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Someone summed this up as "what if Ready Player One was actually good?" I haven't actually read RP1 (but Husband has and it irritated him that the whole thing was nostalgia for, specifically, the things of his own childhood...) - but regardless of the comparison, I thought "Firebreak" was amazing.
It does make one assumption: that the Internet of the 2130s is more or less the same as the Internet of today, just accessed through a neural implant and VR lenses. MMORPGs are big (*). Livestreaming for tips is a thing you can do but only the top 1% of the top 1% make a living at it. If you're lucky it pays for your gaming. If you're *really* lucky... you might get footage of a hard-to-find NPC based on a hard-to-find actual gosh-darn superhero (originally twelve of them, now down to three courtesy of The War; they were grown in the labs at The Company, given superhuman strength and speed and the finest AI brains ever developed, assigned weirdly non-consecutive numbers, and sent off to battle the mech army of The Other Company), and as a result you'll get a sponsor willing to keep you in drinking water indefinitely.
(Without tips from your subscribers or a wealthy sponsor for your stream... you get a quart a day, through The Company's generosity. Anything more than that is a dollar an ounce at the company store, which you will pay because it's cheaper than the treatments for dehydration and kidney failure at The Company's medical clinics.)
(One might guess that the book is largely a critique of late stage capitalism. One might be right.)
The sponsor is a convicted terrorist (she collected rainwater on her roof and purified it herself, one of the worst things you can do when The Company is in the water business). The thing the sponsor wants from you is not illegal but will be hard to pull off and her reason for wanting it is... implausible, almost laughably so. She is dangling an unthinkable amount of water in front of you - not enough to quit all your jobs to stream full-time, but enough to quit some of them, at least! Are you in? Of course you are... our protagonist and her ride-or-die BFF/roommate/MMO teammate/streaming business partner take the deal, misgivings or no misgivings.
I don't want to spoil any more than I already have, but a few things struck me:
- the difference between being a *good* player of the MMO and being a *successful* player (able to climb the daily leaderboards and maybe get one of the NPCs as a follower for a little while) is the money to access upgraded gear. That doesn't feel like a metaphor at all, not even a little.
- an anti-Company protest occurs and Kornher-Stace does not hold back on describing the terror of being in a crowd that is getting kettled.
- but also at the same protest there is a moment - what would have been, might still be if there's a sequel, the creation of the symbol of their protest - that was just so EVOCATIVE that I could see and hear and smell it like I was there.
- we are invited to consider what the consequences should be when you "didn't intend any harm" but did a great deal of (absolutely horrific) harm anyways.
I particularly like that the ending wasn't "tidy". The setting is a dystopia and you don't turn those around on a dime... but it's been given a good shove, at least? It stops in a good place but there's definitely room for the story to continue if (please, please?) Kornher-Stace chooses to write more of it.
(that said there is one thing I'm... slightly puzzled about it apparently not occurring to the protagonist to do, once she became aware it was a thing that could be done (**). I'm wondering if it was a conscious choice or an oversight on Kornher-Stace's part...)
(* I will admit I thought 'is this an Ender's Game and/or Last Starfighter thing with the MMO?' but the protagonist called that out as a conspiracy theory, heee... the reality of the MMO turned out to be worse, and more appropriate to the Corporate Dystopia setting.)
(** rot13: fur unf yrnearq gung gur ahzorerq 'urebrf' unir anzrf, naq gur anzrf bs gjb bs gur qrnq barf ner hfrq gb uhznavmr gurz - ohg fur qbrf abg gnxr gur bccbeghavgl gb yrnea gur anzr bs gur bar fur'f unq n 'sevraq-pehfu' ba sbe lrnef rira juvyr fur'f fvggvat ba n fgvaxl pbhpu qevaxvat onq obbmr jvgu uvz.)
It does make one assumption: that the Internet of the 2130s is more or less the same as the Internet of today, just accessed through a neural implant and VR lenses. MMORPGs are big (*). Livestreaming for tips is a thing you can do but only the top 1% of the top 1% make a living at it. If you're lucky it pays for your gaming. If you're *really* lucky... you might get footage of a hard-to-find NPC based on a hard-to-find actual gosh-darn superhero (originally twelve of them, now down to three courtesy of The War; they were grown in the labs at The Company, given superhuman strength and speed and the finest AI brains ever developed, assigned weirdly non-consecutive numbers, and sent off to battle the mech army of The Other Company), and as a result you'll get a sponsor willing to keep you in drinking water indefinitely.
(Without tips from your subscribers or a wealthy sponsor for your stream... you get a quart a day, through The Company's generosity. Anything more than that is a dollar an ounce at the company store, which you will pay because it's cheaper than the treatments for dehydration and kidney failure at The Company's medical clinics.)
(One might guess that the book is largely a critique of late stage capitalism. One might be right.)
The sponsor is a convicted terrorist (she collected rainwater on her roof and purified it herself, one of the worst things you can do when The Company is in the water business). The thing the sponsor wants from you is not illegal but will be hard to pull off and her reason for wanting it is... implausible, almost laughably so. She is dangling an unthinkable amount of water in front of you - not enough to quit all your jobs to stream full-time, but enough to quit some of them, at least! Are you in? Of course you are... our protagonist and her ride-or-die BFF/roommate/MMO teammate/streaming business partner take the deal, misgivings or no misgivings.
I don't want to spoil any more than I already have, but a few things struck me:
- the difference between being a *good* player of the MMO and being a *successful* player (able to climb the daily leaderboards and maybe get one of the NPCs as a follower for a little while) is the money to access upgraded gear. That doesn't feel like a metaphor at all, not even a little.
- an anti-Company protest occurs and Kornher-Stace does not hold back on describing the terror of being in a crowd that is getting kettled.
- but also at the same protest there is a moment - what would have been, might still be if there's a sequel, the creation of the symbol of their protest - that was just so EVOCATIVE that I could see and hear and smell it like I was there.
- we are invited to consider what the consequences should be when you "didn't intend any harm" but did a great deal of (absolutely horrific) harm anyways.
I particularly like that the ending wasn't "tidy". The setting is a dystopia and you don't turn those around on a dime... but it's been given a good shove, at least? It stops in a good place but there's definitely room for the story to continue if (please, please?) Kornher-Stace chooses to write more of it.
(that said there is one thing I'm... slightly puzzled about it apparently not occurring to the protagonist to do, once she became aware it was a thing that could be done (**). I'm wondering if it was a conscious choice or an oversight on Kornher-Stace's part...)
(* I will admit I thought 'is this an Ender's Game and/or Last Starfighter thing with the MMO?' but the protagonist called that out as a conspiracy theory, heee... the reality of the MMO turned out to be worse, and more appropriate to the Corporate Dystopia setting.)
(** rot13: fur unf yrnearq gung gur ahzorerq 'urebrf' unir anzrf, naq gur anzrf bs gjb bs gur qrnq barf ner hfrq gb uhznavmr gurz - ohg fur qbrf abg gnxr gur bccbeghavgl gb yrnea gur anzr bs gur bar fur'f unq n 'sevraq-pehfu' ba sbe lrnef rira juvyr fur'f fvggvat ba n fgvaxl pbhpu qevaxvat onq obbmr jvgu uvz.)
