City of Orange by David Yoon

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on May 24, 2022

The protagonist in David Yoon’s City of Orange lives in a bivouac under a bridge in a post-apocalyptic world. He eventually learns that his name is Adam Chung, but as the story opens Adam doesn’t remember his name or what caused the apocalypse or where all the people went. Snippets of memory return to him as the novel progresses, including memories of a wife and child, but he isn’t ready to remember their names and doesn’t know if he will ever be ready.

Adam meets an old man who answers every question with the word “berries.” He meets an 8-year-old kid named Clay who gives him some information from a child’s innocent perspective. Most of the time, the protagonist talks to crows and imagines them holding up their end of the conversation. He also carries on internal conversations with Byron, a pre-apocalyptic friend whose humor and advice the protagonist appreciates, even if Byron isn’t actually there.

Adam doesn’t know how he came to be living under a bridge. He’s afraid to explore, afraid of what he might find. He’s discovered one dead body and doesn’t want to repeat that experience, but his larger fear is of discovering more of his lost past. Adam’s scavenging is therefore limited, although Clay seems to have an ample supply of goods that Adam believes to be scarce: canned food, soap, medicine. Clay’s home even seems to have electricity, presumably from solar cells. Adam thinks he should meet Clay’s mom but doesn’t want to spook her. Maybe Adam just isn’t ready to rejoin the company of adults. Or maybe he isn’t ready to recognize the truth about the world he now inhabits.

Regardless of what the novel initially seems to be about, City of Orange is a novel of grief and the pain of loss. The subject matter is dark, but the story is seasoned with light moments to keep it from becoming oppressive. Adam’s backstory is tragic and moving while the story of Adam’s unsettling present is crafted to hold the reader’s attention until its true nature becomes clear.

Yoon weaves social commentary into the background without turning the larger story into a polemic. A white guy doesn’t understand why a Korean American is offended to be addressed as Charlie. The internet feeds a lust for videos that end in gory death. Toxic comments on the video of a fatal traffic accident capture the modern need to revel in rudeness.

City of Orange is a post-apocalyptic story, but the apocalypse isn’t one a reader might expect. Whether events quality as apocalyptic might be a matter of perspective. Yoon’s novel is, in part, a reminder of the need to live in the present, to appreciate what we have before it’s lost. But the novel is also a reminder that, although it takes time to process and accept tragedy, moving forward is both possible and essential.

RECOMMENDED

Version Zero by David Yoon

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on May 25, 2021

Recent novels are targeting big tech, often with good reason. We Are Watching Eliza Bright explored misogyny in the male-dominated tech industry. Version Zero takes a broader, less focused shot at the supposed evils of tech businesses. Unfortunately, the plot becomes too scattered to score a direct hit on the target.

The story begins with a well-defined evil. Max Portillo, an American of Salvadoran parents, works for a social media company called Wren that is a thinly disguised Facebook. His creative approach to problem solving gets him invited to participate in a high-level working group, where he learns that the company has a plan to acquire even more information about its users and to sell that information to the CIA, the Russian government, and any other buyer that can pony up billions of dollars. Max makes a naïve but well-intentioned effort to bring his ethical objections to the attention of the CEO and is fired for his trouble. Not only fired, but his career is destroyed to send a message about defying a powerful employer.

Max’s best female friend, Akiko Hosokawa, still works for Wren. She helps Max conduct a bit of sabotage that drives users to close their Wren accounts, but only temporarily because who can live without Facebook? So Max conducts a slightly more effective bit of sabotage using a group called Version Zero. The group initially consists of Max and Akiko and Max’s best male friend, Shane Sataw, who is also Akiko’s boyfriend. Shane is a decent guy who cleans pools for a living and doesn’t know or care much about the tech world. He exemplifies one of the novel’s themes — it is possible to live a satisfying life without the artificial ego strokes that come from getting “likes” on the meaningless social media posts that distract us from a world we can’t see because our eyes on glued to our smartphone screens. That’s a more amorphous harm than the novel’s initial complaint — the loss of privacy that occurs when big tech justifies stealing our data by pointing out that the fine print in user agreements pobody ever reads allows them to do whatever they want — but it’s still a valid concern.

Version Zero’s antics come to the attention of Pilot Markham, a wealthy tech innovator who dropped out of public view three years earlier after his daughter died. Pilot blames internet trolling for his daughter’s death. He also blames himself and the internet’s enablers. Pilot befriends (or manipulates) Max, Akiko, Shane, and his 18-year-old neighbor, Turpinseed Brayden. Brayden’s voice represents the average young internet user who feels validated by the feedback he gets from friends on social media posts. Brayden isn’t overly bright but he’s harmless and fundamentally decent.

The novel’s plot follows Max and his gang as they conspire with Pilot to wake up the world to the perceived damage caused by the internet. One of their better schemes involves doxing trolls, exposing the real identities of white supremacists and misogynists who use the comfort of anonymity to post vile screeds about Jews or blacks or women or Asians or immigrants or whomever they happen to be hating today.

The story eventually brings in four other CEOs from companies that might be the equivalent of Microsoft, Amazon, Uber, and Reddit. At that point, the targeted evil is simply corporate greed and the elevation of profit over consumers, as exemplified by Uber’s business development model (move in fast, ignore all laws, and put out the fires after you’re too big to stop). While greed is another valid target, it is hardly limited to the tech industry. Consumer harm linked to corporate greed is considerably greater in the pharmaceutical and petrochemical industries, to name only a couple of obvious examples.

The plot moves quickly. It is sufficiently strange and unpredictable to deliver solid entertainment. The story adds human interest by developing a potential love triangle involving Max, Akiko, and Shane that challenges Max’s perception of himself as a decent person.

Still, I’m not quite sure what message David Yoon means Version Zero to send. After condemining big tech with a broad brush, the message seems to come down to “internet bad.” The internet itself is just a tool, not an evil entity. The novel acknowledges that marginalized people depend on the internet for support. Organizations that do everything from cancer research to animal rescue rely on the internet for fundraising. Some of us have been liberated by the internet. I have the freedom to live wherever I want (within financial reason) because of the internet. Without it, I’d probably be a Walmart greeter. And while I could keep this blog as a handwritten journal in a moleskin notebook without posting my ramblings for the world to ignore, I don’t think the blog unleashes any particular evil in the world. Heck, I don’t even bother readers with ads, as do some of the amusing blog entries imagined in Version Zero.

But partial disagreement with (or uncertainty about) a book’s message isn’t enough reason to dislike a provocative book unless the message itself is evil. Yoon’s indictment of big tech is well intentioned. The book is likely intended to make people think about social harms that tech businesses cause. Thinking is never a bad thing. Yoon plays fair by acknowledging counterarguments to the anti-tech message and by suggesting that the balance of benefits and harms does not weigh entirely on the side of harms. Putting aside the novel’s lack of a clear focus, I enjoyed the characters and the surprising (if sometimes absurdist) plot twists. Those are sufficient reasons to recommend a provacative book even if I'm not entirely sold on the provocation.

RECOMMENDED