paperback, 368 pages
Published May 10, 2021 by Berkley Pub Group, Berkley.
From award-winning author Sarah Pinsker comes a novel about one family and the technology that divides them.
Everybody’s getting one.
Val and Julie just want what’s best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant to help with school, they reluctantly agree. This is the future, after all.
Soon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with her colleagues, leaving Val and Sophie part of the shrinking minority of people without the device.
Before long, the implications are clear, for the family and society: get a Pilot or get left behind. With government subsidies and no downside, why would anyone refuse? And how do you stop a technology once it’s everywhere? Those are the questions Sophie and her anti-Pilot movement rise up to answer, even if it puts them …
From award-winning author Sarah Pinsker comes a novel about one family and the technology that divides them.
Everybody’s getting one.
Val and Julie just want what’s best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant to help with school, they reluctantly agree. This is the future, after all.
Soon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with her colleagues, leaving Val and Sophie part of the shrinking minority of people without the device.
Before long, the implications are clear, for the family and society: get a Pilot or get left behind. With government subsidies and no downside, why would anyone refuse? And how do you stop a technology once it’s everywhere? Those are the questions Sophie and her anti-Pilot movement rise up to answer, even if it puts them up against the Pilot’s powerful manufacturer and pits Sophie against the people she loves most.
A very human story about technology, family, activism, big tech, the military, epilepsy, hypersensitivity, addiction, and more.
I refuse to categorize this as sci-fi. This is a family drama with the barest hint of a sci-fi element, like the La Croix of genres. I probably should have put this book down as soon as I could tell where things were (or were not) heading, but I wanted to finish it so I could feel justified in leaving an actual rating.
The book follows Val and Julie, and their two kids Sophie and David. Society has begun adopting neural implants called Pilots that augment human attention, allegedly letting them multitask better and be more productive. A rift quickly opens up between the "haves" (people with Pilots) and the "have nots" (people without). David is the first person in the family to get a Pilot, followed soon by Julie. Val is staunchly anti-Pilot, and Sophie can't get one for medical reasons. We watch this small family grow up, grow …
I refuse to categorize this as sci-fi. This is a family drama with the barest hint of a sci-fi element, like the La Croix of genres. I probably should have put this book down as soon as I could tell where things were (or were not) heading, but I wanted to finish it so I could feel justified in leaving an actual rating.
The book follows Val and Julie, and their two kids Sophie and David. Society has begun adopting neural implants called Pilots that augment human attention, allegedly letting them multitask better and be more productive. A rift quickly opens up between the "haves" (people with Pilots) and the "have nots" (people without). David is the first person in the family to get a Pilot, followed soon by Julie. Val is staunchly anti-Pilot, and Sophie can't get one for medical reasons. We watch this small family grow up, grow apart, and grow into different aspects of Pilot life--Sophie becomes an activist, David becomes involved in the military (and then washes out with PTSD-like symptoms), and Julie and Val become increasingly irritated with the other's stance on family.
And then....the book ends. There's some weak mystery about whether the company behind Pilots is up to something shady, but that never goes anywhere. Interspersed with this family's drama are attempts by the author to push a certain narrative. Social media is bad, screen time is bad, military members are knuckle dragging cavemen and college is superior in all ways, ride share programs steal your information and aren't to be trusted, the list goes on and on. It comes off super preachy and not at all organically integrated into the non-story the author is trying to tell.
I was super disappointed with this book, and think the premise and summary is misleading. The sci-fi element (the Pilot implants) is barely used beyond being the catalyst for drama, and I was incredibly disappointed at being given a family drama I wasn't signing up for.
Plausible near-future Science Fiction that reviews the impact of a technology like Elon Musk's Neuralink might have on our society and those who cannot participate, as well as the dangers of giving corporations like that too much unchecked control. Themes include LGBTQ and disability, and it's refreshing to see an unconventional family (Sophie and David have two moms) at the center of this story, without the story being about that.
This is the sort of near-future sci-fi that's really just one fictional innovation away from the world it was written in, and clearly used as a lens to look at ourselves. It follows one very relatable family and their challenges in adapting--and in some ways being unable to adapt--to a wave of fast social change. I identified strongly enough with each of the main characters in some way that each of their crises broke my heart a little.
The ending wrapped things up a little too neatly and I found that particularly disappointing because it broke the easy belieavability of the rest of the book. But the rest was so good that I can't hold it against book or author.
A warmly thoughtful and engaged family pulled in all directions as society's definition of "neurotypical" shifts beneath them. Seems YA in many respects, extent of conflicts and constrained depths.
This is a good solid read. The plot is meaningful, interesting, and engaging; the characters realistic, believable and human. Although this story was not at all what I had expected, I was pleasantly surprised.
I enjoyed the story of this book very much, but the writing felt weak. The dialogue was often presented as just cold back-and-forth. There was emotion in what was being said, just not in how it was written.
Blue LEDs are the absolute worst.
Seriously though: I've been in the position of worrying if my lack of a cell phone will mean I can't enter buildings anymore. I've got friends who worry about embedded computers that are keeping their hearts running, that use software that is impossible to audit or improve. I've purposefully hacked my focus (in the opposite direction as seen in this book, and without using tech or meds). So there's a lot of stuff in this book that I'm very happy to see engaged with in the way it is here. This was mostly a 5 star read for me, dinged a bit for being a bit too simplistic at the end maybe.
My thoughts here.
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2021/05/review-we-are-satellites.html
