#The Fortunate Fall

[souldagger]

Maya Andreyeva is a "camera," a reporter with virtual-reality-broadcasting equipment implanted in her brain. What she sees, millions see; what she feels, millions share. And what Maya is seeing is the cover-up of a massacre. As she probes into the covert political power plays of a radically strange near-future Russia, she comes upon secrets that have been hidden from the world…and memories that AI-controlled thought police have forced her to hide from herself. Because in a world where no thought or desire is safe, the price of survival is betrayal - of your lover, your ideals, and yourself.

happy (re)publication day to The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed, the lesbian cyberpunk cult classic that's been out of print for almost 3 decades!

it's a dark, intense, haunting book (if somewhat dense and undeniably demanding) about the place where noble ideals and brutal reality meet, about human nature, about how far you're willing to go for your principles, or for love, or for survival, about the erosion of privacy by technology, and about a whale.

it's some of the best cyberpunk has to offer, i'm really glad it can finally reach a wider audience 👁📷🐋

[specialagentartemis]

THE FORTUNATE FALL RE-RELEASE IS OUT!

A cyberpunk novel from the 1990s that’s been out of print for years, and just got a new release, new cover, new introduction, under the author’s new name. And all of that FULLY DESERVED because it’s one of my favorite novels of all time. Cameron Reed only has the one novel and she knocked it out of the park.

Maya Andreyeva is a "camera," a reporter with virtual-reality-broadcasting equipment implanted in her brain. What she sees, millions see; what she feels, millions share. And what Maya is seeing is the cover-up of a massacre. As she probes into the covert political power plays of a radically strange near-future Russia, she comes upon secrets that have been hidden from the world...and memories that AI-controlled thought police have forced her to hide from herself. Because in a world where no thought or desire is safe, the price of survival is betrayal - of your lover, your ideals, and yourself.

Maya Andreyeva is a “camera,” a VR journalist who used to do real work and is now reduced to doing celebrity puff pieces and stories that don’t really matter. She does work she no longer thinks matters and goes home to an empty apartment and it’s a cyberpunk near future surveillance state where she feels like nothing she does matters anymore.

So when she stumbles on evidence of a massacre—a genocide— that the government would really rather have everybody forget, she decides she’s going to make this her swan song of a broadcast. Along with her new screener—a real-time editor she only knows from VR sharing her brain, who edits her raw experiences for broadcast—she’s going to expose these crimes to the world, and then maybe die or run away to claim asylum in Africa together, she doesn’t know yet and it almost doesn’t matter to her. Until it does.

It’s gay. There are whales. It’s weird and different and so worth reading. It’s bleak and sad and often harrowing, and does not shy away from what Maya finds out about the covered-up genocide. It’s about truth and justice and love and survival and journalistic integrity and the media, and it is so, so, so good.

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

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[witchofanguish]

this is such a fantastic cover

[intersexbookclub]

Intersex Book Club reviews The Fortunate Fall

For our June book pick we read *The Fortunate Fall, *a cyberpunk novel from the mid-1990s written by a trans intersex author (Raphael Carter). Intersex author Bogi Takács has argued that the book deserves being read for its intersex themes, which have gone underappreciated. We had a lovely discussion about the book and here are some notes summarizing our reactions. Spoilers ahoy!

INTERSEX THEMES

The book has two characters who self-describe as hermaphrodite in ways that are fairly minor. The intersex-ness of this book does not come from centring on explicitly intersex characters but instead through themes that speak to intersex experiences. (Please note: the h-term is generally considered a slur against intersex people. This is the language used in a mid-1990s book by an intersex author.)

A major theme of the book was coercive medical procedures and the maiming of one’s body. Characters such as the protagonist are described as having literal holes in them. The State requires invasive body modification of queer people to “suppress” their queerness and enforce conformity.

Which gets to the suppressor chips. In the end of the book the main character has her suppressor chip removed which brings back her memories of a previous sapphic relationship and who she was before she became a “camera” (ie. a journalist/influencer). We read the suppressor chips as a metaphor for how so many intersex people have their medical histories hidden from them. We also talked about how this could be read as a metaphor for people who deny their own queerness (e.g. transness, gayness, etc)

This will come up again when we read The Deep by Rivers Solomon but there’s a trend in intersex literature to portray intersex people as sea creatures. One of our hermaphrodite (their term) characters refers to themself as a mermaid and has a mental link with a humpback whale. We talked about how deep sea creatures are a great vehicle for writers to explore both the strangeness and the naturalness of being intersex. The ocean is intensely familiar but also foreign, and features animals whose sex determination schemes are far more fluid (ha) than us humans.

OUR PRIMARY REACTIONS (SPOILER HEAVY) - @ipsogender: “I was not expecting the book to end with honey I need to move in with you because my whale is about to die" - @scifimagpie “this was a darker book, started with a news report on genocide and ended with saddest breakup in gay history”

POSITIVES

OMG THAT ENDING

A uniquely devastating sapphic romance

The viscerality of jacking one’s brain into a digital set up. A lot of modern cyberpunk has paved over the physicality and the grotesqueness of body modification and this book did not shy away from it.

A book that argues for animal rights in a technological society. It got us talking about what an internet that serves other animals would be like.

Some excellent lines such as “The state allows you to hate it but only enough so as not to threaten it.” and “You can’t just show people the evil of the word, people will turn away. You need to show them hope.” which got us talking about activism and how to make political change

NEGATIVES

This book is pessimistic AF

No real denouement. Could be intentional to make the ending weigh on you more but also means less sense of what happens at the end.

The whale is never given a name! 😭

Disability as worse than death trope

Afrofuturism felt kinda weak; Africa is one country and it has surprisingly little effect on other cultures despite supposed superpower status

WHAT WE THOUGHT THE BOOK MIGHT BE TRYING TO SAY

We spent a bunch of time speculating as to authorial intent with the book. Here are some things we brainstormed:

In a totalitarian world where you’re an influencer and people literally tune into your brain, self-preservation comes at all costs including those you love.

Queer romance can be deep and tender, and societal prejudice can cause real hurt (remember: book came out in mid-1990s).

A cautionary tale to not back down from your love or your principles.

Huge leaps in technology won’t change social structure. We can invent technology to experience what other people have experienced and it alone won’t lead to increased acceptance of queers or protection of the environment/animals. (Again, remember: written in mid-1990s, a time of legit optimism about the internet.) From the book: “The Net should be the most democratic form of communication that the world has ever known…. But instead it is being used to enforce an official vision of humanity.”

@scifimagpie: a thesis of this book was "we fucking failed at saving the whales"

HOW IT HELD UP

Predicted: the enshittification of the internet

Predicted: influencer culture

Holds up: the sense of wonder that we can connect people across time and space

Holds up: the need to consider other animals in creating networked technologies

Dated: internet as a physical metaverse

Dated: fixed-location telephones

Dated: presentation of Christianity and its relationship to Russian culture

Disappointing: a future where there are still cars in cities

READ IF YOU LIKED

Idoru by William Gibson

Star Trek IV (the one with the whales)

The Matrix

Animorphs #19

Ancillary Justice

[speculatives]

and will you hold me when i’m frightened, keishi mirabara

[cricketandclover]

LOVE FROM THE OTHER SIDE

[hyunpic]

🥠

[lunarharp]

played dragon age 2...just simple scribbles

[the-orion-scribe]

Rewatched Boss Mabel recently and just noting some observations:

For those who said Mabel keeps bullying Dipper, when she took charge she immediately shredded the demeaning wolf suit Dipper was forced to put on.

Love the Cash Wheel parody as always. Also kind of noting how the showrunner was likely setting Stan up to fail at his greatest moment

One critique is just how most scenes are portrayed in the day, so we dont get the passing of time. Like how the twins were forced to hide from the Gremloblin, which implied they hid overnight. But the two adjacent scenes showed both in the day.

Wendy isnt the greatest in this episode, especially how she kind of took advantage of Mabel's kindness

It's another underrated entry that quite addresses one of Mabel's worldview of trying to treat everyone and everything with kindness, but she still needs a firm hand on things. She dealt with a lot of shit in the first half of the episode, so I'm not so surprised she eventually snapped.

[bucketsofgiggles]

someone hit a tree down the road from my apartment and it hit a transformer and knocked out power to my entire area, so i started reading The Book of Bill in my pitch black apartment using a flashlight and let me tell you, that is absolutely the best conditions to read that book under, gonna have so many nightmares tonight!

[souldagger]

i had fallen into hope friday

[specialagentartemis]

Also picking up new books you’ve never heard of before because the premise sounds neat or the cover is pretty or it’s on a themed library display or you’re just trying to read your library’s entire catalogue of 90s cyberpunk is just fun. Sometimes it’s not your thing but you get to mull over new ideas or the diversity of people and opinions and thoughts in the world. Sometimes you discover your new favorite book of all time

[transmascmikey]

Me shaking covered in blood and visibly transgender: mama is such a good song

[the-genius-az]

Herd of fire.

Azula and Zuko constantly fought over who would be the Alpha of the pack.

Mai and Ty Lee accepted Azula as their Alpha, because Zuko was rarely around.

Zuko reluctantly agreed to let Azula be the Alpha when she defended them in an uncontrolled animal.

Mai and Ty Lee were always scented by Azula, and Zuko never had the courage to ask for it too.

Zuko accepted that he would never have Mai when he saw a mark on her neck.

No one in the pack knew that Azula was studying how to be a good Alpha, much less that it was Lu ten who was teaching her.

When everyone left for the first time, Azula immediately shut down.

When everyone was back together they noticed how Azula surreptitiously perfumed them with her pheromones.

They noticed how Azula was ready to be abandoned again, they didn't know what to think.

Ironically, they weren't the ones who broke the pack bond, and it was the first time they felt the same way Azula did.

[crows-of-buckets]

I cannot get the idea of a da2 au where Malcolm is the surviving parent instead of Leandra. Would both of the twins have made it out? I think they would. Because like. Malcolm, unlike Leandra, can actually fight. I don't think either of the twins would have felt the need to protect him. Would the deep roads expedition even have to happen? I assume they would probably be worse off in this au since I don't think Gamlen would lend his aid. Obviously ignoring the very valid reasons why Malcolm would NEVER take his children to Kirkwall, or anywhere near it, how different would it be? Idk why it's plaguing my head rn but LORD