Moxyland [Paperback]

Lauren Beukes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2009

What's really going on? Who's really in charge? You have NO. F***KING. IDEA. Moxyland kicks the door in on the techno-corporate conspiracy that's out to get us...and our freedom. In the near future, an art-school dropout, an AIDSbaby, a tech-activist and a RPG-obsessed blogger live in a world where your online identity is at least as important as your physical one. Getting disconnected is a punishment worse than imprisonment, but someone's got to stand up to government inc., whatever the cost. FILE UNDER: Science Fiction [Digital Natives / Corporate Wars / Future Tech / Teenage Riot]

Editorial Reviews

Review

"full of unselfconscious spiky originality, the larval form of a new kind of SF munching its way out of the intestines of the wasp-paralysed caterpillar of cyberpunk." - Charles Stross "This fast-paced sci-fi trip has intriguing characters, big ideas, a new lexicon... and serves as a global warning." - GQ "A TECHNICOLOR JAZZY ROLLERCOASTER RIDE INTO A DAZZLING HELL." - Andre Brink "Tell your English teacher you want to read Moxyland or you'll shoot up your school." - NAG Online

About the Author

Lauren Beukes is a writer, TV scriptwriter and journalist. She has an MA in Creative Writing, but she got her real education in ten years of freelance journalism, learning really useful skills like how to pole-dance and make traditional sorghum beer. For the sake of a story, she's jumped out of planes and into shark-infested waters and got to hang out with teen vampires, township vigilantes, AIDS activists and homeless sex workers among other interesting folk.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Angry Robot (July 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007323891
• ISBN-13: 978-0007323890
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,820,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lauren Beukes is a writer, TV scriptwriter and recovering journalist (although she occasionally falls off the wagon).

She has an MA in Creative Writing, but she got her real education in ten years of freelance journalism, learning really useful skills like how to pole-dance and make traditional sorghum beer. For the sake of a story, she's jumped out of planes and into shark-infested waters and got to hang out with teen vampires, township vigilantes, AIDS activists and homeless sex workers among other interesting folk.

When she's not tutoring her baby daughter (aka the queen of eeeeeeevil) in practical ways to take over the world, she also writes books, short stories, magazine articles and TV scripts various.

She's twice been longlisted for the Sunday Times book prize, in 2006 for the Alan Paton Award for best non-fiction for Maverick: Extraordinary Women From South Africa's Past and in 2009 in the fiction category for Moxyland.

She lives in Cape Town with her husband and daughter.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moxyland - Lauren Beukes, May 10, 2010

By 

Alan N. (Chicago) - See all my reviews

Moxyland, by Lauren Beukes, is a pulsating journey through a near-future corporatocracy where most aspects of society appear under the surveillance and control of an inflexible governing entity, seeming equal parts intelligence gathering, law-enforcement, and corporate oligarchy. It takes place in 2018, mostly in South Africa, but like any great novel, its story transfers across boundaries and cultures, finding resonance anywhere people find themselves increasingly surrendering their autonomy to a creeping 'corporate-state megacomplex.' Moxyland follows the lives of four young principle characters (along with about a dozen of their friends, enemies and associates) who's worlds variably intersect in interesting ways, increasingly so as the novel progresses. It is written in an engaging 'four-voices, first-person' style, with each new chapter being told in the present by one of the four main character-narrators. Each speaks with a particular style, attitude, rhythm and lingo, adding richness and complexity to their narratives. Beukes breaks ground by achieving a seamless blending of cool and novel lingo, occasional Afrikaans slang, and in the case of one voice, an appealing conversational familiarity with the reader, often addressing us as if we were his mates. The unpredictable 'rotation' of narrator order as the chapters progress - not knowing who is coming next - further increases the reader's sense of tension and uncertainty, in a story already brimming with suspense and intensity. Toward the end of the book, there is more rapid cycling of narrators, with some chapters only a couple of pages long; as the suspense and nervousness build, you too may find yourself covering paragraphs with your bookmark to keep your eyes from looking ahead. Moxyland is that kind of book. It will grab hold of you while you're reading it, and not let you go for some time thereafter.

Plot details are elsewhere if you really need to know them. But if you are this far, you are intrigued enough. Read it. Moxyland will not let you down and will have you wishing for more.

Beukes is a keen observer of our present, and an imaginative teller of our possible futures. Nothing feels derivative about this work. Moxyland does not feel descended from anything but the mind of a thoughtful and perceptive writer, transcends genre categorization, and truly stands on its own shelf. Highly creative in content, style and language, the worlds her characters inhabit feel disturbingly further from fiction than should make us comfortable. Our own Earth here truly is the alien planet. It is a smart, at times wickedly funny, and ultimately unsettling story of an entirely believable early 21st century world. Moxyland will enjoy broad readership, and Lauren Beukes is a writer to watch.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Miserable but successful, November 15, 2011

By 

Kat at Fantasy Literature - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Moxyland (Angry Robot) (Mass Market Paperback)

Every once in a while a novel comes along that's touted as new, exciting, daring, meaningful, poignant, fresh, full of big ideas, etc. That's what I've heard, so that's what I was expecting and hoping for in Lauren Beukes' novel Moxyland -- especially since it has a nice blurb from William Gibson and has been compared to Neuromancer.

Moxyland takes place in a futuristic (2018) Cape Town, South Africa. The Cape Town setting is unique, and I was hoping to explore it a bit, but Beukes did not make use of her setting -- Moxyland could have taken place anywhere. This Cape Town of the not-too-distant future is a police state run by big corporations where the police control people through government-approved cell phones. Software on the phones lets the police punish citizens by tasing them or cutting off access to their bank accounts and credit lines. In Cape Town, we meet four young adults:

Kendra is an art school dropout who has become an advertisement for a soft drink company. They pumped her up with biotechnology that makes her healthy and beautiful and gives her some of the attention she craves, but the biotech also makes its brand name glow through her skin and gives her a constant craving for their soda. Toby is a vlogger whose wealthy mother ("motherbitch") has just cut him off because he spends all his money on drugs, girls, and expensive clothes. Eager for the website hits that prove people are paying attention to him, he spends his days walking around Cape Town looking for cool stuff to livestream to his vlog. Lerato is an AIDS-baby who was raised in a corporate/government orphanage. She now works for them as a programmer, and she's got an easy life in the posh corporate world, but she can't quite manage to stay loyal to the corporation that's given her everything she's got. Tendeka wants to be a revolutionary, so he rallies kids, coerces them into not accepting government sponsorships, and uses them to commit useless acts of vandalism and civil disobedience. He manages to pull Toby, Lareto, and Kendra into his latest schemes against the Cape Town government.

These four young disillusioned people can't manage to effectively change their world or their places in it. They have no noble ideology (beyond the vague feeling that things should just be "different" than they are), and the things they do just end up causing more harm than good. They are ineffective when they attempt to rage against the corporate machine because they are selfish and thoughtless and they refuse to give up what the corporation offers -- technology, fashion, status, their favorite soda, and the feeling of being connected.

I like this idea, but I didn't like Moxyland mostly for the simple reason that I despised every character in the book. Every single one of them was pathetic, hateful, nasty, rude, cynical, sarcastic, and said "f***" nearly every time they opened their mouths. Not only did I dislike them and think they were pathetic -- they all had these same feelings toward each other. They all irritated me and each other and it was pure misery to be around them.

But that's the point, isn't it? Lauren Beukes wanted me to dislike all her characters and was, therefore, successful in that aspect of her novel. Because they are such a loathsome bunch of people, I cannot sympathize with them. In fact, I start to root for the corporation instead. I think this is the message, the warning: If we buy into what the corporation is selling, we should expect to become pathetically horrid creatures who deserve to be at its mercy. I like this message, but I spent eight hours with my face contorted into a grimace of disgust and I wish I had that time back. Moxyland would have worked better for me if there had been just one character who was different and who I could like. Instead, they all felt like nearly the same nasty person to me. They all had the same voice.

I listened to Brilliance Audio's version of Moxyland, narrated by New Zealand actor Nico Evers-Swindell, who's just as nice to listen to as he is to look at, though he needs to work on making his female characters sound more feminine. Brilliance Audio, I'm glad to see that you're producing Angry Robot titles, but next time would you please include a picture of Nico on the back of the CD box? You usually have a picture of the narrator but his face is missing from Moxyland, just like the faceless people in the cover art. That way, if I don't like the story, at least I can entertain myself by looking at Nico. Thanks for listening.

Lauren Beukes is talented and I think she accomplished what she wanted to with Moxyland. I can't really blame her for not writing it for me, and my 2.5 star rating reflects my lack of enjoyment of this novel and not Ms. Beukes' promise as a new SF author. Therefore, I am definitely on board for the next Beukes novel. In fact, Zoo City is already in my TBR pile.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A delightful trip through a plausible future..., March 2, 2010

By 

NutBar "nut-bar.com" (DFW, Texas) - See all my reviews

Moxyland definitely has some strong cyberpunk tones in the story. Based around four central characters, Moxyland paints very real, very plausible picture of a future that potentially lies just around the corner. First we have Kendra, a naive art school dropout yet talented photographer. Toby, a slacker who lives off his mom, until she cuts him off, and streamcasts via his high tech jacket, Baby Strange. Tendeka, a hard edged revolutionary willing to go to any length to protest the corporate hold on society. And Lerato, a highly sexual, incredibly talented programmer working for the evil corporation itself.

Set in South Africa in the very near 2018, if my math is correct, Moxyland is an amazing ride in a high tech world where cutting edge nano can heal the sick and our cell's SIM cards open, or close, the doors on the quality of lives we live. Your cell's SIM card is your pass to the "corporati" or your ticket to "disconnect".

Lauren Beukes does an amazing job of world building in Moxyland. You get a real sense of what life is like in this part of the world in this future, a clear picture of the very large divide between the luxury of working for the corporation, the despair of living on the streets, and the quality of life in between.

The story is fast paced and a quick read at just over 300 pages. I myself read it in just a few days. The story has a way of reaching out and grabbing you and roping you into their world. Towards then end I was scrambling to find out what was going to happen to the characters Lauren Beukes had allowed me to grow so fond of. The story has a real twist and my head is still swimming from the out come. I'll simply say, well played Lauren, well played.