Radicalized
Four Tales of Our Present Moment
by Cory Doctorow · first published 2019
60% recommend40% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Four near-future dystopian novellas on tech and society, including locked-down smart appliances in Unauthorized Bread and a doomsday bunker in Masque of the Red Death. Suits fans of speculative fiction.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Told through one of the most on-pulse genre voices of our generation--New York Times bestselling author Cory Doctorow--Radicalized is a timely novel comprised of four science fiction novellas connected by social, technological, and economic visions of today and what America could be in the near, near future. Unauthorized Bread is a tale of immigration, the toxicity of economic and technological stratification, and the young and downtrodden fighting against all odds to survive and prosper. In Model Minority, a Superman-like figure attempts to rectifiy the corruption of the police forces h
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You should check out the book "Radicalized" by Cory Doctorow! It's four short stories. The first one - "Unauthorized Bread" was published online: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...
on “Apple is sued for telling you that you're “buying” movies” ↗Anyone wondering how this might look like may like reading "Radicalized" by Cory Doctorow
on “Amazon Argues Users Don't Own Purchased Prime Video Content” ↗Good story. It is collected in Radicalized (ISBN 978-1-78954-494-7) which contains four of his novellas (including this one) about dystopian futures. I can recommend it.
on “Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)” ↗You might enjoy Cory Doctorow's recent book "Radicalized": https://craphound.com/category/radicalized-full/ The protagonist starts out by jail-breaking her toaster, which was designed on only toast authorized bread. However, the company that produced it…
on “Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019” ↗Cory Doctorow book "Radicalized" has the "Unauthorized Bread" story and more: https://craphound.com/category/radicalized-full/ Buy it, or read it for free.
on “My fridge has an RFID chip in the water filter, so a generic filter doesn't work” ↗This article reminds me of Cory Doctorow’s short story “Masque of the Red Death” in Radicalized (2019), which haunts me still and cured me of any bunker curious tendencies.
on “The bunker builders preparing for doomsday” ↗…than 40 days and nights worth of reading Shoshana Zuboff Big Other (surveillance capitalism) Virginia Eubanks Automating Inequality Sophie Brickman Baby Unplugged Cory Doctorow Radicalized Mike Monteiro Ruined by Design Nick Srnicek Platform Capitalism Paul Kingsnorth Life versus the machine Heather Burns Understanding Privacy Roger McNamee Zucked:…
on “Are smartphones serving as adult pacifiers?” ↗Reminds me of Cory Doctorow's last story in Radicalized: "Masque of the Red Death". summary from Wikipedia: A wealthy financier builds and manages a doomsday vault, designed to withstand societal collapse. Interesting story, as are the others in that collection.
on “The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves” ↗I highly recommend Doctorow's "Radicalized" for the other angle of this: pervasive, locked IoT devices baked-in to a rental agreement. "Only use proprietary soap for your washing machine - after all, that's the reason your rent is priced where…
on “New York City to Consider Banning Sale of Cellphone Location Data” ↗Read this as part of Cory Doctorow's "Radicalized" compilation. The whole set of short stories are awesome. If you're enjoying the excerpt, I suggest just buying the book and starting from the beginning.
on “Unauthorized Bread: Jailbreaking IoT toasters” ↗Oh, you _really_ want to read Cory Doctorow's, "Unauthorized Bread". First story in the four-part book, "Radicalized". And if you buy it directly from him, the ebook version is DRM-free.
on “Massachusetts voters pass right-to-repair expansion opening up car data” ↗…selfless ultimate sacrifices for strangers. It's really interesting. EDIT: A great fictional illustration of this rift in the prepper community is 'The Masque of the Red Death', a short story in the book "Radicalized" by Cory Doctorow. It follows the story of the ultimate prepper fantasy, a rich options trader who builds a "Fort Doom" in scrubland, equipped with a year or so of food, water, purification equipment,…
on “Disaster prepping is mainstream again” ↗One short story in Cory Doctorow's "Radicalized" is exactly about that. In the story, immigrants living in social housing supplied with "smart" appliances are only allowed pre-approved detergent, among other things. Can recommend the other stories…
on “LG dryer traffic – 1GB+ daily up/down” ↗Cory Doctorow writes a fictional version of this topic well in one of the short stories in the book Radicalized.
on “Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich (2017)” ↗I have trouble singling out a particular Sci Fi story as prescient. Doctorow is a good writer. Radicalized is good book, and the stories are thought provoking. But that's Doctorow's job. He throws out ideas left and right. An idea that provides the backdrop of a good story is not a prediction, it's the story's…
on “Cory Doctorow's prescient 2019 novella about health insurance and murder” ↗