Book Review: REAMDE

Three brief versions of Reamde can be found on the Neal Stephenson Books rankings by fun, substance and mind bending.  All of the synopses are woefully inadequate to cram in a thousand pages of interesting characters brought to life in a twisting dance of battling human goals: greed, generosity, malice, chivalry, ambition, loyalty, pride, kindness, and vengeance.  Even if I somehow managed to encapsulate the characters and the content into a few lines, those words would still fail to represent the clever turns of phrase or the context in which they are delivered. 

The context matters.  When a mobster in Reamde yells at a hacker, the words themselves only carry weight if the reader has the hundreds of pages of tension and history between the characters bearing down upon the phrase as the climax arrives.  Yet this is no cerebral exercise filled entirely with subtle dialogs that require a literature class to derive true appreciation for the work. If made into a movie it would be an action flick! Of course, coming from the mind of Neal Stephenson, it also journeys into a world filled with hackers and geeks, but some of the geeks happen to specialize in guns or knife combat.

This column was supposed to come out weeks ago.  However, while life did provide a few speed bumps, my own weaknesses are mostly to blame.  I wanted to do justice to Reamde because I love this book so much. Therefore, I decided to ‘refresh my memory.’ I started scanning the pages and catching a phrase here and there at the pace of maybe 10 pages a minute on my Kindle.  Tap, scan, tap, scan. Occasionally, I would study a paragraph to refresh my memory about some concept, but then I would move on.  That lasted for the first ten minutes. Then I was hooked again. I re-read a thousand page book! I only reveal this embarrassing note to emphasize that the book is very fun. Now back to telling you why.

Reamde was published in 2011, has a modern day setting, and reflects the evolving dichotomy of modern life.  Some people strive to be as technical as possible so they can keep pace with a racing world and other people disengage from technology either because it doesn’t suit their principles or, more commonly, simply because they lack the economic means.  Naturally, this leads to cultural differences between the groups, but Stephenson is careful to show that these groups can get along quite nicely if you show a little respect. It is not their stance on technology, but their stance about respecting other people’s beliefs that causes the conflicts.

Reamde’s carefully constructed plot starts off slowly by introducing the two main characters and their attitudes from the safety of a family reunion in Iowa – where most of the relatives enjoy firing a wide assortment of firearms into targets in a remote corner of their family farm.   

Richard “Dodge” Forthrast earned his nickname because his flat boring face bore a strong resemblance to the back-end of a battered pickup truck, Yet, his name might also have been earned due to his evasion of the Vietnam draft after his older brother lost both of his legs serving in the war.  He continued to earn the moniker as Dodge became associated with smuggling marijuana and drug smuggling over the US-Canadian border, but once the drug trade became more violent, Dodge and his closest business partners went legitimate. Even though it might appear that Dodge lost the evasion connotation to his nickname, it seems to have become more of a psychological escape.  Dodge became obsessed with a video game and eventually used his resources to co-create his own popular Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.  None of what he did seemed to normal and law abiding to the bulk of the Forthrast family. Over the course of the story, Dodge finds himself challenged on all fronts.  His business is under attack simultaneously by hackers and by a philosophical schism of his game’s players. His family is under attack when his niece, Zola Forthrast (see below) is kidnapped by the Russian Mafia.  And Dodge is forced to fight in a personal war to protect them all when an Islamic terrorist cell enters the picture. Although his war is not without painful casualties, Dodge heroically protects his family by using the skills learned over a lifetime.  Dodge’s character arc shows the youth fleeing from responsibility, finding a world in which he delivers value, building upon that value to create something, and refusing to flee from responsibility for those who have come under his care.

Zola Forthrast is the twentysomething adoptive niece of Richard Forthrast.  Her life began as an orphan in Eritrea, she walked into refugee camps in the Sudan, and then she was adopted by Richard’s sister Patricia and her husband Bob.  She was re-orphaned when Bob abandoned his family and Patricia was killed in a freak lightning storm. She was adopted a second time by Richard’s eldest brother John and his wife Alice.  Although we are not presented with a glimpse into the horrors of her youth and Zula suffers the most during Reamde’s story, she never breaks her resolve to survive. Zula constantly transforms bystanders into heroes striving to save her life because her moral compass and resolve make most people want to protect her.  Yet her journey is also a descent into the depths of evil. She starts off with a mildly bad-boy hacker who allows pride and greed suck both of them into the world of the Russian mafia. The Russians are a thorough mix of different levels of murderers: of professional soldiers; casual thugs who prefer meth but are willing to commit murder; and a mob boss whose desperation is obvious as he swings between calculating and unhinged. The Russian mafioso’s pride and honor code force them all to chase after black-hat hackers in China only to accidentally cross paths with real villains – Islamic terrorists.  Yet even among the Islamic terrorists, Stephenson allows Zula’s presence to create a segregation: casual and inept terrorists suitable primarily to be suicide bombers; the devoted and competent terrorists who carefully orchestrate bombings or improvise mayhem with ease; and the truly depraved terrorists who believe it is their duty to throw acid on young girl students or rape their female teacher before murdering her to ensure the teacher goes to hell for her ‘impurity.’ Throughout this journey, Zula exhibits strength and character that makes her truly heroic. 

Of course, Neal Stephenson won’t paint easy flat stereotypes of any character if he can’t help it.  Islamic terrorists are not just the paint-by-numbers stereotypes we meet on TV and all of the main characters have personalities and motivations that Zola must navigate and manipulate to survive.  Richard’s youngest brother Jake’s conservative Christian conclave in Idaho provides a stark contrast to the Islamic terrorists in both motives and techniques. However, as seen through the eyes of a Russian ex-soldier character, the “American Taliban” represents a movement that could be just as dangerous and explosive.  Good and bad in Reamde stems not from who you were born or with whom you identify – your priorities and how you treat others define your position in a hierarchy that shifts as the story progresses.

To define the story in more detail would lead to spoilers that will ruin climaxes.  Still even as I restrain myself, I must also point out that the delivery of the content is at least half the fun.  Just as you can stand and observe a roller coaster’s turns and dips and imagine only a small fraction of how it will actually feel, knowing what happens will be a pale imitation of the experience of reading the book.  It is not the deepest, most meaningful book. It is also not Stephenson’s most challenging book crammed so full of new ideas you will get a headache. While there is certainly substance and a few mind-bending moments, ultimately, this is an easy, fun read. Please invest some time in reading Reamde – it is worth it.

Meanwhile, I can’t short change a Neal Stephenson specialty – delivering big ideas.  Some ideas will be casually flung at the reader in passing and others will be carefully crafted and honed throughout the book. While I crave to deliver a comprehensive listing of these memes, I will conclude this book review with a list of the most memorable concepts and a bit of their background.

Evil is Relative – Partially explained in Zula’s character outline, the concept of good and evil is explored in several ways throughout Reamde.  While Zula’s character arc of suffering drags her through the most stark representation of good and evil, the other characters have their good or evilness shifted in the eddies of the side stories providing context to the main plot.  As some villains become heroes in the story, a parallel transformation is also happening within the videogame Dodge helped to create, T’Rain. Within the T’Rain videogame, the players revolt from the arbitrary assignment of good and evil within the game’s narrative.  Instead, they form unsanctioned factions aligned by taste (see Forces of Brightness vs. Earthtone Coalition below). The Forces of Brightness turn on their game-official allies and attack them without warning. Yet as the story makes clear, some actions are simply in the nature of how business is conducted by the respective videogame designer, hacker, drug dealer, soldier, spy, terrorist, cop, or airline hostess.  Some aspect of that job may seem evil or good to people doing other jobs (ex: cop vs. drug dealer), but ultimately there is a range of personal choices that can make the job truly good or truly evil. Do you decide to abandon the handcuffed woman or put yourself in harm’s way to save her? Do you take joy in knifing the opposition slowly and watching them die or do you stab and kill them quickly to minimize their pain and reaction?  Do you use your business as an excuse to do nothing different or do you put your business on hold to treat others humanely? In the book as in life, context matters. It would be very useful if this meme could propagate through our modern political society so we stop painting issues as the polarizing pure right or pure wrong we have today.

Forces of Brightness vs. Earthtone Coalition – Coined by Dodge, this description was adopted with pride by the different players within the conflict.  As explained above, the conflict, also known as the War of Realignment, began when certain characters decided to reject the game’s official good versus evil theme as too arbitrary and meaningless.  They pointed out that both sides had the same missions and that they were only good or evil based upon their race – certainly a loaded theme in our modern world! Certain players that tended to prefer the shiny and obnoxious colors over the sedate color palette of the official color schemes and did not care about the story associated with the game – they “just wanted to kick ass.”  Although specifically referencing the elements of the game, this meme represents a more fundamental schism between those who weigh fun higher than substance and those who weigh substance higher than fun. As explained in a previous blog, I like to consider both aspects, but certainly I will manifest one or the other depending upon the context. In these blogs I can certainly be accused of being a member of the Earthtone Coalition because I care much more about the substance than in delivering short, superficial commentary. However, when I get a chance to play videogames, my sheer recklessness could be a sign that I am part of the Forces of Brightness! Or at least for that moment. I think this meme would also be useful to spread so that we have other dimensions upon which we can measure people and their actions. Instead of two dimensions of good/evil (or democratic/republican, etc.) we also need to be able to recognize when people just want to screw around because chaos can be entertaining.

Heroes do what they can when they can. This is not a meme unique to Neal Stephenson, but the theme is consistently reinforced throughout the book.  The heroic characters of the Reamde continue to find themselves at a disadvantage that prevents them from directly solving the issues they want to solve.  Instead, they must suppress their ambitions, work on smaller goals and try different approaches until they can take action. Even when they do take action, sometimes, they know that the action will result in merely delaying the opponent or destroying themselves.  Yet they take the action they can take so that someone else might achieve the end goal.

Fundamentalists are simply fundamentalists.  In the book, Islamic terrorists invade Northern Idaho and encounter armed Christians who take the stance that the US government has no rights over their property.  A Russian character, Sokolov, who fought the Islamic insurgency in Afghanistan as a soldier teams up with these Americans. Yet Sokolov cannot help but think about them as the American Taliban.  He senses that they are religious fundamentalists who place their values above the law. While they play a heroic role in the book, it is also clear that these fundamentalists are just one short step away from placing their values above the lives of others. Reamde subtly shows both the reasonable side of fundamentalism and also how fundamentalists are at risk of becoming indistinguishable from terrorists. My passion for this meme stems from the core idea that not everything can be accomplished at once. True success requires thoughtful action, and constant effort – even if the resources for success are not currently available.

Manifesting an Avatar.  Sometimes to get things done in life, we need to appear to be someone other than who we truly are.  In Reamde, Dodge calls this “manifesting an avatar” when he takes on the persona of a stereotypical thug to intimidate his brother-in-law.  This is not simply acting a role and has its basis in Hindu mythology. To the Hindu, an avatar is a deity taking a form on Earth in a different body and is often used in their scripture to tell of the exploits of Vishnu.  Neal Stephenson then used the term in 1992 to describe the virtual body inhabited by a person within a virtual reality world. In that usage, we are the gods, who manifest a version of ourselves in the virtual world.  This usage for computers has become co-opted as a term for any image we use of ourselves in a virtual setting: 2D anime characters, sports team logos, or photoshopped versions of our own pictures.  Anything that shows an idealized or modified version of ourselves is more an avatar than a real representation. Neal Stephenson builds upon this idea by associating it with the ideal Forms that Plato attributed to Socrates.  Ideal forms are the ultimate version of something (the perfect table, etc.) and everything we build is an imperfect shadow of that perfect philosophical idea. In Reamde, this form can also be someone’s specific nightmare idea – such as Dodge the Drug Dealer who wears leather (borrowed), drives a Humvee (rented), and is larger than life.  Although similar to wearing a costume, Manifesting an Avatar also requires one to adopt the persona, rationale, and tactics of the idealized form. This is one meme that already appears naturally in life, however, I think it would be helpful to be able to recognize that some people feel required to manifest an avatar in certain situations. Some people may be the colossal jerk all of the time, but others my feel forced to react that way because someone else rear-ended them and they can’t afford a new rear bumper…

Ransomware Storm.  Reamde is a computer ransomware virus that shuts down thousand’s of user’s computers.  When the book was written ransomware had been around for a while, but as a malware, ransomware goes in and out of fashion as virus scan software catches up.  Of course, you would have to be living in a shed in the woods to miss the onslaught of ransomware attacks over the past few years: Cryptolocker, WannaCry, NotPetya, SamSam and many others! Sometimes it is hard to tell if Stephenson is predicting the future or inspiring people to make it… While I might rather that this meme goes away, it is useful for everyone to recognize that it will continue to exist so we practice safe computer hygiene.

The Furious Muses. – the voices of people in our past who echo in our heads and cause us to think twice about our actions. Richard “Dodge” Forthrast is haunted by his ex-girlfriends. When they were dating, each one would try to correct his behavior in some manner, but eventually left him because he failed to change enough. However, their advice lingers in the back of his brain and he continues to try and improve for the next people he will meet in life or the next situation. In certain times of trouble, these furious muses will inspire Dodge to do something differently than he might naturally be inclined to act. This meme is the more generalized version of What Would Jesus Do and recognizes that each person you meet in life can have an impact upon who you will be in the future. Adopt the muses that promote a positive future and abandon the self-destructive ones…