Customer Reviews

Moxyland

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

This is a tough one for me to review, because quite honestly I'm not sure I liked it. However, I'm also not sure I hated it. It almost seemed like Beukes set out to write a cyberpunk 1984 of the new generation without much else in mind. It certainly had some good concepts going, but it was a bit too heavy handed and on the predictable side. Moxyland is a very rough book. I don't mean the writing; although it takes awhile to get use to the near future speak as the characters talk in abbreviations, technophile, and made-up words in nearly every sentence. I had the same problem with Snow Crash at first, but I came to appreciate it. The characters are all very rough as is the world they live in, which is a near-future dystopian Cape Town, South Africa where corporations run pretty much everything.

At first I thought I was in store for something along the lines of Ian McDonald's River of Gods, but it is nothing that philosophical or as well realized. Moxyland is Beukes's take on the old Orwellian theme of Big Brother watching and controlling the populace. Split into 4 character views it seems like another point of view or major theme was needed to bring the work up another level. Of the 4 POVs I only connected with one of them and it wasn't even the do-gooder character that it should have been. Some good concepts included the importance of everyone being plugged in with their phone, how it can be used against you, and how being "disconnected" is as close to death someone in this society can be, which is an idea coming more and more true everyday. There was also a fairly interesting storyline about one of the main characters being part of a corporate experiment involving nanos that can make you unnaturally healthy, but they also display a sort of advertisement on your skin.

One of the characters plays games for money. Sort of like how people nowadays pay for magical swords on eBay for games like EverQuest. I think this is the idea that should have been explored a bit more especially since the lives of everyone being connected is so important. Maybe mixing more of the Game World with the real world would have done it for me. Everything just seemed so vague. Like more detail was needed to get some of the concepts across better. Another problem I had with is the title. Moxyland refers to a children's game one of the character plays, but it is only relevant to 2 chapters and the cuddly and ferocious creatures have no bearing on the story at large. The ending was a bit of let down as I was expecting something bigger, better, and more original.

Overall, I didn't find Moxyland as thought provoking as the author intended. What could have been a decidedly discussion worthy book turned into more of mishmash of themes not explored well enough and kneecapped by characters you can't identify with. I give Moxyland 5 out of 10 Hats.

There's no doubting the originality of the South African setting of Lauren Beukes' post-cyberpunk futuristic science-fiction, and although the language is in places a little heavy on buzzwords and invented tech-speak, the novel's underlying purpose and satire of a society reliant on technology to the point of oppression is clear and not so removed from the present day.

It's a novel that is very much to do with social attitudes, authority, corporate interests and in particular how they apply to youth and specifically youth in South Africa. It takes its view from a group of young people very much in tune with the rapidly changing world and its use of technology, some of them radical artists, photographers and graffiti painters, others expressing their ability and creativity in other less socially acceptable forms of protest against the establishment (sometimes from within the establishment), through hacking of corporate billboards and through streaming or posting footage of their activities on the internet.

Like any good cyberpunk novel however, Moxyland looks at the other side of the wonderful technological wizardry that makes this possible, considering the downside to our over-reliance on technology and the trust we place in it. Heavily dependent on technology for communication and leisure, the ultimate control of those tools by the authorities and the big corporations mean that citizens can be exploited for sponsorship or denied rights when it suits the main players, with it being possible to deactivate phones (clearly the technological do-everything gadget of choice at the moment), track movements, revoke freedom of travel (or even entrance to your apartment) and use them to pin-down and subdue citizens for relatively minor misdemeanours.

The plot is full of forward-thinking ideas on the direction technology is heading, tying them in a relevant manner into the society as it is today or at least one that is credibly not too far away in the future. Much as you can admire the spiky, cool, anti-establishment stance of the young characters however, there's little that is likeable about them and their flawed and often egotistical actions. Their attempts to get one over on the system actually seem somewhat conformist - done from within the system, since there doesn't seem to be any way of achieving anything from the outside - perpetuating the use of technology or allowing themselves to be used as pawns to allow the authorities to come up with ever more strict controls, and even co-op the one-time rebel hackers to implement them.

Depending on your viewpoint this can be a good thing, realistically looking at how individuals behave in such a corporate-controlled environment but some may find the difficulty of relating to or sympathising with any of the characters a problem. But then Moxyland is not meant to be comfortable reading. Although the central premise is by no means an original one in science-fiction (or indeed with conspiracy theorists), the treatment here is concise and powerful, the novel brimming with ideas that present a rather worrying view of modern IT and communications technology and how it can so easily be misused.

Moxyland is a delight for anyone fascinated by future possibilities and intriguing characters. It is a story in which the concepts are well executed and creative. Many scenes from Moxyland stuck with me long after I finished the book.

In thinking about the book over the last week, I have concluded that "Moxyland" can be read as a prequel to "Brave New World" or "1984." High praise indeed, I whisper, and yet I think the work deserves it. In that regard, I would not place the book in the science fiction section of my local Borders; instead, I would set it near Huxley and Orwell or maybe next to Sartre's "Nausea" or Camus' "The Plague."

Are you crazy, you might ask. Have you lost your mind? I don't think so but if you insist it is science fiction, then I must conclude that the book is really a book of ideas like John Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar" or Harry Harrison's "Make Room Make Room." Nevertheless, even here I have trouble, because Beukes' book is more grounded in the here and now and consequently does not amaze as much as Brunner and Harrison; but, instead, warns and points at a near future, almost on our doorstep, that we should take heed of (even though we might be helpless to stop it).

In a nutshell, "Moxyland" involves four protagonists, who tell their stories in the first person. They live in Capetown, South Africa, approximately ten years from today; and, although apartheid is not mentioned, its effects seem obvious.

The protagonists are: Kendra, a young photographer; Tendeka, an activist and would-be terrorist; Lerato, a corporate employee and computer programmer; and Toby, a rich kid, working on his master degree in literature at the local University. Each one is connected to the virtual world and tangentially to each other. However, each one is disconnected from family and friends. Instead, they inhabit the virtual universe, where avatars could hide a fourteen year old or a corporate boss.

As I said above, they are orphans in both literal and literary sense. For instance, Toby's mother cuts off his stipend and he is forced to make money as a "gonzo" reporter; Lerato is an aids baby, raised in an orphanage as a ward of a multi-national corporation.

Beukes sets the four off on a collision course, which ends in disaster for some of the participants.

One of the most telling images in the book is a self-portrait done by Kendra. It is a photograph of herself. Because she uses old, analog equipment and antiquated film stock, the image is black--not blank, black. An interesting image, especially, when the author tells the story in the first person. Here the "cogito" fails; the "I" of the persona refuses to reflect the vision of the constructed other. In other words, no images come to the viewer to instruct or inform the viewer. Isn't that a bit like the avatar of the other in a computer game?

In that regard, another major theme of the novel is the way that the virtual is bleeding into the real. Toby plays various games in which, through his first-person-narration we are not sure if he is in a game or in life. The reader has difficulty determining what is real and what is not and eventually so does Toby.

As the virtual seeps in and absorbs the real, human beings become consuming fodder and living advertisements for certain global products. Within this context, the orphan, un-weaned from the real mother, continues to imbibe the corporate milk, which results in addiction and infantilism.

As I said at the beginning I think "Moxyland" can be read as a prequel to "1984" or "Brave New World." If we project the story line into the future and I think the book invites it; either, a fascistic Big Brother will arise, probably a virtual one, like the Wizard of Oz, or an unseen manipulative hand will continue to control and manipulate as in the Huxley novel.

In conclusion, the novel is a book of ideas; well written, edgy, and prescient.

I don't want to give anything away, so I am just going to say that you should read this book. It is a dark, frightening look at the state of current and near-future technology, governments, corporations, and marketing. I read it in a couple of evenings, and didn't want to put it down.

OK, I'll confess - this is based on reading only 34% (according to my Kindle). The book does have some interesting ideas (but none that are fully novel), but I don't care about the characters, and the story doesn't seem to be going anywhere (confirmed when I read more of the reviews to make sure I wasn't giving up too early).

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.

What if Stroctorow grew up in Africa? Or perhaps, given the outlook, one of Pat Cadigan's Synners did, as Moxyland is perhaps more along those lines.

The story posits the existence of an Africa that has come out the other side of the decimation of a generation by AIDs - and the large numbers of parentless young people as a result - and also a cleanup of the dangerous crime levels, at least in terms of the area this tale takes place in.

However, to do so has required a definite tilt to corporate fascist dystopia. The behaviour of these companies is leaning somewhat Richard Morganatic.

Average people do lots of daily business through their mobile phones - and can hence easily be disconnected as a punishment, or even worse. Worse being is that the cops can literally zap people through their phones, so no unwieldy tasers needed, just call down the lightning, so to speak. Through in some genemod tracker dogs, too. No-one running around blowing people away with automatic weapons, burning people as witches, or other such to be seen here, though. Chemical and biological tagging of offenders is used so that the dogs can hunt them down later. Low-tech biosolutions compared to what might be employed in the wealthier west.

The Rural areas, capitalised as such, still seem to be severely disadvantaged, and other countries still worse off than South Africa.

Cape Town's technology level is such that MMO games are popular, as are fancy-mobile-phone assisted Live Action ARG/RPGs along with that. Doesn't change the fact that there are street kids galore, and people that don't have access to the network, and plenty of refugees from elsewhere.

The novel follows four characters. A rich kid that is an independent media producer, a walking corporate advertisement addicted photographer, a street activist, and a corporate programmer with subversive sympathies. All of whom think they can make a difference, or at least get ahead. In for a shock, this lot.

This is a very good, and very polished first novel. Well done.

4 out of 5