betty reviewed Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed
Can't believe this is from the 90s
5 stars
I was reading Cyberpunk in the 90s when this was first published, although I never encountered it. Cyberpunk in the 90s was, as I encountered it, slick and cool and flashy. Dystopian, but the charismatic and capable protagonist made it look sexy. To be honest, I was a teenager, and it felt like it was calculated to appeal to a teen.
It seems difficult to believe this was grown from the same soil. This is dystopian, but the dystopia doesn't serve to underline how cool our protagonist is. Maya, our protagonist, is a reporter whose job and life is constrained by an event in her past which has put her under the suspicion of the political police in totalitarian Russia. It is simplistic to say she is a reporter, rather, she is a camera: one whose job is to experience things and transmit her experience; sight, sounds, sensations, and thoughts. …
I was reading Cyberpunk in the 90s when this was first published, although I never encountered it. Cyberpunk in the 90s was, as I encountered it, slick and cool and flashy. Dystopian, but the charismatic and capable protagonist made it look sexy. To be honest, I was a teenager, and it felt like it was calculated to appeal to a teen.
It seems difficult to believe this was grown from the same soil. This is dystopian, but the dystopia doesn't serve to underline how cool our protagonist is. Maya, our protagonist, is a reporter whose job and life is constrained by an event in her past which has put her under the suspicion of the political police in totalitarian Russia. It is simplistic to say she is a reporter, rather, she is a camera: one whose job is to experience things and transmit her experience; sight, sounds, sensations, and thoughts. As such, even her thoughts can implicate her.
Maya hopes to regain some currency as a reporter by getting an interview with a survivor of the gestalt massacre which put the current regime in power. She is paired with a new "filter" for this job, someone who partners with her to pare down what she experiences into something more coherent (and politically palatable) for broadcast. Maya mistrusts her new filter, and knows that searching for this story may put her at odds with the censors, but it's the only goal she has that allows her to pursue meaning in her life.
Then, of course, her new filter and the story she is pursuing both turn out to be much more than and different from what they originally seemed.
This is a rough read, including some first person accounts of future war crimes which are not technologically possible at present but are certainly based on gulags of the past. There is human and animal experimentation, a kind of conversion therapy, and an ever present of paranoia that felt very close at the moment.
On the other hand, it's a hell of a story.
