Moxyland by Lauren Beukes
Posted in Reading Reviewed, Science Fiction at 12:00 on 26 June 2012
Angry Robot, 2009, 314p.
Like Beukesâs second novel Zoo City – a nominee for the BSFA Award last year – Moxyland, her first, is set in South Africa, which does add an unusual flavour; but whereas in Zoo City that seemed an important element Moxyland could really be set anywhere. It is almost a 1984 in reverse; it is not the state so much as corporations that exert power. How 21st century. How timely.
In Moxyland not only the conversations but also the wider narrative are in a stripped down demotic (eg a vid chat sesh.) This adds to immediacy and the sense of future shock but takes a little getting used to. In this regard the multiple viewpoints employed to tell the story add to the dislocatory effect.
In its totally phone-connected, over-surveilled society where semi-cyborg police dogs called Aitos make your average Alsatian look like a tame poodle and mobile phones are the conduit for everday transactions but are fitted with âdefusersâ to administer taser-like electric shocks as a public order or restraint mechanism, to be âdisconnectâ is a punishment, to be switched off an act of resistance intrepretable as terrorism. Not that there arenât terrorists aroundâ¦.
The plot circles round the insidious nature of totalitarianism, the illusion that free agency is possible, that you matter.
The Moxyland of the title is a throwaway, an online game for children, heavily moderated. Adults do access it but any player can be denounced anonymously as such an illicit user. While the game is mentioned (we are shown one of the characters playing it) it really has no part in the plot and as such is rather too obvious a metaphor for the wider society of the novel.
Moxyland is a hyped-up, near future, thriller light, seeped in creeping paranoia – but where they really are out to get you – or at least get you to conform – but the characters donât quite breathe as they might. The many viewpoints donât help with this, even when we see the same events from differing perspectives. It was Beukesâs first novel though, and still an interesting read; a good pointer to the more polished tale she gave us in Zoo City.
Tags: Lauren Beukes, Science Fiction, Zoo City
Martin McCallion
27 June 2012 at 13:51
I had a similar opinion, but was more disturbed by why everybody didn’t just insulate themselves from their phones, to avoid the shocks.
jackdeighton
28 June 2012 at 00:11
Yes, Martin.
I suppose an actual taser would work even through thick rubber pockets but not a mobile phone low on power.
The story is an adaptation of the totalitarian nightmare to the mobile phone age. But governments would probably just require denial of users’ service rather than go for tasering but for fiction’s purposes that’s not as dramatic, is it?
Martin McCallion
28 June 2012 at 00:36
I think that actual tasers have spikes that have to penetrate clothes for their effect. Hard to see how they can work against a zipped-up leather jacket, say.
Anyway, yes, drama, fine; but it really trashed my suspension of disbelief.