I read mysteries. I don't believe in coincidence.
So there must be some nefarious plot afoot that is pushing me to look at our surveillance state.
Here are the facts:
- Someone shared with me an article about the looming jail sentence for James Risen, the New York Times journalist who broke the story of the NSA's illegal wiretapping of domestic phone calls in 2005. I read his latest book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War which exposes that and other tales of a national-security-industrial-complex gone amuck, and wrote about it here.
- A Facebook post by a friend, who is an author, praised a new scifi/mystery, Spark: A Novel, narrated by a very talented voice actor. I am not saying she knew that I was a sucker for both audiobooks and cross gender mysteries, but it was a book she suggested would be a good fit for this series.
- The same narrator did Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time, by Ira Katznelson, that I have been listening to off and on for the past few weeks, so I knew the narrator to be very good to excellent.
- Then I started investigating who John Twelve Hawks is and discovered that he isn't. John Twelve Hawks is a pseudonym for an unknown person who has written a science fiction series and Spark: A Novel. Mostly he is known for being unknown. His editor has never met him and he uses burn phones with voice-disguise equipment to talk to those he must.
- While learning about this author, I found that he was giving away copies of his non-fiction work, Against Authority: Freedom and the Rise of The Surveillance States. Since I rarely say no to free, I downloaded, read it, and have written about it below.
Good non-fiction is a wonderful source of facts and figures - of information about our society and how it operates. Good fiction takes that same information and shows us how the human heart responds to it.
The only problem I had was in telling which was which.
Spark
Spark: A Novel
By John Twelve Hawks
Published by Doubleday
October 7th 2014
320 pages
There is a very rare pyschological condition, known as Cotard's Syndrome in which a person believes that part of his body has disappeared, or has died. Matt Soniak wrote about it for Mental Floss:
Cotard’s Delusion is a mental disorder where people suffer the nihilistic delusion that they are dead or no longer exist. First reported in the 1700s, the disorder is still largely a mystery today. The underlying cause isn’t understood; it’s been linked to bipolar disorder, depression and/or schizophrenia depending on the patient’s age. Here, ten people who went to their doctors and complained that they were dead.
It helps to know that it is a real condition since the main character in Twelve Hawk's new mystery/thriller, appears to be a victim of that syndrome. Following a motorcycle accident in which he believes that he died, save for a tiny spark deep in his human "shell," he only feels a limited range of emotions. He has learned that his human shell requires regular cleaning and nutrients that he consumes in a product named ComPlete (Ensure) instead of food and drink in which he finds no pleasure.
He lives in a world very much like our own, with the surveillance being just slightly more open. Everyone carries either a Freedom Card in an outside pocket, or a radio-frequency chip implanted under the skin that can be read by the EYE system, allowing the government to track physical movement and determine if an individual is operating outside of his/her normal parameters. People have accepted this oversight after a Day of Rage resulted in the simultaneous bombings of schools in nine different countries by an unknown terror group.
There are more robotics in this near future dystopia, but between the government surveillance and the absolute control of the banks, there is enough there for it to feel familiar.
Jacob Underwood is the name of our intriguing anti-hero. Because he lacks emotions such as fear and guilt, he is the perfect recruit for the Special Services Section of the multi-national firm DGB. As a hired assassin, he is assisted by his Shadows, voice recognition software that is connected to a computer with "reactive intelligence."
Across the street, Stetsko finally finished parking the car. He smiled, switched off the engine, and patted the steering wheel as if the Mercedes were a racehorse that had just survived a dangerous steeplechase.
“Show scanned photograph,” I told Laura and my target’s face appeared on the smartphone screen.
Look right. Look left. No one was in the street. I walked over to the car, held up the phone, and compared Stetsko’s photograph to the reality in front of me. Then I raised my weapon and shot reality in the head.
Using a human who is almost an automaton, gives Twelve Hawks the freedom to explore life in a post industrial society where poverty and wealth are close neighbors and security trumps liberty. Jacob Underwood completes his assignments promptly and without problems until he is tasked with including a child in an assassination.
Unable to explain his failure to his handler, Ms Holquist, he is given an opportunity to redeem himself by eliminating a problem created by Emily Buchanan, a young intern who has stolen files from DBG. Tracking her down leads Jake Underwood into a world far different from the one he is accustomed to operating in.
What made listening to this tale as an audiobook such a pleasure, was Scott Brick's monotone narrative voice as Jacob Underwood. You don't even notice it until subtle changes slowly appear. His performance was without a false note as it perfectly fit the characters, the story and Twelve Hawks' theme.
Against Authority: Freedom and the Rise of The Surveillance States
by John Twelve Hawks
August 2014
According to Hawks:
This non-fiction book is both personal and controversial. I describe the “Virtual Panopticon” that is beginning to surround us like an invisible prison, and explain how we can defend our freedom.
I feel so strongly about the issues described in AGAINST AUTHORITY that I’m offering this book for free on my newly designed website:johntwelvehawks.com
(It was reading this essay yesterday, while answering questions about Risen's work about our existing surveillance state that I started to get that feeling that someone was watching me. But only because I don't believe in coincidences.)
In Against Authority, Twelve Hawks takes on the price we pay for life in a technological society. In easy, readable prose, arranged in short chapters, he illustrates the collection of our personal information by both private and public entities. In a sense we have become more valuable for our meta data than we are for our reality.
But it is not a call to drop off the grid, as much as it is a call to pay attention to how connected we have become, to how much of our privacy we have lost and how to continue to function as an individual in the internet world.
At the price, free, it is well worth the read. It can be downloaded as an eBook, a pdf file to print or read, and it can be read on the web.
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