When woke science fiction becomes self-parody: Two novellas from Radicalized, by Cory Doctorow

 With the impending election, I have been doing daily posts on politics, and I need a palate cleanser of pickled ginger.  Back to some science fiction!  Today, we tackle a subject I have been addressing semi-frequently in my commentaries on science fiction, in part because much of modern science fiction is not only political, but in a particular way.  Cory Doctorow is a skilled writer, and closely associated with one of my favorites-- Charles Stross-- but kind of like a kid brother.  Doctorow, though, can not only occasionally rip off his idol, he can also fall prey to some of the worst excesses of attempts at political science fiction, which I have addressed before.  So let's just get into it.

Radicalized is a compilation of four novellas, two of which I rather enjoyed.  "Unauthorized Bread" is a fun, little tale about smart appliances gone way too far, and the travails of jailbreaking them.  Are there problems in the story?  Yeah, but I'll forgive them for an otherwise amusing story.  "Masque of the Red Death" was just good.  It is about an investment fund manager and "prepper" who has read way too much Ayn Rand and taken her way too seriously.

So instead of writing about "Unauthorized Bread" and "Masque of the Red Death," and I'm going to gripe about the more problematic stories in the compilation.  The quicker one first.  In the eponymous tale, a group of people meet in online fora to discuss the deaths of their loved ones when they are denied treatment for cancer or some other fatal condition by their insurance companies.  Some of them decide to become terrorists, and start targeting insurance company executives, politicians, etc.  You can see the potential here.

Doctorow, though, didn't do his research.  He wanted to hit basic, standard lefty beats about politics, and for healthcare, that means rah-rah-single-payer.  So, everything is building towards single payer, and in their pre-recorded statements before doing their suicide bombings, the terrorists always say something about single payer.

But you know what kind of treatment all of the dead loved ones were denied?  Expensive experimental treatments.  No single payer system anywhere covers experimental treatments.  Treatments under any system are covered after rigorous scientific studies demonstrate efficacy.  If a doctor thinks that some new, experimental treatment might work in a country with single payer?  Your single payer health insurance ain't coverin' it.  So the whole plot falls apart because Doctorow doesn't understand the relationship between experimental treatments and single payer.

Could Doctorow have found a kind of treatment that gets denied in the for-profit system but gets covered in various single-payer systems?  Sure, but he would have needed to do his actual research.  He didn't.  He was lazy.  I detest lazy writing.  There are real conversations to be had about the benefits and drawbacks of single payer, but this isn't the way to do it.  Lying, and saying that experimental treatments would be covered... ain't the way to do it.

No, Cory.  No.  Bad commie.  No borscht for you.

OK, quick one out of the way.  Now, let's get to the messier one.  "Model Minority."  This one had a very cool idea.  A character who is basically Superman, whom I will simply call, "Superman," is flying along on his merry way, and he sees a black guy having the shit beaten out of him by four 'roid-raged cops.

Cool lead-in.  So much potential.  So Doctorow to create a concept with potential and fuck it up.

OK, so if you know your comic book history, you know that there used to be an actual code-- the Comics Code Authority-- which had very specific rules.  Like, the cops always had to be the good guys, and superheroes (read: vigilantes) always had to work alongside the cops.  That's why Jim Gordon would throw up the Bat-signal.  (And yeah, Batman shows up in Doctorow's novella too, without being so named.  He's just "Bruce.")  So for a lot of comic book history, it would have been forbidden to write about this stuff.  Of course Superman would be on the cops' side, particularly during the time period when the worst abuses were most frequent.  And without getting into the Fryer controversies, the guy survives, so it was technically non-lethal force.  Cold comfort, but worth the observation.

Anyway, what would Superman do in 2019, when Doctorow published this?  And if Superman intervened to save the black guy, what would happen in the aftermath?  That's the story.  So Superman swoops down, saves the badly injured Wilbur Robinson, and ensures that he gets to a hospital.  He tries to ensure a fair trial, and truth, justice, American way, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Hurray for Superman, right?

So Doctorow suggests that Superman's actions would be polarizing.  And indeed, worse than polarizing.  He'd have the Blue Lives Matter people against him, which... yeah, probably, but that he also wouldn't even get the support of the activists!  Everyone would turn on him!  And the thing is, Doctorow may be right, but in a way that devolves into self-parody.

When Superman saves Wilbur Robinson, the whole thing turns into a national uproar.  Basically, think of the kind of national protests that have occurred in response to George Floyd, and add to the mix the idea that there is someone who cannot be taken down by even the biggest guns in the military arsenal.  Powder keg.  As "Bruce" notes at one point, Superman turns back a military-style weapon that was almost used on protesters, and the government gets scared, because what if Superman shows up in Kandahar?  On... the other side?  If he is not truly loyal to the US government, that's a scary proposition to a lot of people.

Like I said, powder keg.

So there are actually some sharp observations here.  Unfortunately, they are crudely undercut by the central moment.  Superman is deeply confused why even Robinson seems so angry at him, and why everyone is against him.  He has a conversation with Robinson which is supposed to be a reflection of what it means to be an "ally."  This is a fraught idea in modern politics, and if Doctorow had written the critical scene in a way that had demonstrated any irony, it would play differently, but nothing suggested intentional irony, and that was the problem.

So Superman has a conversation with Robinson after saving him from the psycho-cops, and Robinson is angry.  At... Superman.  Why?  Superman has his big revelation that what he did wrong was that he never asked Robinson what he wanted.  He swooped down like a white savior, thinking he knew best.  And the result was a national furor and uproar.  So Superman asks Robinson what Robinson would have wanted, and Robinson tells him that what he would have wanted was not to have been swooped off to the hospital, but just to have had the whole thing recorded and put on youtube, and given to his lawyer.

What Robinson's position is intended to convey is that being an ally means not assuming you know best, asking, deferring, and all of that.  Carry this too far to the extreme, and you have someone trying with all of his might-- his Superman might-- to do right, and being told, "you're doing it wrong."

Does anyone remember that Insta-whatchama-whatever-thing when everyone put up black squares to show solidarity with BLM after George Floyd, and they were told, no, don't do that, you're doing it wrong?  People were actually trying to show support, and they were excoriated for it.  "You're doing it wrong."

There is a point at which excoriating someone for trying to be an ally wrong becomes self-parody.

Let's just think through the plot here.  Superman sees Robinson getting the shit beaten out of him by some psychopathic cops.  The rules of proper ally-ship, as explained to him by Robinson, state that he was supposed to swoop down, tell the cops:  "wait a moment, I need to ask this man what he wants.  Pause your batons!  But don't put them away, because he might want you to keep beating the shit out of him!  Sir, would you like me to stop this, or let it continue, knowing that a sufficient number of head injuries will actually kill the fuck out of you and your puny human head?"

At which point, Robinson would say, "why thank you for being a proper ally, you alien from not-Krypton!  I believe that I would like this four-on-one felony assault to continue.  However, I would like you, rather than saving me, to record it, knowing full well that you could have saved me further injury and possibly putting my life in jeopardy through willful inaction.  Then, please give the recording to my attorney so that if I am not killed by these four batons, nor comatose, there can be legal action.  Also, put the recording on youtube!"

Superman:  "Very well, good sir!  As a proper ally, I will defer to your wishes.  Officers, continue beating the shit out of this man whilst I record it!"

Dialog aside, this is actually what Robinson tells Superman he wanted.  It is only by putting dialog and sequence to it that the absurdity comes into vivid focus.  This is self-parody.  Yeah, I got Supe's back here.  He was right.  In the story, there are people who ask why he wasn't intervening earlier, and I'm also with them.  He fuckin' watched Stonewall, name-checked by Doctorow.  But this time, he did right.

And it gets worse when you think about the lawyer/youtube request.  A central complaint of BLM is that even when there are recordings, and even when they are on youtube, cops aren't punished.  And they aren't!  Empirically, they aren't punished when they do this to white people either (See: Timpa, Tony).  They're just never punished.  Cops can pretty much kill anyone they want.  Video, no video, doesn't matter.  If they want to kill you, they can kill you.  Mostly, they don't.  These are rare events, and I must always remind you of what I call "the paradox of news."  If it is a national news story, that is because it is rare enough to warrant news coverage, and that tricks your statistically disinclined brain into thinking it is normal.  Your brain sucks.  Learn statistics.

Anyway, back on track.  Robinson's position makes no sense.  It is self-parody.  His statement to Superman about what he would have wanted runs directly contrary to the claims of BLM and police reformers more generally.  In fact, they were wearing body cams, while chanting "stop resisting" as their excuse for beating the shit out of him, so a youtube video?  It would have done nothing.  Those cops would have gotten away with it, no matter what.  The only question was whether or not Robinson sustained further injuries.  Or maybe even died.

But Doctorow wanted to give a lecture about being a proper ally, and in order to give that lecture, he had to have that scene which, if you think about it, devolves into a hypothetical alternative timeline in which Superman pauses the beating to ask Robinson if he wants the cops to keep pulverizing him, then tells the cops to resume the felony assault upon learning that, yes, that's what Robinson wanted.

At which point... I'm not a lawyer, but I think Superman himself would have been legally culpable.  And in the story, Superman was a lawyer.

But at least he would have been a proper ally!