An Aura of Familiarity, una antología del Institute for the Future

Banda sonora de la reseña: Sugiero leer esta reseña escuchando Take Me To The Water de Rage (Spotify, Youtube). 

An Aura of Familiarity: Visions from the Coming Age of Networked Matter, antología editada por el Institute for the Future, es una iniciativa curiosa y más que interesante. Recopila seis relatos originales escritos por reconocidos autores de ciencia ficción y unidos por un tema común: un futuro en el que los objetos cotidianos poseen cierto nivel de "inteligencia" y están conectados entre sí en red. Además, todos los relatos están disponibles de forma gratuita online y están acompañados de ilustraciones de Daniel Martin Diaz y de breves vídeos explicativos de los propios autores.

Como digo, el proyecto es francamente interesante y la idea totalmente encomiable. Sin embargo, la puesta en práctica de la misma, al menos en cuanto al resultado final conseguido por los autores, deja bastante que desear. 

De entre todas las historias, destaca claramente "Water" de Ramez Naam, un cuento escrito con mucha inteligencia y una considerable dosis de mala leche y dotado de un ritmo casi perfecto y de un desenlace totalmente redondo. Sin duda la mejor historia de esta antología y una de las mejores del año. Muy recomendada.

Los demás cuentos, por desgracia, no están a la altura. En segundo lugar, pero a considerable distancia de "Water", situaría "Social Services" de Madeline Ashby. No es un mal relato, pero se ve excesivamente lastrado por un comienzo dubitativo y una personaje protagonista anodina. Es, también, una de las historias que menos aprovecha las posibilidades del tema de la antología. El cuento de Rudy Rucker ("Apricot Lane"), por su parte, comienza con brío y planteando posibilidades más que interesantes, pero se pierde pronto en esa curiosa mezcla de sinsentidos e infidelidades matrimoniales tan característica del autor.

Muy en su línea está también Cory Doctorow, que en "By His Things Will You Know Him" se entretiene con una premisa tan insulsa como irrelevante. Bruce Sterling, por el contrario, se esfuerza tanto en abrumar al lector con referencias "modernillas" (Tumblr, Stephen Wolfram, iPhones, Netflix, phablets...) en "From Beyond the Coming Age of Networked Matter" que se podría pensar que es una historia paródica... si no fuera porque tampoco funciona como parodia de nada.

Mención aparte merece "Lich House", la historia de Warren Ellis, que es la peor del libro hasta el punto de resultar casi ilegible. Se trata de un prolongado infodump, carente por completo de ritmo narrativo y de tensión alguna, que consigue aburrir soberanamente pese a su escasa longitud.

En definitiva, una antología de la que recomiendo leer el fantástico relato de Naam y olvidar completamente el resto. Eso sí, repito que me parece un proyecto tremendamente prometedor y espero que el Institute for the Future siga publicando libros de esto tipo... sólo que con una mejor selección de historias. 

Free Ebook: Homeland by Cory Doctorow

Homeland by Cory Doctorow has been released under a Creative Commons license and can thus be downloaded for free on several different formats. This is the synopsis of the novel:

In Cory Doctorow’s wildly successful Little Brother, young Marcus Yallow was arbitrarily detained and brutalized by the government in the wake of a terrorist attack on San Francisco—an experience that led him to become a leader of the whole movement of technologically clued-in teenagers, fighting back against the tyrannical security state.

A few years later, California's economy collapses, but Marcus’s hacktivist past lands him a job as webmaster for a crusading politician who promises reform. Soon his former nemesis Masha emerges from the political underground to gift him with a thumbdrive containing a Wikileaks-style cable-dump of hard evidence of corporate and governmental perfidy. It’s incendiary stuff—and if Masha goes missing, Marcus is supposed to release it to the world. Then Marcus sees Masha being kidnapped by the same government agents who detained and tortured Marcus years earlier.

Marcus can leak the archive Masha gave him—but he can’t admit to being the leaker, because that will cost his employer the election. He’s surrounded by friends who remember what he did a few years ago and regard him as a hacker hero. He can’t even attend a demonstration without being dragged onstage and handed a mike. He’s not at all sure that just dumping the archive onto the Internet, before he’s gone through its millions of words, is the right thing to do.

Meanwhile, people are beginning to shadow him, people who look like they’re used to inflicting pain until they get the answers they want.

Fast-moving, passionate, and as current as next week, Homeland is every bit the equal of Little Brother—a paean to activism, to courage, to the drive to make the world a better place.

Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross released under Creative Commons license

Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross has been realeased under a Creative Commons license and can be downloaded for free in a variety of formats. This is the synopsis of the book:

Welcome to the fractured future, at the dusk of the twenty-first century.

Earth has a population of roughly a billion hominids. For the most part, they are happy with their lot, living in a preserve at the bottom of a gravity well. Those who are unhappy have emigrated, joining one or another of the swarming densethinker clades that fog the inner solar system with a dust of molecular machinery so thick that it obscures the sun.

The splintery metaconsciousness of the solar-system has largely sworn off its pre-post-human cousins dirtside, but its minds sometimes wander…and when that happens, it casually spams Earth's networks with plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies that emulsify whole industries, cultures, and spiritual systems. A sane species would ignore these get-evolved-quick schemes, but there's always someone who'll take a bite from the forbidden apple.

So until the overminds bore of stirring Earth's anthill, there's Tech Jury Service: random humans, selected arbitrarily, charged with assessing dozens of new inventions and ruling on whether to let them loose. Young Huw, a technophobic, misanthropic Welshman, has been selected for the latest jury, a task he does his best to perform despite an itchy technovirus, the apathy of the proletariat, and a couple of truly awful moments on bathroom floors.

Note: I want to thank @jcantero for pointing this out to me.