Tim Maughan

After the weighty novels I've been reading recently, It was really nice to spend an evening racing through something light and easy for a change. I do not mean to depreciate 'Infinite Detail's quality by this; most things seem light after [b:Gravity's Rainbow|415|Gravity's Rainbow|Thomas Pynchon|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1414969925l/415._SY75_.jpg|866393]. The subject matter isn't particularly cheerful, yet there is something bitterly amusing about show more reading very-near-future depictions of societal breakdown while in lockdown. This one was published in 2019 and feels suitably cutting edge, except it predicts that the economy will collapse for technological rather than plague reasons. The large scale Black Lives Matter protests are spot on, though. The narrative is split between flashbacks to the time this collapse took place and post-apocalyptic Bristol a decade later. I really enjoyed the fact that the plot is more exploratory than thriller-ish. It keeps the reader's interest with clever world-building, thoughtful commentary, and intriguing characters, rather than perpetual action. There are a few action scenes, however these are spaced out and the implications of violence are not ignored.

Given the focus upon personal technology, big data, and smart cities, 'Infinite Detail' reads like a combination of [b:Perfidious Albion|37564159|Perfidious Albion|Sam Byers|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1528633924l/37564159._SY75_.jpg|59177083] (an excellent novel about social media, smart cities, and Brexit) and the oeuvre of [a:Cory Doctorow|12581|Cory Doctorow|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png]. However it is more hopeful than the former and much more subtle than the latter. Although it sometimes seems to be dominated by technological minutiae, 'Infinite Detail' has some nuanced political themes. The descriptions of music are vivid and joyful and I loved the twist regarding Mary's ostensible special power. In fact, the little details are well deployed to build a distinctive future, especially in the pre-collapse sections set in 2026. Perhaps the most memorable and moving moments follow a man who collects cans to redeem at a recycling centre for money. As New York implements a smart recycling incentive scheme that tracks exactly who buys every can, his livelihood suddenly and bewilderingly vanishes. I am implacably suspicious of the smart city concept, which seems to be ubiquitous privatised surveillance sold to us as convenience, so would be interested to know what people unfamiliar with or positive towards it think of Maughan's depiction. Although the book reminded me of too many other things I've read to seem especially revolutionary, 'Infinite Detail' is astute, appealing, and very readable. I also like the cover design. show less

Paintwerk is a trio of linked cyberpunk stories strongly reminiscent of Bruce Sterling ("Deep Eddy", "Bicycle Repairman" and "Taklamakan"). The key technologies here are spex and augmented reality, the themes about art and authentic creation and selling out to some massive corporate cloud that can only parasitize off the raw energy of The Street.

The first story, about graffiti artists in Bristol, is by far the best, with an appropriately weird cast of characters and a wry askance glance at a show more future where Banksy is as respected as Picasso, yet local taggers still get nabbed and ABSO'ed by the cops. The others, which go into gaming and virtual colonization, are more style over substance but still a lot of fun.

Good quick read, which even five years later has some of that near-future gloss on it. show less

Infinite Detail tells the story of a revolt against big data that destroys the Internet and the global economy. Set mainly in a minority community on Stokes Croft Street in Bristol, England, it follows the fate of a group of friends as they search for their lost pasts and work to build new, healthier connections. There is a ray of hope at the end, but it leaves open the possibility that the destruction of our surveillance state will lead only to the old tyrannies. Our recent blip in the show more supply chain and Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter make the scenario more believable than it might have been three years ago.
Tim Maughan shares Cory Doctorow’s distaste for the surveillance inspired by the internet of things. Like Doctorow, Maughan does not want us to “let ourselves become nothing more than the content between adverts.” But Infinite Detail does not offer the utopian solace of Doctorow’s Walkway or Little Brother. As one character says toward the end, “[W]e just burned everything down and didn’t plan for afterwards.”
Stylistically, Infinite Detail is a patchwork of effective scenes embedded in a fragmented narrative that throws up roadblocks we don’t need. I especially like a conversation between a kid and his friends who can’t understand why he wants to find sounds to sample from old vinyl records and cassette tapes. 4 stars. show less

Infinite Detail is a novel of our grim cyberpunk present, of a time that feels distinctly pre-apocalyptic. We live in a world with immense accumulations of wealth and power and information, and yet rather than steer towards a coherent vision of the future, hell, do anything at all, these machines alternately brutalize and seduce us. If you want a vision of the future, it's Kendal Jenner offering a riot cop a Pepsi forever.

One timeline, BEFORE, follows hacktivist Rushdi Manaan. Rushdi is show more British, the sysadmin of the ferociously anti-surveillance Croft, a hip Bristol neighborhood blockaded with wifi jammers running on a Bluetooth mesh network. Rush is in a long distance relationship with Scott in New York, living in a world ruled by a surveillance capitalism machine he hates.

AFTER is, well, after. Someone broke the internet, killing every connected device. As communication networks failed and supply chains froze, 'local autonomy' has risen up to replace the survivors. It's a grim world, with a dislocated population sheltering under warlords of various ideological stripes. The various people in After are trying to make sense of their lives in Bristol. Mary sees dead people, those chaotic final hours in the Croft. Tyrone keeps her safe, tries to score survive Bristol Jungle tapes of a dead rave culture. Anika is a guerilla fighter, on the run from the military dictatorship that runs the UK and looking for a new weapon in her liberation campaign.

At a kind of page-by-page level, this is a pretty good novel. Great gritty feel. But stepping back, it doesn't have characters so much as points of view on events that the characters have no ability to influence. And this is 2020, alarmism about surveillance capitalism is practically passé. At least Maughan is honest that what comes next will likely be sticks, stones, and a lot of corpses, to paraphrase Albert Einstein on World War 4. show less