Politics, society and COVID-19 through science fiction: Feed, by Mira Grant
As promised, this morning we'll have a look at a book that isn't normally one I would cover. Feed, by Mira Grant (really, Seanan McGuire), was the first in a trilogy of books that were fun, but didn't really nail everything, and leaned a bit too much into witty banter to cover for some sloppy writing. Nevertheless, in some ways, the first book is a good book to recommend for this particular moment in time.
It's about society after the zombie apocalypse. It's about the normalization of the post-zombie apocalypse.
And it takes place during a presidential primary.
So here's the basic set-up. Various medical unfortunateness...es? The plural of "unfortunateness." They happen. There's a cure for cancer! And... the common cold! (Cue ironic commentary.) When they combine, badness ensues. Kellis-Amberlee is the resulting bug. Zombies are the result. Society sort of collapses, and part of that collapse is that institutions fail to get it right. They fail to provide accurate information to the public about what is happening. In particular, professional journalists fail. Consequently, anyone who wants information on society as it is collapsing must turn to social media. Blogs, even.
Think of that. The best you can do is to turn to social media for information. Horrifying, right? About as horrifying as zombies.
Then again, attempts at uprisings in countries like Iran have been dependent on social media, so...
So getting back to Feed, the collective failure of journalism to provide accurate information during the zombie apocalypse leads to the rise of bloggers as a source of information. With information, though, it is possible, not exactly to defeat the zombie apocalypse, but to reestablish some kind of civilization amid an ongoing zombie threat. People live lives of isolation, dependent on security, with blood tests to make sure that anyone who enters a secured place isn't in the process of turning into a zombie ("amplifying"), large gatherings don't happen, and you get the basic point.
Politically, it is worth pointing out that fear can be useful. I'll let that dangle there, and not get into anything too spoiler-y.
The basic plot of the first book is a little nonsensical. A prominent presidential candidate invites a pair of very young bloggers to tag along on the campaign trail, wackiness ensues. A little too YA for my general tastes.
OK, so I'm a political scientist. There was an episode of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer in which the characters were sitting around, watching an action movie, and Buffy got annoyed at the fight scene because the action hero was doing it wrong, and her friends got annoyed at her for ruining the movie. Sometimes, that's me. With politics. I like when authors get social science right. I teach a class about it! Mira (Seanan)... messed up some things. But hey. At least she included a character named, "Buffy." Also, George (Georgia) was named after George Romero, and Shaun was a reference to Shaun of the Dead. Where was I? Oh, yeah. I was about to gripe.
Time to gripe.
Let's start with bloggers. Bloggers suck.
By that, I mean you should never trust bloggers.
By that, I mean...
By that, I mean Grant didn't really nail the point about the collapse of journalism. Way back when I started writing about science fiction and politics here, I pointed you to one of the better novels on this point: Neal Stephenson's Fall; or, Dodge in Hell. Comparing Grant to Neal Stephenson is a little unfair. Comparing anyone to Stephenson is a little unfair, but there it is. Stephenson wrote about the collapse of a collective understanding of truth. The basic problem with turning to random sources on the internet, or, "the miasma," as Richard "Dodge" Forthrast called it, is that you don't have verification processes, and you just go down a self-reinforcing ideological rabbit hole. Blogging isn't a solution to anything except, "how should I spend my Sunday morning," or from your perspective, "what is that disgruntled professor grumbling about now?"
Grant/McGuire/Whatever she wants to call herself, wrote Feed before the 2016 election and the rise of "fake news," but even so, the concept of relying on social media for information had obvious problems at the time. Sorry, Seanan, I read it before 2016, and I didn't buy it. The profession of journalism is in trouble. That doesn't presage the rise of bloggers, nor anything like that. Instead, it presages, if anything, something far more ominous, akin to a post-truth world like that described by Neal Stephenson.
More griping, because I need to do this. I won't go into detail here, but McGuire did not appear to have any clear sense of the mechanics of a presidential nominating process. Look, I know this is boring to many people, but here is how it works. Each candidate names potential delegates from each state, who are campaign supporters. There are primaries and caucuses, which are statewide elections. Those elections determine whose delegates will represent the state at the convention. The convention holds a vote among the delegates, selected by primaries and caucuses. That's the short version. There are complicated formulae, caucuses are messy, and there's lots of stuff, but anyone writing about the nominating process at least needs to get this much. McGuire didn't appear to understand this. Me=grumpy. McGuire also didn't appear to have any coherent sense of a party/ideological system, or anything like that. Look, if you are doing world-building and writing about a presidential nomination, this is what we call necessary research. When Neal Stephenson (to use him again) wrote Seveneves, he actually did the research to get orbital mechanics, the International Space Station, and all that right. He fudged some stuff (Cradle, for example), but when he writes, he does his damned research. McGuire missed the most basic points.
OK. Sorry, I had to do that. I'm a political scientist.
But she did get some basic observations right. Social distancing. There was so much about the world in Feed that spoke to the nature of social distancing, in the individual interactions and the overall structure of society. McGuire did that well. It was built upon an undercurrent of fear that was sort of normalized. Society got to a point of treating the zombie apocalypse, not as over and done, but as a fact of life to be accepted and managed. That, really, is my main observation for today, and an interesting point for how people change their expectations. The baseline level of stress and fear went up, and everything in that society changed around it. People went on with their lives, not as they were, but by restructuring their lives around what needed to be done within the confines of that stress and fear. The normalization of the zombie apocalypse. That, I think, is why the Feed trilogy holds up, and deserves at least a significant portion of its buzz, even from my perspective as a grumpy political scientist who picks apart mischaracterizations of politics like Buffy watching an action movie. Except, of course, that Buffy could actually fight. I'm just the professional peanut gallery.
The other element worth noting here is how this affects political culture. McGuire got political mechanics all wrong, and didn't think through a party or ideological system with any coherence, but she did think through some basics. Like... no big rallies. Think about a primary campaign with the candidates traversing the country, only to meet with small gatherings because people won't meet in large groups for fear of a zombie outbreak. This is a part of social distancing, but it's about the interaction between social distancing and political dynamics. How important is this? When I read it years ago, it struck me as a minor point, but in the era of the Trump rally, it becomes more important.
What happens to Trump rallies now? Do they still happen? It has taken a long time for Trump to admit that COVID-19 actually is a serious problem.
Which is, itself, an interesting thing in the context of Feed. In the world of Feed, fear is politically useful. Of course, fear can always be politically useful, and I have been making that point in various ways for a long time. Scared people act irrationally. And they give up things that they otherwise wouldn't sacrifice. Savvy politicians can use that. Trump, of course, is not exactly savvy. He is the bluntest instrument in the history of bluntness, and the reason it took him so long to declare a national emergency, in contrast with his immigration/wall stunt, was that he was committed to a posture of blustering his way through and telling everyone that everything is perfect because Trump is President.
The more pervasive and normalized fear becomes, though, the more politically useful it can be to anyone smart enough to exploit it.
I keep telling you to do the math. COVID-19 is serious. There is potential for a high death toll, in raw numbers. The most crass, and shocking way that I can put it, as I did yesterday, is that if 1/3 of the population is infected with COVID-19 at 2% mortality, that is the mathematical equivalent of 1/6th of a Holocaust. 330,000,000/3=110,000,000 infected, with a death toll of 2.2 million at 2% mortality, which is 1/6 of the 12 million from the Holocaust. Individually, though, your baseline Bayesian probability of surviving is approximately 99.33%, even at that high estimate of mortality. Is that a game of Russian Roulette I want to play? No. What it means is that you take sensible precautions, but don't panic.
Fear and panic are how you let yourself get exploited. Statistically, you are highly likely to survive. Rationality is difficult. It is also necessary. It is difficult to manipulate a rational person who doesn't panic beyond reason.
It's about society after the zombie apocalypse. It's about the normalization of the post-zombie apocalypse.
And it takes place during a presidential primary.
So here's the basic set-up. Various medical unfortunateness...es? The plural of "unfortunateness." They happen. There's a cure for cancer! And... the common cold! (Cue ironic commentary.) When they combine, badness ensues. Kellis-Amberlee is the resulting bug. Zombies are the result. Society sort of collapses, and part of that collapse is that institutions fail to get it right. They fail to provide accurate information to the public about what is happening. In particular, professional journalists fail. Consequently, anyone who wants information on society as it is collapsing must turn to social media. Blogs, even.
Think of that. The best you can do is to turn to social media for information. Horrifying, right? About as horrifying as zombies.
Then again, attempts at uprisings in countries like Iran have been dependent on social media, so...
So getting back to Feed, the collective failure of journalism to provide accurate information during the zombie apocalypse leads to the rise of bloggers as a source of information. With information, though, it is possible, not exactly to defeat the zombie apocalypse, but to reestablish some kind of civilization amid an ongoing zombie threat. People live lives of isolation, dependent on security, with blood tests to make sure that anyone who enters a secured place isn't in the process of turning into a zombie ("amplifying"), large gatherings don't happen, and you get the basic point.
Politically, it is worth pointing out that fear can be useful. I'll let that dangle there, and not get into anything too spoiler-y.
The basic plot of the first book is a little nonsensical. A prominent presidential candidate invites a pair of very young bloggers to tag along on the campaign trail, wackiness ensues. A little too YA for my general tastes.
OK, so I'm a political scientist. There was an episode of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer in which the characters were sitting around, watching an action movie, and Buffy got annoyed at the fight scene because the action hero was doing it wrong, and her friends got annoyed at her for ruining the movie. Sometimes, that's me. With politics. I like when authors get social science right. I teach a class about it! Mira (Seanan)... messed up some things. But hey. At least she included a character named, "Buffy." Also, George (Georgia) was named after George Romero, and Shaun was a reference to Shaun of the Dead. Where was I? Oh, yeah. I was about to gripe.
Time to gripe.
Let's start with bloggers. Bloggers suck.
By that, I mean you should never trust bloggers.
By that, I mean...
By that, I mean Grant didn't really nail the point about the collapse of journalism. Way back when I started writing about science fiction and politics here, I pointed you to one of the better novels on this point: Neal Stephenson's Fall; or, Dodge in Hell. Comparing Grant to Neal Stephenson is a little unfair. Comparing anyone to Stephenson is a little unfair, but there it is. Stephenson wrote about the collapse of a collective understanding of truth. The basic problem with turning to random sources on the internet, or, "the miasma," as Richard "Dodge" Forthrast called it, is that you don't have verification processes, and you just go down a self-reinforcing ideological rabbit hole. Blogging isn't a solution to anything except, "how should I spend my Sunday morning," or from your perspective, "what is that disgruntled professor grumbling about now?"
Grant/McGuire/Whatever she wants to call herself, wrote Feed before the 2016 election and the rise of "fake news," but even so, the concept of relying on social media for information had obvious problems at the time. Sorry, Seanan, I read it before 2016, and I didn't buy it. The profession of journalism is in trouble. That doesn't presage the rise of bloggers, nor anything like that. Instead, it presages, if anything, something far more ominous, akin to a post-truth world like that described by Neal Stephenson.
More griping, because I need to do this. I won't go into detail here, but McGuire did not appear to have any clear sense of the mechanics of a presidential nominating process. Look, I know this is boring to many people, but here is how it works. Each candidate names potential delegates from each state, who are campaign supporters. There are primaries and caucuses, which are statewide elections. Those elections determine whose delegates will represent the state at the convention. The convention holds a vote among the delegates, selected by primaries and caucuses. That's the short version. There are complicated formulae, caucuses are messy, and there's lots of stuff, but anyone writing about the nominating process at least needs to get this much. McGuire didn't appear to understand this. Me=grumpy. McGuire also didn't appear to have any coherent sense of a party/ideological system, or anything like that. Look, if you are doing world-building and writing about a presidential nomination, this is what we call necessary research. When Neal Stephenson (to use him again) wrote Seveneves, he actually did the research to get orbital mechanics, the International Space Station, and all that right. He fudged some stuff (Cradle, for example), but when he writes, he does his damned research. McGuire missed the most basic points.
OK. Sorry, I had to do that. I'm a political scientist.
But she did get some basic observations right. Social distancing. There was so much about the world in Feed that spoke to the nature of social distancing, in the individual interactions and the overall structure of society. McGuire did that well. It was built upon an undercurrent of fear that was sort of normalized. Society got to a point of treating the zombie apocalypse, not as over and done, but as a fact of life to be accepted and managed. That, really, is my main observation for today, and an interesting point for how people change their expectations. The baseline level of stress and fear went up, and everything in that society changed around it. People went on with their lives, not as they were, but by restructuring their lives around what needed to be done within the confines of that stress and fear. The normalization of the zombie apocalypse. That, I think, is why the Feed trilogy holds up, and deserves at least a significant portion of its buzz, even from my perspective as a grumpy political scientist who picks apart mischaracterizations of politics like Buffy watching an action movie. Except, of course, that Buffy could actually fight. I'm just the professional peanut gallery.
The other element worth noting here is how this affects political culture. McGuire got political mechanics all wrong, and didn't think through a party or ideological system with any coherence, but she did think through some basics. Like... no big rallies. Think about a primary campaign with the candidates traversing the country, only to meet with small gatherings because people won't meet in large groups for fear of a zombie outbreak. This is a part of social distancing, but it's about the interaction between social distancing and political dynamics. How important is this? When I read it years ago, it struck me as a minor point, but in the era of the Trump rally, it becomes more important.
What happens to Trump rallies now? Do they still happen? It has taken a long time for Trump to admit that COVID-19 actually is a serious problem.
Which is, itself, an interesting thing in the context of Feed. In the world of Feed, fear is politically useful. Of course, fear can always be politically useful, and I have been making that point in various ways for a long time. Scared people act irrationally. And they give up things that they otherwise wouldn't sacrifice. Savvy politicians can use that. Trump, of course, is not exactly savvy. He is the bluntest instrument in the history of bluntness, and the reason it took him so long to declare a national emergency, in contrast with his immigration/wall stunt, was that he was committed to a posture of blustering his way through and telling everyone that everything is perfect because Trump is President.
The more pervasive and normalized fear becomes, though, the more politically useful it can be to anyone smart enough to exploit it.
I keep telling you to do the math. COVID-19 is serious. There is potential for a high death toll, in raw numbers. The most crass, and shocking way that I can put it, as I did yesterday, is that if 1/3 of the population is infected with COVID-19 at 2% mortality, that is the mathematical equivalent of 1/6th of a Holocaust. 330,000,000/3=110,000,000 infected, with a death toll of 2.2 million at 2% mortality, which is 1/6 of the 12 million from the Holocaust. Individually, though, your baseline Bayesian probability of surviving is approximately 99.33%, even at that high estimate of mortality. Is that a game of Russian Roulette I want to play? No. What it means is that you take sensible precautions, but don't panic.
Fear and panic are how you let yourself get exploited. Statistically, you are highly likely to survive. Rationality is difficult. It is also necessary. It is difficult to manipulate a rational person who doesn't panic beyond reason.
Comments
Post a Comment