspects of the worldbuilding that remained unexplained. As with Zoo City, I was also rather disconcerted to discover that, yet again, Beukes doesn’t really touch any of the racial issues that would seem to be inherent in a political and socioeconomic struggle in a near-future Cape Town.
Beukes’ style is apparently one that you’ll either love or hate, and I was fortunate enough to thoroughly enjoy it. As always, the book has a few quotable gems. One of my favourites:
And as for the title? One of the games that Toby plays is called Moxyland. It appears friendly and cute and fuzzy, and there are bright colours and kindly guides who spout rules and rhyming aphorisms. But the second you enter the game, gangs of older, more experienced players band together to take down the n00b:
Welcome to Moxyland.
Excerpted from my review on BookLikes, which contains additional quotes and spoiler-tagged sections, mainly because I'm too lazy to copy them over.
Unlike Kendra, Tendeka has no desire to bow down to corporate law. Inspired by a mysterious online contact, he decides to lead his own revolt against the corporate powers who have a stranglehold over the city. His actions will kick off a chain of events that will affect even the corporate-insulated Kendra.
The story is told from four apparently only tangentially-related perspectives, but as the story proceeds, the characters’ lives begin to intersect. Curiosity, boredom, and the promise of a good story lead Toby, an easy-going rich-boy podcaster, to provide Tendeka with rather half-hearted aid in his rebellion. When Tendeka’s project starts to require a bit of sophisticated hacking, Toby ropes in his old friend, Lerato, a programmer for a massive powerhouse corporation. Toby finally runs into Kendra, and again scenting a story, ends up dragging her into more trouble than she can possibly imagine.
Each of the characters provides a radically different set of motivations and perspectives. Kendra is the innocent, so “terrified of losing anything” that she spends her life trying to capture those fleeting moments on film. She is the only one of the four to follow the corporate edicts and literally swallow their dogma. Tendeka is initially unbending in his repudiation of the current system, considering it a “moral stand” worth the sacrifice of everything. Lerato grew up as an aidsbaby in a corporate working school and will do anything to get ahead and escape her past. She is willing to play the game but is always on the lookout for ways to cheat. Although his attitude is superficially similar to Lerato’s, Tendeka was born with a silver spoon and the assumption that the rules simply do not apply to him. While I found it rather difficult to fully sympathise with any of the characters, I do think they serve the narrative well. Moxyland is a story about perspectives, about media spin and the control of ideas and emotions, and these four disparate viewpoints add depth to the theme.
At the same time, I do think that Moxyland is a less mature effort than Zoo City, with a noticeably less well-developed world. Personally, I’m a bit sceptical that we’ll end up depending completely on phones; I’d predict bionics or at least computerized contact lenses would happen before all of the infrastructure is completely dependent upon mobile devices. The defusers, too, were a little problematic: why don’t people wrap their phones in insulation or at least drop them when they’re about to go off? It’s not like anything is physically attached. There were several other plot points and aspects of the worldbuilding that remained unexplained. As with Zoo City, I was also rather disconcerted to discover that, yet again, Beukes doesn’t really touch any of the racial issues that would seem to be inherent in a political and socioeconomic struggle in a near-future Cape Town.
Beukes’ style is apparently one that you’ll either love or hate, and I was fortunate enough to thoroughly enjoy it. As always, the book has a few quotable gems. One of my favourites:
“Humanity is innately damaged. It’s a flaw in the design code. We’re weak. We’re fallible. We need to be told what to do, to be kept in line.”One of the best aspects of the book was also its heart: the exploration of the ways that truth can be intentionally reshaped by emotion and perspective. As one character notes,
“Fear has to be managed. Fear has to be controlled. Like people.”
And as for the title? One of the games that Toby plays is called Moxyland. It appears friendly and cute and fuzzy, and there are bright colours and kindly guides who spout rules and rhyming aphorisms. But the second you enter the game, gangs of older, more experienced players band together to take down the n00b:
“It's not about making friends with kids all over the world, it's about getting ahead, getting one over.”No matter how well-laid your scheme and how advanced you think your play might be, you won't get past them.
Welcome to Moxyland.
Excerpted from my review on BookLikes, which contains additional quotes and spoiler-tagged sections, mainly because I'm too lazy to copy them over.
November 15, 2011
ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.
Every once in a while a novel comes along that’s touted as new, exciting, daring, meaningful, poignant, fresh, full of big ideas, etc. That’s what I’ve heard, so that’s what I was expecting and hoping for in Lauren Beukes’ novel Moxyland — especially since it has a nice blurb from William Gibson and has been compared to Neuromancer.
Moxyland takes place in a futuristic (2018) Cape Town, South Africa. The Cape Town setting is unique, and I was hoping to explore it a bit, but Beukes did not make use of her setting — Moxyland could have taken place anywhere. This Cape Town of the not-too-distant future is a police state run by big corporations where the police control people through government-approved cell phones. Software on the phones lets the police punish citizens by tasing them or cutting off access to their bank accounts and credit lines. In Cape Town, we meet four young adults:
Kendra is an art school dropout who has become an advertisement for a soft drink company. They pumped her up with biotechnology that makes her healthy and beautiful and gives her some of the attention she craves, but the biotech also makes its brand name glow through her skin and gives her a constant craving for their soda. Toby is a vlogger whose wealthy mother (“motherbitch”) has just cut him off because he spends all his money on drugs, girls, and expensive clothes. Eager for the website hits that prove people are paying attention to him, he spends his days walking around Cape Town looking for cool stuff to livestream to his vlog, “Diary of Cunt.” Lerato is an AIDS-baby who was raised in a corporate/government orphanage. She now works for them as a programmer, and she’s got an easy life in the posh corporate world, but she can’t quite manage to stay loyal to the corporation that’s given her everything she’s got. Tendeka wants to be a revolutionary, so he rallies kids, coerces them into not accepting government sponsorships, and uses them to commit useless acts of vandalism and civil disobedience. He manages to pull Toby, Lareto, and Kendra into his latest schemes against the Cape Town government.
These four young disillusioned people can’t manage to effectively change their world or their places in it. They have no noble ideology (beyond the vague feeling that things should just be “different” than they are), and the things they do just end up causing more harm than good. They are ineffective when they attempt to rage against the corporate machine because they are selfish and thoughtless and they refuse to give up what the corporation offers — technology, fashion, status, their favorite soda, and the feeling of being connected.
I like this idea, but I didn’t like Moxyland mostly for the simple reason that I despised every character in the book. Every single one of them was pathetic, hateful, nasty, rude, cynical, sarcastic, and said “fuck” nearly every time they opened their mouths. Not only did I dislike them and think they were pathetic — they all had these same feelings toward each other. They all irritated me and each other and it was pure misery to be around them.
But that’s the point, isn’t it? Lauren Beukes wanted me to dislike all her characters and was, therefore, successful in that aspect of her novel. Because they are such a loathsome bunch of people, I cannot sympathize with them. In fact, I start to root for the corporation instead. I think this is the message, the warning: If we buy into what the corporation is selling, we should expect to become pathetically horrid creatures who deserve to be at its mercy. I like this message, but I spent eight hours with my face contorted into a grimace of disgust and I wish I had that time back. Moxyland would have worked better for me if there had been just one character who was different and who I could like. Instead, they all felt like nearly the same nasty person to me. They all had the same voice.
I listened to Brilliance Audio’s version of Moxyland, narrated by New Zealand actor Nico Evers-Swindell, who’s just as nice to listen to as he is to look at, though he needs to work on making his female characters sound more feminine. Brilliance Audio, I’m glad to see that you’re producing Angry Robot titles, but next time would you please include a picture of Nico on the back of the CD box? You usually have a picture of the narrator but his face is missing from Moxyland, just like the faceless people in the cover art. That way, if I don’t like the story, at least I can entertain myself by looking at Nico. Thanks for listening.
Lauren Beukes is talented and I think she accomplished what she wanted to with Moxyland. I can’t really blame her for not writing it for me, and my 2.5 star rating reflects my lack of enjoyment of this novel and not Ms. Beukes’ promise as a new SF author. Therefore, I am definitely on board for the next Beukes novel. In fact, Zoo City is already in my TBR pile.
Every once in a while a novel comes along that’s touted as new, exciting, daring, meaningful, poignant, fresh, full of big ideas, etc. That’s what I’ve heard, so that’s what I was expecting and hoping for in Lauren Beukes’ novel Moxyland — especially since it has a nice blurb from William Gibson and has been compared to Neuromancer.
Moxyland takes place in a futuristic (2018) Cape Town, South Africa. The Cape Town setting is unique, and I was hoping to explore it a bit, but Beukes did not make use of her setting — Moxyland could have taken place anywhere. This Cape Town of the not-too-distant future is a police state run by big corporations where the police control people through government-approved cell phones. Software on the phones lets the police punish citizens by tasing them or cutting off access to their bank accounts and credit lines. In Cape Town, we meet four young adults:
Kendra is an art school dropout who has become an advertisement for a soft drink company. They pumped her up with biotechnology that makes her healthy and beautiful and gives her some of the attention she craves, but the biotech also makes its brand name glow through her skin and gives her a constant craving for their soda. Toby is a vlogger whose wealthy mother (“motherbitch”) has just cut him off because he spends all his money on drugs, girls, and expensive clothes. Eager for the website hits that prove people are paying attention to him, he spends his days walking around Cape Town looking for cool stuff to livestream to his vlog, “Diary of Cunt.” Lerato is an AIDS-baby who was raised in a corporate/government orphanage. She now works for them as a programmer, and she’s got an easy life in the posh corporate world, but she can’t quite manage to stay loyal to the corporation that’s given her everything she’s got. Tendeka wants to be a revolutionary, so he rallies kids, coerces them into not accepting government sponsorships, and uses them to commit useless acts of vandalism and civil disobedience. He manages to pull Toby, Lareto, and Kendra into his latest schemes against the Cape Town government.
These four young disillusioned people can’t manage to effectively change their world or their places in it. They have no noble ideology (beyond the vague feeling that things should just be “different” than they are), and the things they do just end up causing more harm than good. They are ineffective when they attempt to rage against the corporate machine because they are selfish and thoughtless and they refuse to give up what the corporation offers — technology, fashion, status, their favorite soda, and the feeling of being connected.
I like this idea, but I didn’t like Moxyland mostly for the simple reason that I despised every character in the book. Every single one of them was pathetic, hateful, nasty, rude, cynical, sarcastic, and said “fuck” nearly every time they opened their mouths. Not only did I dislike them and think they were pathetic — they all had these same feelings toward each other. They all irritated me and each other and it was pure misery to be around them.
But that’s the point, isn’t it? Lauren Beukes wanted me to dislike all her characters and was, therefore, successful in that aspect of her novel. Because they are such a loathsome bunch of people, I cannot sympathize with them. In fact, I start to root for the corporation instead. I think this is the message, the warning: If we buy into what the corporation is selling, we should expect to become pathetically horrid creatures who deserve to be at its mercy. I like this message, but I spent eight hours with my face contorted into a grimace of disgust and I wish I had that time back. Moxyland would have worked better for me if there had been just one character who was different and who I could like. Instead, they all felt like nearly the same nasty person to me. They all had the same voice.
I listened to Brilliance Audio’s version of Moxyland, narrated by New Zealand actor Nico Evers-Swindell, who’s just as nice to listen to as he is to look at, though he needs to work on making his female characters sound more feminine. Brilliance Audio, I’m glad to see that you’re producing Angry Robot titles, but next time would you please include a picture of Nico on the back of the CD box? You usually have a picture of the narrator but his face is missing from Moxyland, just like the faceless people in the cover art. That way, if I don’t like the story, at least I can entertain myself by looking at Nico. Thanks for listening.
Lauren Beukes is talented and I think she accomplished what she wanted to with Moxyland. I can’t really blame her for not writing it for me, and my 2.5 star rating reflects my lack of enjoyment of this novel and not Ms. Beukes’ promise as a new SF author. Therefore, I am definitely on board for the next Beukes novel. In fact, Zoo City is already in my TBR pile.
January 12, 2012
Before I had even finished Moxyland I was trawling GoodReads for more of the same, which should give you some indication of how thoroughly I enjoyed it. Beukes has seamlessly meshed current technology, pop culture and existing societal issues, set it in a future dystopian South Africa and arrived at genuinely entertaining and thoroughly believable read. I found myself Googling elements of the story all the way through to see which were based in reality, and was equally impressed and horrified to find that pretty much ALL of them were.
My one (minor) complaint would be that there was a somewhat unexplained development at the end of the book, which suggested a likely sequel although there hasn't been one to date. I don't mind drawing my own conclusions, though.
All things considered, this is a fantastic novel and a rare cyberpunk find. It's not overwhelming with it's jargon or technical descriptions, it's realistic and grounded in current events and pop culture, yet it doesn't try too hard to be cool. If there's a sequel coming, count me in!
My one (minor) complaint would be that there was a somewhat unexplained development at the end of the book, which suggested a likely sequel although there hasn't been one to date. I don't mind drawing my own conclusions, though.
All things considered, this is a fantastic novel and a rare cyberpunk find. It's not overwhelming with it's jargon or technical descriptions, it's realistic and grounded in current events and pop culture, yet it doesn't try too hard to be cool. If there's a sequel coming, count me in!
July 21, 2012
Corporations are legally people—how long before they become nation-states? Some of them own islands, or indeed, virtually entire countries. I’m not as pessimistic as some about our short-term survival odds in the coming century. Sure, we have problems, but we’ll muddle through—somehow. Yet if I had to pick which chilling dystopian vision of the future I feel is most likely, the corporations-own-us-all future is the one I’d choose. It’s feudalism all over again, baby—party like it’s 1214. Corporations wield increasing influence over our democratic processes. Governments, either through fear of losing big donors come election time or simple greed and corruption, are increasingly unwilling to stand up to behaviours and business practices that are counterproductive and dangerous in the long run. And so it goes.
This train of thought has become more prominent of late thanks to protests like the Occupy Wall Street movement. And I’m glad for it, because there’s a sense of complacency in some developed countries. We evangelize democracy in Africa, the Middle East, and southeast Asia … but when it comes to our own internal affairs, we turn a blind eye to the abuses of power politicians and corporations commit. We are unwilling to admit that ours is a hollow democracy, a frayed and decaying process. We have freedoms—but for how long?
One striking feature of Moxyland is that, while it picks up the corporate dystopian visions of its cyberpunk predecessors, it does so not in Canada, or the United States, or the UK, or even Japan. No, it’s set in South Africa. Its characters are artists and criminals, freelance bloggers and refugees, corporate citizens and self-proclaimed freedom fighters. The people in this book aren’t politicians, CEOs, or even protestors in the usual sense. And this isn’t about Wall Street, the 2008 meltdown, corporate lobbies on Capitol Hill, or News of the World. Lauren Beukes challenges us to look up from our Westernized tunnel vision of the world’s problems and consider that other countries are struggling with the same issues.
It’s notable that the only manifestation of governance we see in Moxyland is the police service. (And it isn’t clear whether they are publicly-run or outsourced to a corporate outfit.) The corporations are, if not in principle, then in practice the law. One of my favourite parts of the book happens early on, when Lerato is detained going through customs because someone reported her suspicious cough. She waves her shiny corporate ID and receives obsequious apologies, and as she walks away, she mutters that corporations should just go ahead and issue passports, make it official. After all, Lerato’s employer already assigns her roommate and pre-approves her dating pool. Why not go ahead and become a full citizen of the corporation?
Instead of the big picture, bird’s eye view of the world, Beukes takes onto the streets. We see everything from the level of the pawns of this game. Toby is the observer, somewhat above everything—but also inextricably involved, much to his dismay. Tendeka is the hot-headed idealist whose partner tries, very hard, to provide the balanced opinions he needs. Kendra is the artist in love with her anachronisms, using them to take refuge from a nihilistic worldview that threatens to swallow her up. And Lerato is the antihero, the corporate sympathizer—at least she admits she’s biased—who nevertheless has the kind of console cowboy flair that makes her an attractive character.
Truth be told, there is little to like about any of these characters. I can sympathize with their problems but not with their attitudes. Some of them, like Toby and, to some extent, Lerato, are fatalistic in their approach to the world: life sucks, corporations rule, deal with it. They do what they can to get their thrills. Kendra, on the other hand, is spinning her wheels. She’s trapped in a dead-end relationship and allows herself to get talked into a sponsorship deal she never really wanted. Her story, in my opinion, is the most tragic of all, and if any of the characters were my favourite, it would be her.
Its characters might not be likable, but they are diverse and richly portrayed. Like her world, Beukes spends considerable effort developing perspectives to deliver her story. Unfortunately, Moxyland falters in its execution of plot. It demonstrates that plot is more than a sequence of events; in this book, one thing happens after another, but there’s a distinct lack of any sense of causality. These characters seem to go stumbling around from one problem to the next with little motivation—they react, rather than act. The grand conspiracy at the end, while clever, is somewhat trite and not all that satisfying.
Moxyland is pregnant with possibility, but it never quite manages to realize much. I like its depiction of the corporate dystopia. Beukes’ extrapolation of current technologies—and how we use them—is modest in a very effective way. But a setting can only take a story so far, and Moxyland is adrift without a plot. Good books can be entertaining or thought-provoking—great books have to be both.
This train of thought has become more prominent of late thanks to protests like the Occupy Wall Street movement. And I’m glad for it, because there’s a sense of complacency in some developed countries. We evangelize democracy in Africa, the Middle East, and southeast Asia … but when it comes to our own internal affairs, we turn a blind eye to the abuses of power politicians and corporations commit. We are unwilling to admit that ours is a hollow democracy, a frayed and decaying process. We have freedoms—but for how long?
One striking feature of Moxyland is that, while it picks up the corporate dystopian visions of its cyberpunk predecessors, it does so not in Canada, or the United States, or the UK, or even Japan. No, it’s set in South Africa. Its characters are artists and criminals, freelance bloggers and refugees, corporate citizens and self-proclaimed freedom fighters. The people in this book aren’t politicians, CEOs, or even protestors in the usual sense. And this isn’t about Wall Street, the 2008 meltdown, corporate lobbies on Capitol Hill, or News of the World. Lauren Beukes challenges us to look up from our Westernized tunnel vision of the world’s problems and consider that other countries are struggling with the same issues.
It’s notable that the only manifestation of governance we see in Moxyland is the police service. (And it isn’t clear whether they are publicly-run or outsourced to a corporate outfit.) The corporations are, if not in principle, then in practice the law. One of my favourite parts of the book happens early on, when Lerato is detained going through customs because someone reported her suspicious cough. She waves her shiny corporate ID and receives obsequious apologies, and as she walks away, she mutters that corporations should just go ahead and issue passports, make it official. After all, Lerato’s employer already assigns her roommate and pre-approves her dating pool. Why not go ahead and become a full citizen of the corporation?
Instead of the big picture, bird’s eye view of the world, Beukes takes onto the streets. We see everything from the level of the pawns of this game. Toby is the observer, somewhat above everything—but also inextricably involved, much to his dismay. Tendeka is the hot-headed idealist whose partner tries, very hard, to provide the balanced opinions he needs. Kendra is the artist in love with her anachronisms, using them to take refuge from a nihilistic worldview that threatens to swallow her up. And Lerato is the antihero, the corporate sympathizer—at least she admits she’s biased—who nevertheless has the kind of console cowboy flair that makes her an attractive character.
Truth be told, there is little to like about any of these characters. I can sympathize with their problems but not with their attitudes. Some of them, like Toby and, to some extent, Lerato, are fatalistic in their approach to the world: life sucks, corporations rule, deal with it. They do what they can to get their thrills. Kendra, on the other hand, is spinning her wheels. She’s trapped in a dead-end relationship and allows herself to get talked into a sponsorship deal she never really wanted. Her story, in my opinion, is the most tragic of all, and if any of the characters were my favourite, it would be her.
Its characters might not be likable, but they are diverse and richly portrayed. Like her world, Beukes spends considerable effort developing perspectives to deliver her story. Unfortunately, Moxyland falters in its execution of plot. It demonstrates that plot is more than a sequence of events; in this book, one thing happens after another, but there’s a distinct lack of any sense of causality. These characters seem to go stumbling around from one problem to the next with little motivation—they react, rather than act. The grand conspiracy at the end, while clever, is somewhat trite and not all that satisfying.
Moxyland is pregnant with possibility, but it never quite manages to realize much. I like its depiction of the corporate dystopia. Beukes’ extrapolation of current technologies—and how we use them—is modest in a very effective way. But a setting can only take a story so far, and Moxyland is adrift without a plot. Good books can be entertaining or thought-provoking—great books have to be both.
February 8, 2021
Moxyland is a wild and sprawling science fiction novel set in South Africa in what I would call ‘the near future’, except that it’s actually now past; first published in 2008, it takes place in 2018. As it opens, we’re introduced to one of four narrators: Kendra, a likeable character who makes terrible decisions – such as becoming a ‘sponsor baby’ for a soft drink brand, which means she gets to benefit from performance-enhancing technology, but is also branded with the drink’s logo... and becomes addicted to it. There’s also Toby, an insufferable manchild who fronts a vlog with the fittingly Nathan Barley-esque title ‘Diary of Cunt’; adbusting activist Tendeka, who’s the only vaguely level-headed person in the book; and Lerato, a ruthlessly ambitious, misanthropic programmer working for an all-seeing corporation.
The blurb for Moxyland tells us it ‘crackles with bold and infectious ideas’, and it does! It’s uniquely fizzy, incredibly colourful, and Beukes’ imagination is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, the book does not have a plot. Things happen, more things happen, then MORE things happen, and then suddenly it’s over, without any structure ever having made itself known. The title is emblematic of this problem: Moxyland is the setting of a kids’ videogame Toby plays at one point; it doesn’t have any significance in the story. It speaks to the fact that there is no clear hook to hang the whole thing on.
I had fun reading this, and was surprised by some of what hooked me (I disliked Lerato’s chapters at first, but her story, which has a corporate thriller element, became my favourite). It just ran out of steam, or rather I did, when I realised it wasn’t actually going to come together.
TinyLetter | Linktree
The blurb for Moxyland tells us it ‘crackles with bold and infectious ideas’, and it does! It’s uniquely fizzy, incredibly colourful, and Beukes’ imagination is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, the book does not have a plot. Things happen, more things happen, then MORE things happen, and then suddenly it’s over, without any structure ever having made itself known. The title is emblematic of this problem: Moxyland is the setting of a kids’ videogame Toby plays at one point; it doesn’t have any significance in the story. It speaks to the fact that there is no clear hook to hang the whole thing on.
I had fun reading this, and was surprised by some of what hooked me (I disliked Lerato’s chapters at first, but her story, which has a corporate thriller element, became my favourite). It just ran out of steam, or rather I did, when I realised it wasn’t actually going to come together.
TinyLetter | Linktree
November 7, 2011
Now THIS is good cyberpunk. Definitely reminiscent of genre classics like Neuromancer and Snow Crash, with the updated tech of contemporary books like Little Brother... but believe me, this ain’t Young Adult. Moxyland, set in future South Africa, has all the hallmarks of a good dystopia: government control, believable surveillance methods, lots of designer drugs, even a virus epidemic. Lauren Beukes is a phenomenal world-builder, and I found her speculation of what the near future will be like both original and convincing. The major concept is that cell phones have become a huge key to everyday life – in addition to the obvious communication, electronic currency is stored on them, they allow entrance to homes, public transit, etc. – and the ultimate punishment for a citizen is to be disconnected and become one of society’s untouchables. There are lots of other future inventions that are clear extrapolations of what is currently possible with today’s technology in here, too.
I found the pacing to be excellent and it was a real page-turner. However, reviewers here seem very divided. Maybe I can help.
You won’t like this book if:
- You dislike stories told from alternating points-of-view. The novel is narrated by four main characters: Tendeka, a gay, overly-idealistic, militant activist who lost his brother to drugs and is determined to save other young street kids; Toby, a spoiled brat junkie who has been cut off from the family funds for the last time and obsessively streamcasts his everyday life to online fans; Kendra, an art school dropout photographer who has “sold out” and has the worst taste in men ever; and Lerato, girl genius and programmer extraordinaire, who has climbed the corporate ladder but desperately wants out. Chapter titles indicate which character is narrating, and it’s all told in first-person present tense.
- You only like “nice” characters. These guys are all seriously flawed and most of them are pretty hateable. This isn’t to say they’re not relatable – it’s just that they each probably personify what you dislike most about yourself and sometimes it’s hard to look in the mirror. It's like remembering what you were like as a snotty teenager. Come to think of it, I probably would have loved this even more if I had read it when I was a snotty teenager.
- Future slang annoys you. There’s a lot of it in here, and no glossary a la A Clockwork Orange either.
- You’re sensitive to violence and/or gore. There are some pretty graphic and disturbing parts, especially near the end.
Fortunately, I like all of these things, so yay. Hopefully you do too. I’ll definitely be picking up Beukes’ other novel, Zoo City, though I hear it is very different.
I found the pacing to be excellent and it was a real page-turner. However, reviewers here seem very divided. Maybe I can help.
You won’t like this book if:
- You dislike stories told from alternating points-of-view. The novel is narrated by four main characters: Tendeka, a gay, overly-idealistic, militant activist who lost his brother to drugs and is determined to save other young street kids; Toby, a spoiled brat junkie who has been cut off from the family funds for the last time and obsessively streamcasts his everyday life to online fans; Kendra, an art school dropout photographer who has “sold out” and has the worst taste in men ever; and Lerato, girl genius and programmer extraordinaire, who has climbed the corporate ladder but desperately wants out. Chapter titles indicate which character is narrating, and it’s all told in first-person present tense.
- You only like “nice” characters. These guys are all seriously flawed and most of them are pretty hateable. This isn’t to say they’re not relatable – it’s just that they each probably personify what you dislike most about yourself and sometimes it’s hard to look in the mirror. It's like remembering what you were like as a snotty teenager. Come to think of it, I probably would have loved this even more if I had read it when I was a snotty teenager.
- Future slang annoys you. There’s a lot of it in here, and no glossary a la A Clockwork Orange either.
- You’re sensitive to violence and/or gore. There are some pretty graphic and disturbing parts, especially near the end.
Fortunately, I like all of these things, so yay. Hopefully you do too. I’ll definitely be picking up Beukes’ other novel, Zoo City, though I hear it is very different.
September 22, 2023
The scariest part of this book is that you don't even have to suspend disbelieve. We are pretty much there already.
May 18, 2011
Lauren Beukes has written something new with Moxyland. To say this is not cliched, and to realize this you would need to read Moxyland.
It is a future where the cellphone is indispensable, as much a part of your life as your driver's license, social security number, and bank account. In fact, it is all these things then some more. It is also a riot control device. Beukes has crafted a almost dystopian society of relative simplicity that conceals moral complexity.
There's the cops and their nanotech dogs, the Aitos. The dogs and phones are their defenses in the event shit goes south. If one should raise trouble, it takes a mere press of a button to send high voltage electricity coursing through your body, courtesy of your phone. Otherwise they can mark you with a scent that attracts the dogs.
Which brings us to Tendeka, the prerequisite anti-corporate rebel. The perfect target for authority. Tendeka hates the corporates and is searching for a more aggressive way to strike back.
He sometimes employs Toby, a smooth talker with a coat that records everything that happens to him. He is also addicted to bliss and sugar, the drug of choice. He doesn't have a particular allegiance to a school of thought outside the one inside his head. He humors Tendeka's escapades sometimes with the occasional assistance.
Toby often has insider help from an old friend of his, Lerato, who is a crack programmer rising through the corporate ranks. She gets an adrenaline high from doing illegal hacks in her company's system, sometimes to help Toby, sometimes to get information. Lerato is ambitious and like Toby, is all about herself.
Passing through is sponsorbaby Kendra. She's got an analogue camera, and develops her films with an old-timer who can't forget how hard it was in the bad old days. Kendra is an artist, and sometimes has gallery shows. In the eyes of some people, Kendra might be a sell-out. Because she has become branded, injected with nanotechnology that juices up her system, and addicts her to the company's drink line (think red bull on crack) Ghost. Imagine nike branding professional athletes. Like a drawing up of territory lines in corporate espionage.
Their lives intertwine, merge, collide, and fracture in a series of first person narrated chapters that progressively gets shorter with the suspense and action, until everything just goes south in a really interesting way that makes you consider the consequences of allowing corporate power to rise above laws.
The last few chapters is like a punch in the gut. Last time I felt something like this when absorbing a story was watching Requiem of a Dream. It all wraps up in the end, neat as a bow, with an ambiguous message etched in invisible ink on your brain:
1. Corporates are bad for you and don't have your best interests in heart (what heart? the one made of offshore banking accounts, of course!)
2. Don't fuck with corporates or you'll get burned.
It is a future where the cellphone is indispensable, as much a part of your life as your driver's license, social security number, and bank account. In fact, it is all these things then some more. It is also a riot control device. Beukes has crafted a almost dystopian society of relative simplicity that conceals moral complexity.
There's the cops and their nanotech dogs, the Aitos. The dogs and phones are their defenses in the event shit goes south. If one should raise trouble, it takes a mere press of a button to send high voltage electricity coursing through your body, courtesy of your phone. Otherwise they can mark you with a scent that attracts the dogs.
Which brings us to Tendeka, the prerequisite anti-corporate rebel. The perfect target for authority. Tendeka hates the corporates and is searching for a more aggressive way to strike back.
He sometimes employs Toby, a smooth talker with a coat that records everything that happens to him. He is also addicted to bliss and sugar, the drug of choice. He doesn't have a particular allegiance to a school of thought outside the one inside his head. He humors Tendeka's escapades sometimes with the occasional assistance.
Toby often has insider help from an old friend of his, Lerato, who is a crack programmer rising through the corporate ranks. She gets an adrenaline high from doing illegal hacks in her company's system, sometimes to help Toby, sometimes to get information. Lerato is ambitious and like Toby, is all about herself.
Passing through is sponsorbaby Kendra. She's got an analogue camera, and develops her films with an old-timer who can't forget how hard it was in the bad old days. Kendra is an artist, and sometimes has gallery shows. In the eyes of some people, Kendra might be a sell-out. Because she has become branded, injected with nanotechnology that juices up her system, and addicts her to the company's drink line (think red bull on crack) Ghost. Imagine nike branding professional athletes. Like a drawing up of territory lines in corporate espionage.
Their lives intertwine, merge, collide, and fracture in a series of first person narrated chapters that progressively gets shorter with the suspense and action, until everything just goes south in a really interesting way that makes you consider the consequences of allowing corporate power to rise above laws.
The last few chapters is like a punch in the gut. Last time I felt something like this when absorbing a story was watching Requiem of a Dream. It all wraps up in the end, neat as a bow, with an ambiguous message etched in invisible ink on your brain:
1. Corporates are bad for you and don't have your best interests in heart (what heart? the one made of offshore banking accounts, of course!)
2. Don't fuck with corporates or you'll get burned.
July 31, 2016
Review from Tenacious Reader: http://www.tenaciousreader.com/2016/0...
Moxyland follows four storylines in this near future dystopia. Each perspective spotlights a different aspects of this world and culture. I really enjoyed each of the four characters, even if I didn’t feel quite as connected to any of them as I would have preferred. But then, I think this is the nature of the story. With the focus being divided, there is less material to really attach you to each perspective. Plus I think the overall goal of the story was maybe not so much about the characters, but about the world they were living in. In that, the book definitely succeeded.
In some respects, the world sounds great. There is technology that can be injected, make a person more physically attractive, enhance their immune system to prevent illness, enhance their mind. Abandoned AIDs babies are adopted and supported by corporations, given a life where they are set up to be successful. They have taken gaming to entirely new level, creating a much more immersive and real experience.
But then there are the details you start to notice. There is the class structure and social hierarchy that divides people. Technology, while very cool in many ways, also provides some disturbing abilities for those people “in control”. Technology can also be used to shut a person off from everything. Their phones are cut off, and since everything (even opening doors, food, water) is controlled through their phone, it is like shutting down their life. Even for people that can see the danger in this technology, it is still so central to everything that the fear of being cut off is very real. Corporate sponsors can make people addicted to their products, causing severe cravings/withdrawal. Because if they are going to invest in enhancing someone, they want this beautiful person to now be seen *needing* their products. Yeah, nothing says great sales strategy quite like a forced addiction! They will also use people as test subjects for experimental technologies. Seriously, this place just gets creepier the more you learn about it.
Overall, Moxyland another great book for Beukes. Especially considering this is a debut novel. Seriously, if you have not read any of her books yet, you should try. I can’t wait to find out what she has in store for us next.
Moxyland follows four storylines in this near future dystopia. Each perspective spotlights a different aspects of this world and culture. I really enjoyed each of the four characters, even if I didn’t feel quite as connected to any of them as I would have preferred. But then, I think this is the nature of the story. With the focus being divided, there is less material to really attach you to each perspective. Plus I think the overall goal of the story was maybe not so much about the characters, but about the world they were living in. In that, the book definitely succeeded.
In some respects, the world sounds great. There is technology that can be injected, make a person more physically attractive, enhance their immune system to prevent illness, enhance their mind. Abandoned AIDs babies are adopted and supported by corporations, given a life where they are set up to be successful. They have taken gaming to entirely new level, creating a much more immersive and real experience.
But then there are the details you start to notice. There is the class structure and social hierarchy that divides people. Technology, while very cool in many ways, also provides some disturbing abilities for those people “in control”. Technology can also be used to shut a person off from everything. Their phones are cut off, and since everything (even opening doors, food, water) is controlled through their phone, it is like shutting down their life. Even for people that can see the danger in this technology, it is still so central to everything that the fear of being cut off is very real. Corporate sponsors can make people addicted to their products, causing severe cravings/withdrawal. Because if they are going to invest in enhancing someone, they want this beautiful person to now be seen *needing* their products. Yeah, nothing says great sales strategy quite like a forced addiction! They will also use people as test subjects for experimental technologies. Seriously, this place just gets creepier the more you learn about it.
Overall, Moxyland another great book for Beukes. Especially considering this is a debut novel. Seriously, if you have not read any of her books yet, you should try. I can’t wait to find out what she has in store for us next.
December 1, 2011
Lauren Beukes has an affinity for social commentary and a worldview that I find intriguing. Her novels Moxyland and Zoo City are both set in South Africa, which is a locale that I know very little about. Beukes' novels alone have piqued my interest in the culture and politics of South Africa. Both are set in a hi-tech future that is grim, and both have morally ambiguous characters that make questionable choices to survive in a society gone rogue despite governmental efforts at control.
Moxyland has several main characters, and each chapter is written from the perspective of one character. Kendra is a photographer that accepts a contract to genetically modify her body into a sort of corporate billboard for soft drinks. Tendeka is an activist who works with street youth by day and performs acts of corporate and media sabotage by night. Toby is a child-of-privilege/addict/grifter/charmer/mediahound with a gift for being in the right place at the right time. Lerato is an AIDS orphan who was groomed by mega-corporation Communique as a programmer. Now, she is a ruthless young corporate shill who performs corporate espionage on the side.
Themes of technology, privacy, art, human rights, socioeconomic division, corruption, activism, civic responsibility and the roles and responsibilities of the media are all explored in this novel. Moxyland explores a future that is alarmingly within the realm of possibility, and for that reason alone it's worth reading.
Moxyland has several main characters, and each chapter is written from the perspective of one character. Kendra is a photographer that accepts a contract to genetically modify her body into a sort of corporate billboard for soft drinks. Tendeka is an activist who works with street youth by day and performs acts of corporate and media sabotage by night. Toby is a child-of-privilege/addict/grifter/charmer/mediahound with a gift for being in the right place at the right time. Lerato is an AIDS orphan who was groomed by mega-corporation Communique as a programmer. Now, she is a ruthless young corporate shill who performs corporate espionage on the side.
Themes of technology, privacy, art, human rights, socioeconomic division, corruption, activism, civic responsibility and the roles and responsibilities of the media are all explored in this novel. Moxyland explores a future that is alarmingly within the realm of possibility, and for that reason alone it's worth reading.
October 18, 2015
This might be one instance where an audiobook has the potential to lead a reader (listener) into confusion more than reading the print might do. Moxyland is read by Nico Evers-Swindell, best known for his portrayal of Prince William in the made-for-tv movie William & Kate. While he does a good job with the voices and South African accents, the intertwining stories are hard to keep up with, particularly with the way the reader is dumped right into the center of everything already going on.
That's how living in a totalitarian, nearly-post-Apartheid South Africa can be sometimes. The four main characters in Moxyland don't seem to have a grasp of the big picture either, and can hardly keep up with navigating the landscape where your cellphone can punish you, viruses can be used as crowd control, and your body can be turned into an irrevocable product advertisement.
This has tastes of William Gibson and Cory Doctorow, and the realism is helped by the ten years Beukes spent as a journalist, where she started thinking "What would happen if...?" The world she has created is scary, but not difficult to imagine. After all, some of us are already living it.
That's how living in a totalitarian, nearly-post-Apartheid South Africa can be sometimes. The four main characters in Moxyland don't seem to have a grasp of the big picture either, and can hardly keep up with navigating the landscape where your cellphone can punish you, viruses can be used as crowd control, and your body can be turned into an irrevocable product advertisement.
This has tastes of William Gibson and Cory Doctorow, and the realism is helped by the ten years Beukes spent as a journalist, where she started thinking "What would happen if...?" The world she has created is scary, but not difficult to imagine. After all, some of us are already living it.
January 13, 2023
Okay, so I won't lie, I only made it about 75% of the way through this one. And it's not the book's fault... it just turns out I really, really, really hate cyberpunk. Well, at least we know.
October 27, 2011
Moxyland is one of those rare books where a single string of stars is inadequate to properly rate it. It requires more stars, with explanations.
BIG IDEAS ****
Big ideas drive science fiction. Moxyland is jam packed with big ideas that kept me reading. In fact, the discovery of the next "that's a neat concept" was all that kept me turning pages for the following reasons.
CHARACTERS *
Splitting the point of view among four characters made the book more difficult to read. Multiple POV's are okay, but it's still nice to have someone designated as the Main Character, so I can enjoy his/her journey.
CHARACTERS WE CARE ABOUT -* (yes, that's a negative sign)
The second problem with four POV's is that none of the characters is likeable. All of them attempt to out-scum the other. I cared about no one in the book. In fact, by the end, I stopped trying to keep the characters apart. They merged into one person I thought of as 'Scummy'.
PACING **
The book sags badly in the middle, but picks up again during the last 80 or so pages. Getting to those last few pages was a major chore.
READIBILITY **
The book has been compared to Neuromancer due to Moxyland's in-your-face rush of unexplained made-up words. Like Neuromancer, Moxyland is a difficult book to read. However, with Neuromancer, the reader finds a flow and the artificial words start making a little sense. With Moxyland, I reached a point where I stopped trying to decipher the meanings of the made-up words.
LACK OF A STORY PROBLEM
I'm not sure this last point can be rated; however, the lack of a story problem bothered me a lot. I read 370 pages thinking some problem would arise that all of these characters were going to solve. Instead, I got the equivalent of rambling blog entries - albeit with some really cool big ideas.
CONCLUSION
We have 8 stars divided by 5 categories = 1.6 stars for Moxyland. Because I was so impressed by the abundance of the big ideas (cell phones as the source of money, wired clothing that records constant video and streams it on the Internet, governments tagging protestors with a virus that liquefies their insides - unless they surrender for a vaccine and to be arrested) overall, I give Moxyland a 3.
BIG IDEAS ****
Big ideas drive science fiction. Moxyland is jam packed with big ideas that kept me reading. In fact, the discovery of the next "that's a neat concept" was all that kept me turning pages for the following reasons.
CHARACTERS *
Splitting the point of view among four characters made the book more difficult to read. Multiple POV's are okay, but it's still nice to have someone designated as the Main Character, so I can enjoy his/her journey.
CHARACTERS WE CARE ABOUT -* (yes, that's a negative sign)
The second problem with four POV's is that none of the characters is likeable. All of them attempt to out-scum the other. I cared about no one in the book. In fact, by the end, I stopped trying to keep the characters apart. They merged into one person I thought of as 'Scummy'.
PACING **
The book sags badly in the middle, but picks up again during the last 80 or so pages. Getting to those last few pages was a major chore.
READIBILITY **
The book has been compared to Neuromancer due to Moxyland's in-your-face rush of unexplained made-up words. Like Neuromancer, Moxyland is a difficult book to read. However, with Neuromancer, the reader finds a flow and the artificial words start making a little sense. With Moxyland, I reached a point where I stopped trying to decipher the meanings of the made-up words.
LACK OF A STORY PROBLEM
I'm not sure this last point can be rated; however, the lack of a story problem bothered me a lot. I read 370 pages thinking some problem would arise that all of these characters were going to solve. Instead, I got the equivalent of rambling blog entries - albeit with some really cool big ideas.
CONCLUSION
We have 8 stars divided by 5 categories = 1.6 stars for Moxyland. Because I was so impressed by the abundance of the big ideas (cell phones as the source of money, wired clothing that records constant video and streams it on the Internet, governments tagging protestors with a virus that liquefies their insides - unless they surrender for a vaccine and to be arrested) overall, I give Moxyland a 3.
September 6, 2011
I ended up tracking down a copy of Moxyland (I'm not sure if it was released in the US or if it's still in print in the US, I had to order a copy in some godforsaken way) because Lauren Beukes second novel, Zoo City is getting a lot of hype but the synopsis of Moxyland made it sound more like something I would enjoy.
Anyway, holy shit this book was amazing. Decently color-blind character portrayals (eg: nobody has "coffee-with-cream colored skin" but you do learn things about characters' backgrounds from the way they pull their hair out of their face), commitment to starting out with flawed and irredeemable characters and letting them stay that way and also some really enjoyable cultural niches. (I recommended this book to several people by promising "Gay anti-corporate terrorists!")
Specifically I would recommend this book to anyone who's ever read Cory Doctorow (particularly Little Brother and For the Win) and enjoyed the parts where the world is fucked and we have to try and fight the power but felt like the narrative was straining under its YA framework to shoehorn some optimism. When I read Little Brother, I think I said something like, "I like this book, but I like it a little less because I know that I would have obsessively, life-changingly LOVED it when I was 13." One thing is for sure about Moxyland, it is not suitable for 13-year-olds.
Anyway, holy shit this book was amazing. Decently color-blind character portrayals (eg: nobody has "coffee-with-cream colored skin" but you do learn things about characters' backgrounds from the way they pull their hair out of their face), commitment to starting out with flawed and irredeemable characters and letting them stay that way and also some really enjoyable cultural niches. (I recommended this book to several people by promising "Gay anti-corporate terrorists!")
Specifically I would recommend this book to anyone who's ever read Cory Doctorow (particularly Little Brother and For the Win) and enjoyed the parts where the world is fucked and we have to try and fight the power but felt like the narrative was straining under its YA framework to shoehorn some optimism. When I read Little Brother, I think I said something like, "I like this book, but I like it a little less because I know that I would have obsessively, life-changingly LOVED it when I was 13." One thing is for sure about Moxyland, it is not suitable for 13-year-olds.
July 26, 2018
The way your brain works it's always rewiring itself; the layers of association tangled up with different people and places recontextualised by new experiences. You can map out a whole city according to the weight of memory, like pins on the homocide board tracking the killers movements.
Wow this book blew me away. It confused me at first and then it snuck up on me and I felt blind-sided when I finished reading. The ending was a little confusing, but that's okay. Life can be confusing, too. I'm certain I cannot adequately explain what I loved about it, but I'll do my best.
This is a gritty near-future semi-dystopian, set in a world where the AIDS epidemic was much more deadly than our reality, rampant poverty AND uncharted wealth rub uncomfortable elbows, and your phone is used for absolutely everything from a subway pass to house key to credit card to remote-controlled taser.
There are multiple POVs, most of them follow one inter-twined story of rebellion and corporate intrigue, but another POV (Kendra) weaves between them, following her own path, only really interacting with one of the other main characters. Kendra is fairly likeable, but Toby, Lerato, and Tendeka are all rather unlikeable, each in their own way, but also sympathetic and always interesting.
Moxyland is similar in feel to Zoo Cityin the sense that there is a militaristic police state presence floating just above a veritable morass of underground crime. If you liked one, you should read the other!
August 31, 2012
The book opens with a young photographer agreeing to become a sponsorbaby for the beverage, Ghost. She receives an injectable tech that circulates in her system and attaches to her cells. The Ghost logo will appear like a luminescent tattoo on her skin. She will crave for Ghost for as long as she lives.
This is her world. The city is drowning in advertising. Everyone is dependent on their phones for money and identity, and even the simple task of opening a door. To be without a phone is to be a disconnect: homeless, identity-less. But someone is forming a group that will aspire for just that – to be disconnected from the world, in order to change it.
The divide between corporate versus “civilian-plebes” plus the brutality of the police force is reminiscent of apartheid (author Lauren Beukes is from South Africa, where the novel is also set). Beukes says so herself in the “Extras” that the novel grew from the legacy of this divide. “Don’t let anyone tell you that apartheid has nothing to do with South Africa now.”
She covers several topics in her novel – gaming culture, nanotech, technological dependency, advertising, corporate rule, oppression, terrorism – and presents them fresh and highly charged. The energy of the narrative is amazing. Read this book.
This is her world. The city is drowning in advertising. Everyone is dependent on their phones for money and identity, and even the simple task of opening a door. To be without a phone is to be a disconnect: homeless, identity-less. But someone is forming a group that will aspire for just that – to be disconnected from the world, in order to change it.
The divide between corporate versus “civilian-plebes” plus the brutality of the police force is reminiscent of apartheid (author Lauren Beukes is from South Africa, where the novel is also set). Beukes says so herself in the “Extras” that the novel grew from the legacy of this divide. “Don’t let anyone tell you that apartheid has nothing to do with South Africa now.”
She covers several topics in her novel – gaming culture, nanotech, technological dependency, advertising, corporate rule, oppression, terrorism – and presents them fresh and highly charged. The energy of the narrative is amazing. Read this book.
September 23, 2011
yeeessss...interlibrary loan comes through to save the day.
a wonderful, zany, dystopia set in cape town, but really, could be anywhere now. Oh sure, south Africa is way ahead of usa in mobi use, and everyday terror, and in vibrant art and striving for a better "rainbow" world, but the basic premise is the same: corporate oligarchy is NOT the way to run a country or society, nor is transgenic police dogs or corporate tattoos. Bad things are gonna happen if you let toys-r-us run a muck. haah. and sure, this isn't exactly high literature, or even margaret atwood, but it is a fun and exciting use of new made-up words, a clever re-imaging of our future of the very rich vs everybody else, a paranoid and all powerful police force, and what the powerless are "forced" to do to have a voice in their society, even the bourgeoisie powerless.
a wonderful, zany, dystopia set in cape town, but really, could be anywhere now. Oh sure, south Africa is way ahead of usa in mobi use, and everyday terror, and in vibrant art and striving for a better "rainbow" world, but the basic premise is the same: corporate oligarchy is NOT the way to run a country or society, nor is transgenic police dogs or corporate tattoos. Bad things are gonna happen if you let toys-r-us run a muck. haah. and sure, this isn't exactly high literature, or even margaret atwood, but it is a fun and exciting use of new made-up words, a clever re-imaging of our future of the very rich vs everybody else, a paranoid and all powerful police force, and what the powerless are "forced" to do to have a voice in their society, even the bourgeoisie powerless.
February 12, 2015
' You can't play nice by society's rules?
Then you don't get to play at all. No phone
No service. No life. p28
That's what life is like in this not so distant dystopian future. Worse...nobody really knows just whose in control and who benefits, but there seems to be no escape for any of the hapless protagonists who represent the various choices available to those growing up in a society with such a thin veneer against chaos.
LB is a frank, penetrating and saucy writer. I can't wait to dive in to more of her writing.
Moxyland is too close for comfort.
'Watch out for the lulling.' p82
Then you don't get to play at all. No phone
No service. No life. p28
That's what life is like in this not so distant dystopian future. Worse...nobody really knows just whose in control and who benefits, but there seems to be no escape for any of the hapless protagonists who represent the various choices available to those growing up in a society with such a thin veneer against chaos.
LB is a frank, penetrating and saucy writer. I can't wait to dive in to more of her writing.
Moxyland is too close for comfort.
'Watch out for the lulling.' p82
October 21, 2021
In her first novel, Beukes brings us a high tech, corporate almost-dystopia set in near-future Capte Town. Corporations run orphanages and schools and universities, there are penalties for defecting, and everyone needs their phone to do the simplest thing, like entering a building or buying food - allowing punishment by disconnecting a phone. We follow four characters through this world as they collide at high speed.
Beukes based the government/order structure on apartheid era systems, and it's (unfortunately) chillingly plausible. The premise here is very cool, and the character who works in Big Tech, who is ambitiously trying to scheme her way out had my favourite chapters. Unfortunately, the story itself is disjointed, and never really comes together with any real coherence.
I picked this up because I really like Beukes's later work, and was hoping this would be more of the same. Hints of what's to come are visible here, but I wouldn't recommend this one unless you're a completist, or read primarily for setting and premise. If you want weird future, read Zoo City instead.
Beukes based the government/order structure on apartheid era systems, and it's (unfortunately) chillingly plausible. The premise here is very cool, and the character who works in Big Tech, who is ambitiously trying to scheme her way out had my favourite chapters. Unfortunately, the story itself is disjointed, and never really comes together with any real coherence.
I picked this up because I really like Beukes's later work, and was hoping this would be more of the same. Hints of what's to come are visible here, but I wouldn't recommend this one unless you're a completist, or read primarily for setting and premise. If you want weird future, read Zoo City instead.
August 20, 2023
If you want to feel old, consider that the future in Lauren Beukes's Moxyland is already in the past, despite the fact that it was only published in the UK in 2009. (Yeah, "only" 2009. That was last week, wasn't it? No? Drat.) That future isn't too far removed from our present either, not that Beukes is shining a light and expecting us to follow this path. Far from it - Moxyland is a country, both real and virtual, of disenfranchisement and tiered capitalism, hardcore poverty and corporate materialism rubbing side by side as very uneasy bedfellows. Beukes's characters veer erratically across that line between the two states, toyed with and discarded by the system even as they attempt to fight it, subvert it, ride it, or just plain survive it. It takes a few chapters to get used to the multiple first-person voices, and another few to get over the fact that Toby is the real protagonist here. I'm still not convinced I got the connection between Kendra and the police dogs, but the corporate sponsoring her is shady as hell, with possibly the best underhanded viral marketing campaign this side of Prime.
Oh, and this edition here was the first book on Angry Robot's rather extensive catalogue. If I was a complete muffin, I might try to read them all in publication order...
Modern cyberpunk that hasn't aged badly? Start here.
Oh, and this edition here was the first book on Angry Robot's rather extensive catalogue. If I was a complete muffin, I might try to read them all in publication order...
Modern cyberpunk that hasn't aged badly? Start here.
August 27, 2017
I am a Beukes fan, but this was probably my least favority of hers. The world building was excellent but I couldn't get a handle on the characters. There were lots and they all seemed the same at the beginning. By the time I had them all untangled the book ended. What I like about Beukes writing is, pardoxically all of the diverse characters she manages to weave into a coherent story. This, one of her earlier books, shows her potential but doesn't quite blend it all together.
Even with my tepid remarks, this is a good cyber-punky story filled with gene tech and robot dogs. 3.5 stars rounded up because as usual I don't think Beukes gets as much love as she deserves.
Even with my tepid remarks, this is a good cyber-punky story filled with gene tech and robot dogs. 3.5 stars rounded up because as usual I don't think Beukes gets as much love as she deserves.
July 26, 2023
The last quarter was 3/5.
April 19, 2015
I’d been wanting to read this for awhile because the cover art looked nifty, but the reviews on Amazon weren’t terribly stellar so I was hesitant. One of Beukes newer books, Broken Monsters, however, has been garnering a ton of really great press recently, so I figured what probably happened is that Beukes has writing chops out the wazoo, but there was a fundamental flaw in the plot of this particular story.
I love dissecting stories and seeing what worked and what didn’t, so I hopped into Moxy Land after rustling it up for next to zero money’s on Amazon. Cheap is good. I like cheap.
As I suspected the writing for Moxy Land was fantastic. Beukes took an incredibly difficult narrative style (alternating first person points of view every other chapter) and made it work pretty darn well. It’s rare to see alternating first person points of view because what tends to happen is that the characters all become a blur. They all start sounding alike and acting alike. Bad news where compelling narrative is involved.
But Lauren somehow makes it work. Each of her 4 point of view characters is distinct enough to remain engaging. That alone is impressive and speaks to her impressive writing chops.
Moxy Land doesn’t rest on the strength of the writing, however. The world building is superb. It’s gritty and multi-layered with a depth that shows Beukes really knows what she’s talking about.
What I’m about to say next might upset some people ‘ cause I’m sure I won’t word it correctly and it’ll bring a shit-storm of hate in its wake. I’m prepared for that, but I’ll tread carefully.
The best Science Fiction/Fantasy women authors recently have been garnering a lot of attention for their unique and progressive takes on gender roles and sexual orientations and the cultural effects of those two dynamics on future societies: think Kameron Hurley’s The Mirror Empire, or Anne Leckie’s Ancillary Justice.
Don’t get me wrong, these are very important ideas with much fertile soil to be tilled. I think the genre as a whole is only strengthened by these types of works. But, my problem with these plot devices is that they become the entire plot. Sure, there is a story taking place underneath it all, but it’s being blurred over.
When people talk about Mirror Empire they talk about the unique matriarchal societies. When people talk about Ancillary Justice, they talk about the fact that Leckie only uses the feminine pronoun. What gets lost in all the hullaballoo is the story itself.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I tend to be a story guy. (Which, let me point out for those wondering, both of those books have great stories, but nobody ever talks about them. Only the gender issues.)
Now, back to Moxy Land and Lauren Beukes, who is one of new favorite sci-fi women authors precisely because she doesn’t let her story get bogged down by those facets of modern Sci-Fi which are quickly becoming tropes. There are compelling sexual orientations throughout the story, but they are flavoring which add a touch of realism, and not the point of the story itself.
The problem with Moxy Land, however, is that the story moves really slowly. Things are happening, but with so many point of view characters, it’s hard getting a feeling of urgency or forward progress. So the story kind of limps along until finishing with an anti-climatic fizzle. Oh, well. I chalk that up to Beukes being a newer author at the time of Moxy Land’s writing. I suspect she’s improved drastically in this area in her newer books which I’m eagerly looking forward too.
Pick up something by Lauren Beukes, I don’t think you’ll regret it.
Original review available on OneLazyRobotBlog.com
I love dissecting stories and seeing what worked and what didn’t, so I hopped into Moxy Land after rustling it up for next to zero money’s on Amazon. Cheap is good. I like cheap.
As I suspected the writing for Moxy Land was fantastic. Beukes took an incredibly difficult narrative style (alternating first person points of view every other chapter) and made it work pretty darn well. It’s rare to see alternating first person points of view because what tends to happen is that the characters all become a blur. They all start sounding alike and acting alike. Bad news where compelling narrative is involved.
But Lauren somehow makes it work. Each of her 4 point of view characters is distinct enough to remain engaging. That alone is impressive and speaks to her impressive writing chops.
Moxy Land doesn’t rest on the strength of the writing, however. The world building is superb. It’s gritty and multi-layered with a depth that shows Beukes really knows what she’s talking about.
What I’m about to say next might upset some people ‘ cause I’m sure I won’t word it correctly and it’ll bring a shit-storm of hate in its wake. I’m prepared for that, but I’ll tread carefully.
The best Science Fiction/Fantasy women authors recently have been garnering a lot of attention for their unique and progressive takes on gender roles and sexual orientations and the cultural effects of those two dynamics on future societies: think Kameron Hurley’s The Mirror Empire, or Anne Leckie’s Ancillary Justice.
Don’t get me wrong, these are very important ideas with much fertile soil to be tilled. I think the genre as a whole is only strengthened by these types of works. But, my problem with these plot devices is that they become the entire plot. Sure, there is a story taking place underneath it all, but it’s being blurred over.
When people talk about Mirror Empire they talk about the unique matriarchal societies. When people talk about Ancillary Justice, they talk about the fact that Leckie only uses the feminine pronoun. What gets lost in all the hullaballoo is the story itself.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I tend to be a story guy. (Which, let me point out for those wondering, both of those books have great stories, but nobody ever talks about them. Only the gender issues.)
Now, back to Moxy Land and Lauren Beukes, who is one of new favorite sci-fi women authors precisely because she doesn’t let her story get bogged down by those facets of modern Sci-Fi which are quickly becoming tropes. There are compelling sexual orientations throughout the story, but they are flavoring which add a touch of realism, and not the point of the story itself.
The problem with Moxy Land, however, is that the story moves really slowly. Things are happening, but with so many point of view characters, it’s hard getting a feeling of urgency or forward progress. So the story kind of limps along until finishing with an anti-climatic fizzle. Oh, well. I chalk that up to Beukes being a newer author at the time of Moxy Land’s writing. I suspect she’s improved drastically in this area in her newer books which I’m eagerly looking forward too.
Pick up something by Lauren Beukes, I don’t think you’ll regret it.
Original review available on OneLazyRobotBlog.com
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