The Lost Cause

Is an apocalyptic utopia a thing? Cory Doctorow (@pluralisic@mamot.fr) says yes in this tale of a 19 year old orphan's CliFi adventures in post Green New Deal Burbank, California.

When Brooks Palazzo's grumpy old MAGA grandpa passes away he's happily helping out his community doing jobs-guarantee tasks - solar panel maintenance, flood sandbagging, etc. - while trying to figure out what to do with his inherited family home.

The utopia is tainted with his grandpa's old cronies, who are armed to the teeth with illegal AR-15s and hell bent on running the brown climate refugees out of town in the short term, and taking back America in the long term. Society has outgrown the whole climate denial thing, but what do you do with all the leftover refugee-repelling reactionaries that are still hanging around? Do you find forgiveness in your heart? Or round them up?

A conundrum that could go either way for Brooks, but Doctorow ends up finding a third way that I didn't see coming.

I didn't dislike The Lost Cause, but it definitely wasn't my favorite of his books. The sentiment I agree with, but something about the unbridled optimism of the youth felt off to me. Maybe it's just me getting old and jaded.

While some sold it as "solarpunk," I'm not sure it fits this genre. Brooks, the "hero" character, is emotionally complex, but eternally falls on optimism. And his comrades generally seem to share an upbeat nature. Near future southern California is hot, plagued by fires, and dealing with the fallout of MAGA racists and their "plut", cryptocurrency allies, a broader swath of "decent people", and the leftist activists that are trying to create change in the face of climate catastrophe that leaves many internally displaced persons. A few characters add some political complexity, but there's an overall "us vs them" equation that lays the foundation for the book. It reads like a few others of Doctorow's books (Walkaway in mind), where there's a constant back and forth between positive, hopeful movement, and reactionary destruction. It shares with other solarpunk (1) a lot of talk about solar and carbon neutral or negative technologies, and (2) a general optimism in the face of difficult climate situations. Unlike much other solarpunk, this isn't a further off future, where significant transformation has changed political, social and cultural grounds. It is instead a near future, where the political debates remain (realistically, I think) in relatively similar terrain. Unlike "The Ministry for the Future", Doctorow doesn't get lost in scalar storytelling ranging from micro to macro transformation. Instead, the focus is on the change that could be made at a small level, in one place, by a group of committed activists. I think the book is meant to leave you hopeful, and I can see how it could do. However, unlike The Ministry for the Future, Becky Chambers' novels, or other Solarpunk, this book feels like it lands solidly in more realistic science fiction. It was a rich romp with some fun ideas (I love the notion that AI combined with open source does something useful and makes it possible for lay people to collectively redesign neighborhoods and communities) and, I think, a decent read on near future politics. And, as I often do, I find myself appreciating Doctorow's political bent, including his thorough investigations into "plut" culture and the cryptocurrency political hellscape.