Watchlist: 32 Stories by Persons of Interest

by Bryan Hurt (Editor), T. Coraghessan Boyle (Contributor), Aimee Bender (Contributor)

“Including work by literary heavy–hitters... the anthology considers the act and weight of watching and being watched... and in Watchlist , these see–to–know quests range from funny to terrifying.” — Los Angeles Magazine

In Watchlist , some of today’s most prominent and promising fiction writers from around the globe respond to, meditate on, and mine for inspiration the surveillance culture in which we live. With contributions from Etgar Keret, T.C. Boyle, Robert Coover, Aimee Bender, Jim Shepard, Alissa Nutting, Charles Yu, Cory Doctorow, and many more, WATCHLIST unforgettably confronts the What does it mean to be watched?

In Doctorow’s eerily plausible ""Scroogled,"" the US has outsourced border control to Google, on the basis that they Do Search Right. In Lincoln Michel’s “Our New Neighborhood,” a planned suburban community’s ‘Neighborhood Watch’ program becomes an obsessive nightmare. Jim Shepard’s haunting “Safety Tips for Living Alone” imagines the lives of the men involved in the US government’s fatal attempt to build the three Texas Tower radar facilities in the Atlantic Ocean during the Cold War. Randa Jarrar’s “Testimony of Malik, Israeli agent #287690” is “a sweet and deftly handled story of xenophobia and paranoia, reminding us that such things aren’t limited to the West” ( Sabotage Reviews ) and Alissa Nutting’s “The Transparency Project” is a creative, speculative exploration of the future of long–term medical observation.

By turns political, apolitical, cautionary, and surreal, these stories reflect on what it’s like to live in the surveillance state.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Science Fiction, Anthologies, Mystery, Audiobook, Fantasy

512 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2015

About the author

Bryan Hurt is the author of Everyone Wants to Be Ambassador to France, winner of the Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction. His fiction and essays have been published in The American Reader, The Kenyon Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New England Review, Tin House, and TriQuarterly. He lives in Colorado.

Reviews

[Hazal Çamur · Rating 4 out of 5]

En acı olan gözetlenmek ya da farkında olmamak değil; farkında olmanın ta kendisi.

Gözetleniyoruz ve bu umrumuzda değil. Devlet, komşu, sosyal medya hesabındaki tanıdık tanımadık herkesin bakışları altındayız ve zerre kadar rahatsız değiliz. Üstelik başkalarını gözetlemek konusunda da aynı pervasızlığı sergiliyoruz.

Aslı 32 öyküden oluşan, ama Delidolu Kitap'ın yayıncıyla anlaşarak 19'a kasıtlı olarak indirdiği bu öykü derlemesini uzun zamandır bekliyordum. Delidolu ailesi, "gözetleme" konseptiyle alakası olmayan öyküleri eleyerek kitabın adına ve konseptine yakışanları bizlerle buluşturmuş. Şöyle de bir şey var, bu kitapta yer alan öykülerin %90'ı bu kitap için yazılmış şeyler değil. Çoğu dergilerden yazarının izniyle alınmış öyküler. Hal böyle olunca, Delidolu Kitap'ın neden böyle bir şeye gittiğini anlamak zor değil. Şahsen bir okur olarak bunu sansür şeklinde yorumlamadım. Ortaya çıkan sonuç güzel de olmuş.

Kitabın ilk öyküleri kesinlikle eserin en iyileri. Özellikle bazıları var ki tam bir Black Mirror bölümü tadında. Hele ki Kadın Avcısı adlı öykü. Çok rahat biçimde bir Black Mirror senaryosu olabilirmiş. Etkisini de hemen atamadım üstümden. Kitaptaki favori öyküm oldu.

Kitabın ortalarında tempo bir hayli düşüyor. Öyküler klişeleşmeye başlıyor. İlk öykülerin o vuruculuğu, şoke eden, tokat atan etkisindne oldukça uzaklar. Buralarda sıkıldığımı itiraf etmeliyim.

Sonlara doğru kitap tekrar yükselişe geçiyor. Yeniden "gözetleme" ve "gözetlenme" kavramlarının o rahatsız edici çekiciliğiyle yola devam ediyor ve kitabı sonlandırıyoruz.

Eserin en ilgi çekici yanı, öykülerin bir kısmının gündelik hayattan kesitleri içermesi. Hepimizin hayatından bir gün denebilecek bu öykülere gözetleyen ya da gözetlenen açısından bakınca, o başta söylediğim vurdumduymazlık, o rahatlık bir anda dağılıyor. Ya da en azından aralanıyor. Bu bakımdan kitabın akılcı davrandığını düşünüyorum.

Öte yandan, yakın gelecek öngörüleri içeren öyküler de bir o kadar başarılı. Bir de o ortalardaki vasat öyküler olmasa benden koca bir 5 yıldız kapabilirdi.

Kitabın ortaya çıkış öyküsü de bir hayli ilginç. Her şey, editör Bryan Hurt'ün bebeklerini izlemek için bir bebek kamerası almasıyla başlıyor aslında. Ve bir arkadaşı diyor ki," Bebeğin bundan haberi var mı?" Ama hangimiz bebeğin ne düşündüğünü umursuyoruz ki? Ya da farkında olup olmadığını?

Gözetleme Listesi güzel bir derleme. Özellikle tam da bu zamanlarda gerekli olan bir kitap. Ona 5 yıldız vermeyi bekliyordum ama olmadı. Olsun, 4 yıldız da hiç fena değil hani :)

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rec. by: I think it was via Miles Klee, one of the contributors
Rec. for: Potential criminals

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
—Juvenal

It's an old idea, and really not a bad one, you know... to keep a watchful eye on the bad guys. But... who gets to decide who the bad guys are, in the first place? And Juvenal's question still applies: who keeps an eye on the ones who decide such things? After all,

A baby is a potential criminal.
—As observed by Arszenti, in Dayworld Rebel (1987) by Philip José Farmer

Editor Bryan Hurt's Introduction to Watchlist: 32 Stories by Persons of Interest makes it clear that while he's certainly concerned about the kind of ubiquitous surveillance that has become all too common in the 21st Century, his real interest is in the stories we tell ourselves about watching, and about being watched. This anthology, which came out in 2015, doesn't wallow in paranoia nearly as much as it simply explores the manifold implications of being gazed upon. In short: this is not the book you'd expect from the title, and although I did feel a little nervous carrying it through an airport (as I recently had occasion to do), this volume really shouldn't worry any of the self-appointed guardians of our safety too much. Hurt's anthology contains more questions than answers, and more varied perspectives than a single conspiratarian vision.

In other words... Hurt's anthology is rather scattered, but still pretty damned good.

These are the stories—I've adapted the Table of Contents from Multnomah County Library, this time:

"Nighttime of the City," by Robert Coover
The inaugural entry for Watchlist is an odd choice—but maybe that's the point. Coover's impressionistic story lets us know right away that this book is not going to be a set of simplistic reactions to the panopticon, after all...

"Sleeping Where Jean Seberg Slept," by Katherine Karlin
This short story is about trying to live in Iowa (where Jean Seberg was born and raised), rather more than it is about the romance of Paris.

"Testimony of Malik, Israeli Agent, Prisoner #287690," by Randa Jarrar
This story of a kestrel who has a thing for seafood from the Gaza Strip seems newly topical, although its central conflict is centuries old...

"The Relive Box," by T. Coraghessan Boyle
I've read this one twice before... most recently in another anthology called Press Start to Play. Boyle's story is about father-daughter dynamics and about spying on one's own past selves... subjects I know a little about myself.

"Scroogled," by Cory Doctorow
Your irony will get you hanged, one of these days. Doctorow's came across as the most literal take on the theme of surveillance, so far.

"California," by Sean Bernard

Obsess over normal things. It's healthier.
—p.85

And what could be more normal than watching TV?

"Adela, primarily known as The Black Voyage, later reprinted as The Red Casket of the Heart, by Anon.," by Chanelle Benz
An ornate and feverish composition indeed, in which—this time—the watchers are children.

"Ladykiller," by Miracle Jones
An odd mix of already-faded trends (Facebook, Buzzfeed) and technology we don't have even yet, all in the service of a rather mechanical seduction...

"The Transparency Project," by Alissa Nutting
Short and surreal, involving a literal window into Cora's heart (and other viscera).

"The Gift," by Mark Irwin
Claire asked Mark for just one thing...

"What He Was Like," by Alexis Landau
I was hard-pressed to see how this one fits in with Hurt's theme at all, but it was a powerful and wistful story nonetheless.

"The Entire Predicament," by Lucy Corin
Like that dream you had...

As a baby I cried, but now if I know anything I know better.
—p.142

"Coyote," by Charles Yu
In the end, I wanted to know more about you, the low-level (Level Three) worker in the Division.

"Terro(tour)istas," by Juan Pablo Villalobos
The System is very, very good at putting 2 + 2 together. Sometimes, the System even comes up with 4....

"Safety Tips for Living Alone," by Jim Shepard
This one reads like history... because it is, or at least it's grounded firmly in historical events. Texas Tower #4 really did collapse in 1961—which makes Shepard's tale all the more heartbreaking.

"Prof," by Chika Unigwe
Right once does not mean right forever—especially if you were right for the wrong reasons...

"The Witness and the Passenger Train," by Bonnie Nadzam
That vertiginous feeling when you realize that everything is arbitrary and conditional—that reality is being created on the fly, by our expectations of what must be...

"Moonless," by Bryan Hurt
For I am become Death, destroyer of—well, just one world, really, and a tiny one at that. At first, anyway. Clever, and a bit melancholy—this one's a good fit for Watchlist even if including it did seem rather self-indulgent.

"Our New Neighborhood," by Lincoln Michel

He continues to rub my belly with his knuckles. I try to think of the last time those knuckles touched me in a place I wanted to be touched.
"I wish I could see what was going on in there," he says without looking up.
—p.234

Donald and his wife Margot are homeowners, but they have a lot of things to disagree about...

"Buildings Talk," by Dana Johnson
If any buildings were to talk, the ones in downtown L.A. would.

He shook his hand and said the worst words in the world that one human can say to another human. He said, "Good luck."
—pp.253-254

"Lifehack at Bar Kaminuk," by Mark Chiusano
As it happens, Anderson doesn't actually know what a "lifehack" is...

"Making Book," by Dale Peck
Fourteen really is an uncomfortable age... even with (maybe especially with) understanding parents like Boo's.

"Dinosaurs Went Extinct Around the Time of the First Flower," by Kelly Luce
Toshi took Polaroids and spoke French to her, even though she wasn't really French.

"Ether," by Zhang Ran
It's hard to portray a boring life in an interesting way—but there are worse things than boring.

I want to escape my dreary life, but I definitely don't want to escape it only to end up as a gory crime-scene photo in tomorrow's newspaper.
—p.324

Ran's interesting story also features a novel method of communication, evolved in response to a novel method of oppression.

"Drone," by Miles Klee
I'm pretty sure a reference to this story brought me to Watchlist to begin with... but this one still struck me as jarring and disjointed. Its protagonist is a conscript—even less willing than most such—who

dreamt of a classical democracy that worked, that was not crippled by its weak. If he could strike us from history, fine.
—p.362

"Transcription of An Eye," by Carmen Maria Machado
A love story in the form of a Judge Judy episode's transcript? Sure, I'm in.

"The Taxidermist," by David Abrams
The Lord works in mysterious ways, they say, but the gift God gave Tucker Pluid must be one of the weirdest.
Did you know that reindeer eyes change color from season to season, going blue in the winter to admit more light? It's true...

"Second Chance," by Etgar Keret
Short and really kinda sweet.

"Strava," by Steven Hayward
Sometimes online apps reveal a little too much...

"We Are the Olfanauts," by Deji Bryce Olukotun
There are a lot of science-fictional tropes, like flying cars or zeppelins, that always seem on the verge of becoming reality without ever actually coming to fruition. Smell-O-Vision would be one of these, and in Olukotun's story we get that notion filtered through modern social media, and carrying with it the undeniable scent of victory...

"Viewer, Violator," by Aimee Bender

Welcome to this last stage of the exhibit.
—p.444

A museum piece isn't meant to be touched, of course—at least not ordinarily—but keep an eye on this painting, anyway...

"Thirteen Ways of Being Looked at by a Blackbird SR-71," by Paul Di Filippo
A series of absurd vignettes—a baker's dozen of ways to be seen—seems like a fine way to wrap up this anthology.

Rather scattered, but still pretty good.

[Laura Spaulding · Rating 3 out of 5]

The theme of Watchlist: 32 stories by Persons of Interest is what attracted me to this book. I’ve always been concerned about the slippery slope we tread when our privacy is eroded. In his introduction (which I loved!) Bryan Hurt says “The question that inspired this book is how we are affected by this constant surveillance. Does a camera trained on a sleeping child change him? How does an ever-present, faceless audience alter who we are? One way to interpret the old Delphic maxim “Know thyself” is to take it as a warning to ignore the masses, their judgment and opinions. But what does it mean when our notion of self is tied so inextricably with our notion of audience ? In a world without privacy, what becomes of the private self?” I think this is an important issue we should all stay aware of and addressing it through these short stories works.
These stories paint a picture of the many ways we can be watched and the effects of being watched. The collection includes stories from a wide array of authors including T.C. Boyle, Cory Doctorow, Jim Sheppard, Aimee Bender, etc and stories in a wide array
of genres. I found, as in many collections, there were some stories that didn’t quite appeal to me but then there were others, like The Relive Box by T.C. Boyle, Scroogled by Cory Doctorow, Coyote by Charles Yu, Safety Tips for Living Alone by Jim Sheppard, Moonless by Bryan Hurt, Our Neighborhood by Lincoln Michel, The Taxidermist by David Abrams, that I loved and those made reading the collection worth it. I would suggest this collection, it’s a worthwhile read.
I received a copy of this book from Catapult for an honest review.

[Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surveillance society stories? More, please!

This was the copy Charles Yu read his fantastic short story from, after which he gifted and signed it to me. This is a public thanks! :)

There is plenty of futurism here, but the best thing about this collection is that it makes you think about the society we already inhabit. This is a must read (even if only for Yu's story, which is what attracted me to the collection). The one quibble is that some of the stories felt like they needed to be explored at greater length, but given that this was science fiction, which has a history of authors turning short stories into book length works later, fingers crossed!

[Stuart Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very, very good short story collection on our battle with surveillance and privacy, although not all stories adhered to the theme.

As you can see, it took a while to read ... longer than it has ever taken me to read a book. Not sure why, although it may have had to do with the varying quality of the stories.

DeFillipo's dozen or so short vignettes--the last entry--was the best. You might want to start there.

[Abc · Rating 2 out of 5]

Purtroppo per me è un no. Mi aspettavo racconti alla "black mirror" e invece mi sono ritrovata a leggere storie di cui a volte non ho capito il senso. In più casi mi è capitato di chiedermi per quale motivo un determinato racconto fosse stato incluso in questa raccolta perché mi pareva che non avesse nulla a che vedere con il tema della sorveglianza continua e della mancanza di privacy.
Sono davvero delusa perché i racconti riusciti di quest'opera rappresentano solo una ristretta minoranza.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Watchlist is a collection of stories related to people watching and/or being watched in some fashion, sometimes with a more tenuous thematic link, sometimes painfully obvious, often involving technology or science fiction, and often similar to an episode of 'Black Mirror'.

Two **asterisks indicates I particularly liked the story for some reason.


1) 'Nighttime of the city' -- Robert Coover
- Bizarre
- The reader watches an endless, improbable film-noir pursuit of shifting shapes and shadowy figures.

2) 'Sleeping where Jean Seberg slept' -- Katherine Karlin
- Meh. Not feeling it.

3) ** 'Testimony of Malik, Israeli agent, Prisoner #287690' -- Randa Jarrar
- Good. Awkward at first.
- The Middle East from the perspective of a Kestrel

4) ** 'The Relive Box' -- T. Coraghessan Boyle
- A teen girl and father are, like much of the world (?) addicted to the Relive Box -- a device similar to a VR mask that allows the wearer to relive memories over and over if they like. Many people re-live their relationships and sex lives, some search for poignant or painful moments...
- Nice writing
- Very 'Black Mirror'. Scary.
- Related to recent waves of nostalgia, and of course the internet, smart phones, video games, social media, and the potential VR and AR revolution/s/
- People forget to eat or bathe or sleep when confronted with something so powerful and addictive it makes, say, 'Skyrim' look silly
- Would you be able to resist?

5) 'Scroogled' -- Doctorow
- Great title
- The government has outsourced immigration control to Google. They know all. 'Black Mirror' once more.
- Scary, but unclear.
- Fizzles out

6) 'California' -- Sean Bernard
- An obscure and artsy ode to California
- A public television host is being watched...

7) 'Adela' -- Chanelle Benz
- A modern author writing in the Victorian style
- Children conspire to reunite old lovers in this manufactured and perhaps pretentious period piece. Fabricated footnotes. Fake critique of racial and sexual issues? The author having a literary laugh?
- Pretty cool

8) 'Lady Killer' -- Miracle Jones
- A man updates his Facebook status to 'engaged'
- He's approached by a 'drone' -- unclear resolution, but tech is scary seems to be the message

9) 'The transparency project' -- Alissa Nutting
- Weird
- Pretty big sacrifice for money
- Very short

10) 'The Gift' -- Mark Irwin
- Very, very, very short (you'll see what I mean)

11) ** 'What he was like' -- Alexis Landau
- About a woman and her relationship with others, such as a woman in a local convenience store, an old female neighbour, and 'him' she was pregnant and lost her baby boy.
- Page 133, QUOTE:

"I sat there, my legs dangling off the examining table, the white thin paper crinkled under my thighs, and I couldn't believe this was really real but I knew it was real and I knew that I would have to call my husband very soon, the cell phone was in my hand, and I would tell him what happened and then it would e real for him too and the more people who knew the more real this would be and the less real everything that came before this would become."

12) 'The entire predicament' -- Lucy Corin
- WTF? Madness and cords/rope-play?

13) 'Coyote' -- Charles Yu
- in the 2nd person? -- Nice buildup, who's watching whom? -- Weird, 1984ish dystopia-ladder-climbing-bureaucracy

14)'Terro(tour)istas' -- Juan Pablo Villalobos
- The government is spying on three individuals via social media, trying to decide if they are terrorists or or tourists.
- surely inspired by reality, Snowden and such
- Weird writing style - all narration, no dialogue, bolding and underlining, produces a faster pace and to-the-point situation

15)** 'Safety tips for living alone' -- Jim Shepard
- Based on a true story, which takes away a bit from what I thought was the creativity of the author
- A US Air Force member gets posted to an off-shore radar platform, against his wife's wishes
- It's hard to get into at first, but rewarding when you do
- Excellent description, EG pages 173-174 on the platform's crane. Tense, foreboding, page 184
- Steady, brusque pace
- Great ending, excellent!

16)** 'Prof' -- Chika Unigwe
- A female African Professor goes against local cultural and gender norms and also challenges the government, claiming that the government is spying on its citizens -- is she right, or is it all part of her paranoia, and the 3 'voices' in her head?
- Pretty messed up! She turns out to be an unreliable narrator who's heard 3 voices (197-198) her whole life, voices which were amplified by trauma as a teen. She is proven correct in her accusation of government spying through cell towers, making her a local hero -- but then her paranoia leads her to deter people from going to Ebola camps during an outbreak, and the likely death of her husband, who can only beg her "Please", and probably herself. She stopped taking her meds and tried to kill her husband once. Her paranoia is due to mental illness, but also based on the fact that the government DOES spy on its citizens, and local doctors HAD harvested patients for their organs.
- Interesting, realistic, scary. Unreliable narrator, paranoia, mental illness, Ebola...

17) 'The witness and the passenger train' -- Bonnie Nadzam
- Weird, imaginative, "if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around, does it make a sound/Schrodinger's Cat" story

18) 'Moon-less' -- Bryan Hurt
- A story by the editor of the book
- A man becomes a god in his basement, albeit a lonely one
- Short, weird, 'impossible'

19) ** 'Our New Neighbourhood' -- Lincoln Michel
- Disturbing, 'Black Mirroresque' (like many stories here)
- A Neighbourhood Watch in a neighbourhood where where house values are assessed by tiny, ridiculous details. The cold and distant husband forms the Watch, spying on his neighbours from his basement, while the sex-starved wife fantasizes about men while digitally-stalking them in her bedroom, eventually including the neighbours (232-237).
- Totalitarian, '1984' meets 1950s suburbia meets modern times

20) 'Buildings Talk' -- Dana Johnson
- Freakin' landlords
- Typos and needs better editing
- A tenant focuses on an obese and suspendered building manager, calling him Fatty Hardy and making fun of his weight and style. Initially he is unkind, but later he develops a fondness for the man.
- Speaks to home, history, memory and the ephemerality of apartment living
- Good, not great

21) ** 'Lifehack at bar Kaminuk' -- Mark Chiusano
- An editor joins a happy hour party with his New York startup. Then there's a twist. Kind of Neil Gaiman-style

22) 'Making Book' -- Dale Peck
- A teen masturbates and is confronted by his parents with crusty underwear and a shocking videotape
- Understated and humorous, but takes too long to get to the punch
- sex-tapes, voyeurism, coming-of-age, sex-ed, LGBTQ (the teen/narrator may be gay), NSFW -- debatable
- Kinda funny, kinda awkward

23) 'Dinosaurs went extinct around the time of the first flower' -- Kelly Luce
- A western female escort and kleptomaniac in Tokyo who claims she's bad at escorting has a regular, fetishizing Japanese male customer into some odd stuff
- NSFW

24) 'Ether' -- Zhang Ran
- A washed-up, bored man in a future where the internet is even dumber
- Heavily-influenced by Dostoevsky, I'd say. Down and out, melancholy, lonely street-walking interrupted by bizarre interactions with strangers/plot device (315-316)
- Too long and uninteresting

25) 'Drone' -- Miles Klee
- Hyper dystopia, post-apocalyptish-rapid-speak, military-bizarre

26) ** 'Transcription of an eye' -- Carmen Maria Machado
- Two ex-girlfriends face each other on Judge Judy
- Surreal, weird, crazy and fun. Transcription style, which is different.

27) ** 'The Taxidermist' -- David Abrams
- Paranormal. A taxidermist can see through the eyes of the animals he stuffs
- Voyeurism from God that is too much for a mortal to take.
- Simple, interesting, and very appropriate to the anthology

28) 'Second Chance' -- Etgar Keret
- A tech process gives you a second chance at a major life choice
- Black Mirror for sure
- Short, OK...

29) ** 'Strava' -- Steven Hayward
- A morbidly-obese English Prof tries Strava, the competitive cycling app
- The app was recommended to him by his fit, cyclist doctor, who has been sleeping with his fit, cyclist wife
- Well-done

30) 'We are the Olfanauts' -- Deji Bryce Olukotun
- Censors of social media smell content ('Whyffs') struggle with their roles
- Sci-fi, Black Mirror, sex, dystopia
- Took me a bit to get into it and was going to skip it but continued

31) 'Viewer, Violator' -- Aimee Bender
- An art gallery employee narrator takes you, the reader, functioning as a group of patrons perhaps, on a tour through an art gallery and recent events therein.
- People are coming in and violating the art, sometimes sexually
- Meanwhile, the Gallery Head is obsessed with a painting, perhaps 'violating' its makekup or composition with her own mind, perhaps going bonkers

32) 'Thirteen ways of being looked at by a Blackbird SR-71' -- Paul Di Filippo
- a creative take on 'Thirteen ways of looking at a Blackbird' by Wallace Stevens
- 13 humorous scenarios involving surveillance and the fate of the earth
- EG: Story 1 -- a group establishes what is meant to be a surveillance-free society 1 mile underground, but they discover that Mole People exist and have been spying on them from their floors, so they give up and return to the surface
**- I liked VII, where Smart Dust is scattered over the earth allowing everyone to see what everyone is doing. The links to revolution and change are interesting, as highlighted on page 466
- Very Black Mirror and Sci-Fi

[Tadzio Koelb · Rating 3 out of 5]

From my review for the Brooklyn Quarterly :

The pieces in Watchlist that most directly address state surveillance tend to highlight the absurdity lurking in repression. The web-watching spies of the unnamed Empire in “Terror(tour)istas” (Juan Pablo Villalobos) work feverishly to decide if people posting and liking poetically captioned photos of K2 on Facebook (“Mountains are not fair or unfair…”) should be arrested and tortured, or spammed with ads for exotic holidays. In “Our New Neighborhood” (Lincoln Michel), Donald creates a mini-surveillance state (complete with drones, dissidents, conspiracies, and so on) in his suburb of Middle Pond—“located between West Pond on the east and East Pond on the west”—because he is obsessively worried about property values.

This emphasis on the absurd might be a matter of taste: Hurt’s preference, at least in Watchlist, is apparently for absurdist stories of the type misleadingly known in American indie publishing as “innovative fiction.” The association of absurdity and authority also might be an expression of how Hurt perceives government. If so, he would be in good company: political satire has always assumed that one can (and should) bring rulers nose-to-nose with the ridiculous. The pieces collected in Watchlist do not necessarily make clear, however, whether logical absurdity leads to the surveillance state or the other way around. Meanwhile, their conflation in some stories apparently means that absurdity by itself inevitably implies repression.

A similar conflation of subjects happens around technology. Almost every story about state spying shares a distrust of technology. Although government is sometimes the main culprit, tech companies inevitably provide the tools. Google and Facebook make several appearances, joined by a long list of invented start-ups and their apps and hardware: Ether, FicShare, HausFlippr, SingleMingle, Olfanautics, Ladykiller, Strava—technology is what makes surveillance both likely and possible.

By extension, it seems, all new technology must be a form of surveillance. “The Relive Machine” (T. Coraghessan Boyle) and “Second Chance” (Etgar Keret) are both stories about new technology in which people watch only themselves: owners of relive machines can visit their own pasts through stimulation of their memories; clients of the Second Chance service can, at the moment of death, experience a virtual second life based on one decision made differently. “The Transparency Project” (Alissa Nutting) is told by a woman who allows researchers to replace part of her skin with a clear plastic, so they can observe her organs. What has any of this to do with the surveillance state?

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I often read short story collections as a change of pace. This collection of thirty-two stories by 32 different authors presents varying views on the heart-pounding, paranoia-inducing theme of surveillance. Many of these stories are creative and thought-provoking. Some, honestly, are a little weird for me. So to balance the stories I liked with the ones I didn't, I rated this book three stars.

Several stories are five stars in my opinion. T.C. Boyle's story, "The Relive Box", will stay with me for a long time. I just hope it doesn't come true. (A device allows you to replay your life, over and over again on a screen.) The scary, overlapping characteristic of this story with most stories in this group is that personal devices and technological advances (real and imagined) have opened up the often-creepy world of super surveillance.

I did get tired of this concept after awhile. At the end of "Our New Neighborhood" by Lincoln Michel and the beginning of "Buildings Talk" by Dana Johnson, I hit a wall. I couldn't make myself read this book for two weeks straight. Maybe it was because the content of these stories is not soothing bed time reading, and I do most of my reading before I go to sleep. Maybe it was because I was consumed by the biography of Virginia Woolf. Possibly, it was a combination of the two. Thankfully, at some point while my family and I were watching hours and hours of college basketball during March Madness, I reached for this book to read during time outs, half times and commercial breaks. To my surprise, I began to enjoy the stories again. I think I prefer the second half of the book better than the first half. "Make Book" by Dale Peck was memorable. "The Taxidermist" by David Abrams was great and "Ether" by Zhang Ran blew me away.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in exploring the subject of surveillance - with a warning not to read it right before you go to sleep.

I forgot to add a kudos the editor, Bryan Hurt, for gathering and reviewing the submissions for this collection. 4 stars for his effort. (I might have limited the total number of stories to less than 30, but who am I to say?) Imagine what this collection would be like 20 years in the future. Maybe Bryan can put a WatchList, Vol. 2 together at some point.

[Serkan Akşit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Barındırdığı oldukça keyifli hikayelerin yanında "meseleye nasıl bağladınız bunu?" diyebileceğiniz hikayelerin de yer aldığı bir derleme. Çok beğendiklerim sebebiyle kitabı kesinlikle tavsiye ederim.

Beğendiğim hikayeler ve kendimce yaptığım notlama, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️(5) üzerinden:

287960 NO'lu Mahkûm Malik'in Yeminli İfadesi - Randa Jarrar ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4)
Baştan Yaşam Kutusu - T. Coraghessan Boyle ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4)
Google'landık - Cory Doctorow ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5)
Kadın Avcısı - Miracle Jones ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4)
Jean Seberg'in Uyuduğu Yerde Uyumak - Katherine Karlin ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3)
Tanık ve Yolcu Treni - Bonnie Nadzam ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3)
Yalnız Yaşayanlar İçin Emniyet Tüyoları - Jim Shepard ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3)
Yeni Mahallemiz - Lincoln Michel ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4)
Book - Dale Peck ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3)
Esir - Zhang Ran ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5)
Taksidermist - David Abrams ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5)
Strava - Steven Hayward ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4)
Bizler Olfanautlarız - Deji Bryce Olukotun ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3)

[Muratcan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bazı öyküler güzeldi ama çoğu meh işte idare eder seviyesinde.

[Alfonso D'agostino · Rating 2 out of 5]

“che coss’è l’amor” cantava uno, e io – pur non avendo a portata di mano una guardarobiera nera e il suo romanzo rosa e neppure un’amaca gelata – mi sono accorto che l’amore ha davvero mille sfumature diverse. Senza sbilanciarsi su quello con la A maiuscola – che tanti hanno già fatto meglio di me – enumero l’amore per la propria squadra del cuore, l’more per gli animali, l’amore per una città, l’amore per un cantante. O un autore. Ecco: Watchlist lo abbiamo comprato per l’amore verso Aimee Bender.

L’idea che sta alla base di Watchlist è intrigante anche se – confessiamolo – non esageratamente originale: la raccolta di racconti vuole porre l’attenzione sul tema della ossessiva presenza della sguardo del mondo sulle nostre vite. Che si tratti di social network, che si ragioni di sorveglianza vera e propria, o che lo sguardo universale sulle nostre giornate sia la metafora da cui far partire una storia, Watchlist racconta esattamente di questo.

Il problema è che – a mio sindacabilissimo e personale parere – il numero di racconti che superano la piena sufficienza non è pari a quanto sarebbe stato legittimo aspettarsi. Nella memoria mi rimarranno “ReLivebox” di T. Coraghessan Boyle, “Prenderlo nel Google” di Cory Doctorow (anche solo per il titolo alle soglie della genialità), la curiosità anatomica di “Progetto Trasparenza” di Alissa Nutting, il super-distopico (ma non troppo) “Terro(tur)isti” di Juan Pablo Villalobos. Persino “Osservatore, violatore” della Bender ha finito per apparirmi sfuocato nella nebbia complessiva della raccolta: letto da solo, magari in una rivista, avrebbe probabilmente avuto tutto un altro effetto.

-- http://capitolo23.com/2017/07/15/watc... --

[Richard Watson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review originally for Sabotage Reviews: Sabotage Reviews

Undeniably, we in the West live in an age of information, or readily-accessible and frequently-shared data. As the early twenty-first century progresses, we have increasing instances of leaked secret information, intelligence agencies monitoring our communications, and companies changing the ways they can use customers’ personal information through their privacy T&Cs (or insisting they won’t sell it on). All of which is to say nothing of people’s desire to share occasionally profound, occasionally mundane, occasionally intimate, personal information over social media, nor the ubiquitous CCTV camera. This, then, is the inspiration behind OR Books’ short story anthology, Watchlist, edited by Bryan Hurt.
[...]

[Siel Ju · Rating 4 out of 5]

“What is a god if not alone?”
*
Watchlist is an interesting anthology of stories about surveillance — some by well known writers like T.C. Boyle and Aimee Bender, others from newer writers, others from international authors…. There are dystopias, strange machines, and parallel worlds — and a strong USC connection among the contributors, where the editor Bryan Hurt and I both went to grad school. The quote comes from Hurt’s own story, “Moonless,” about a guy who creates a mini universe and thereby becomes a god of sorts. It’s the perfect book if, like me, you’ve already watched all 3 seasons of Black Mirror and need more scary stories about the future of tech.

[Sheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be oddly entertaining. It's a great book of short stories , that you may first find unbelieveable but unfortunately this is what has become of the world we know. I enjoyed the first half much more than the 2nd half. I got to read some work from some really good up and coming authors.

The 2nd part was a little too far out me, since I don't enjoy that type of stuff. But for those of you that do it would be great.

I'm glad I won this through Goodreads first-reads contest.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was good. As with every short story collection, some stories were better than others. It was quite disturbing, but that was the point, I think. I read this concurrently with Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness, which was a serendipitous combination. Particular standouts for me included the stories by T.C. Boyle, Cory Doctorow, Charles Yu, Chika Unigwe, Lincoln Michel, Mark Chiusano, Zhang Ran (my absolute favorite story in the collection, Ether), Etgar Keret and Deji Bryce Olukotun (my second favorite story, We Are the Olfanauts).

[Marcheto Marcheto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aunque como es lógico ha habido unos cuantos relatos que no me han convencido, se trata de una antología muy variada a pesar del tema común y que tiene varios cuentos estupendos, que hacen que realmente merezca la pena leerla. Mis favoritos: los de Juan Pablo Villalobos y Aimee Bender, pero menciones especiales también para Etgar Keret, Charles Yu, David Abrams, T. Coraghessan Boyle y unos cuantos más. Y la mezcla de autores de literatura generalista y de género también me ha parecido muy enriquecedora y afortunada.

[Maurizio Patrignanelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essendo racconti di diversi scrittori si ritrovano nel libro tanti stili diversi e diversi modi di interpretare il tema che li tiene insieme e ha dato vita alla raccolta, l'oscuro scrutare tanto caro a P. K. Dick! Il gradimento di certi racconti piuttosto che altri può essere molto soggettivo, personalmente ne ho trovati interessanti solo una parte di cui due o tre mi sono veramente piaciuti.
Nota particolare: l'ultimo titolo è a sua volta una raccolta di racconti brevissimi!

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

some good ones. a lot of them seemed to come apart at the final paragraph. a lot of buildup for a weak punchline.

"safety tips for living alone" by jim shepard was my favorite. comparatively straightforward, but engrossing and damn tragic.

the day i read "our new neighborhood" i watched an x-files episode that was kind of just like it ("arcadia").

wow, this is my longest review.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Naturally I like the more SF of these and not so much the suburban dramas. Paul Di Filippo's final series of wild speculations kind of epitomize the surveillance theme.

[PENNEY GANLEY · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you Catapult for the free Arc. This book was very interesting. it has a story or two for everyone.

[Joy Yerkie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book! I've never read anything like it before & I mean that in a positive way. I hope Mr. Hurt edits a sequel.

[Rhonda Lomazow · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrific group of short stories.A diverse group of authors something for every reader,Some stories will draw you in some will leave you shaking your head.

[Benjamin Burr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Watchlist: 32 Stories by Persons of Interest is a collection of short stories based on the theme of surveillance. Bryan Hurt compiled the stories, and he put together quite the collection. When putting it together he didn’t give much guidance to the contributors. He wanted to see the range of what he would get. He got a lot of good stuff, and in doing so he put together a collection of stories that will help you understand the hyperobject of the surveillance state like nothing else will.

In other words, there are some intellectual endeavors that can only be accomplished by reading very good fiction. Once you’ve decided you want to embark on one of these endeavors where only fiction will do the trick, the next step is to decide which medium will deliver the most bang for the buck. More often than not readers and writers of fiction settle on novels as the best medium. In this case of trying to come to terms with the hyperobject of the surveillance state, no novel could accomplish what this collection of stories did.

Aside from giving a wide variety of perspectives and voices a platform, a short story collection also gives one the luxury of picking and choosing how much of they want to read. I skipped over 2-3 of the stories that just didn’t pull me in, but the vast majority of them were great reads. I don’t want to give too many of them away since part of the fun of reading a collection like this is the surprise of what’s coming next.

There were a few stories that stuck with me though that I would like to highlight. The first one was the “Relive Box.” This is a story about a console that allows one to experience past moments of your life through virtual reality. The story places us in the midst of a societal breakdown where people are becoming addicted to consuming their own past. If you’ve ever been in a room of people that should otherwise be socializing but they’re consumed by their electronic devices, this story will haunt you in those moments. You’ll see these people – and yourself when you’re guilty of such behavior – for what they are: Narcissus staring at a self-reflection. Aside from an examination of technologically enabled narcissism, the story also gets one thinking about nostalgia, free will, and the rarely realized beauty of forgetfulness. This is a story that hits above its weight and probably hits above the weight of most novels.

The second story that has stuck is “Testimony of Malik, Israeli Agent, Prisoner #287690” by Randa Jarrar. From the title I expected to read a post 9/11 story about Arab subjugation by some Mossad-like state actor. It turns out it’s a story about a kestrel that is captured by Israeli scientists and fitted with a device around the leg designed to track behavior. I loved this story because of all the stories in the collection it did the best job of portraying the eco-surveillance state that is on the verge of exploding. Of all the state-sponsored surveillance state apparatuses that could be will likely be built, the eco-surveillance state is probably the most alarming. When you combine the aggressive rigidity of the current environmentalist legal regime, with the rarely-questioned moral authority of the environmental movement, with rapidly expanding surveillance capability you get a recipe for disaster. For this reason, any work that critiques the eco-surveillance state is worth some attention.

The third story that stuck with me was “Our New Neighborhood” by Lincoln Michel. Any of the millions of Americans who have ever been terrorized by an HOA will find that this story really resonates. Most modern homeowners associations make King George III look like Ron Paul. If the Founding Fathers knew that the country they founded would one day be overrun with a form of tyranny as insidious as the modern HOA, I believe they would have included an amendment to the Constitution to prevent HOAs from ever being formed. I’m grateful that Lincoln Michel recognized this immutable and enduring truth about the corruptibility of HOAs and made a great story out of the premise.

That’s as far as I am going to go with discussing the individual stories, but hopefully, that gives you an idea of the range of ideas that can be explored under the simple theme of “surveillance.”

Read Full review here: http://www.attackofthebooks.com/book-...

[Burak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Birçok yazarın toplanıp belli bir tema üzerine oluşturduğu derlemeler ben de hep vasat olacakmış izlenimi uyandırır. Zira ya yazar öyküsünü sipariş üzerine yazmıştır ve çok iyi değildir ya da derlemenin ana temasına uzak düşmeyi göze alarak eski, pek ilgi çekmemiş öykülerinden birini vermiştir. Eğer şanslıysak arada belki birkaç öykü iz bırakır bizde.

Ama Gözetleme Listesi bu izlenimi boşa çıkardı. Kitapta vasatın altında diyebileceğim bir öykü yok. Hatta biraz da abartırsam birkaç istisna dışında vasat öykü de yok. Kitabın teması gözetleme olunca ben de bol bol Black Mirror'a senaryo olabilecek öykü okumayı bekliyordum. Böyle öyküler tabi ki var; özellikle Baştan Yaşam Kutusu, Kadın Avcısı, Yeni Mahallemiz, Esir ve Bizler Olfanautlarız güzel düşünülmüş, güzel yazılmış distopik kurgular. İzleme ve izlenmenin hayatımızda nasıl bir yer ettiğini, nelere yol açtığını/açabileceğini farklı bakış açılarıyla görüyoruz bu öykülerde.

Ama beni asıl şaşırtan bilimkurgu öğeleri kullanılmadan yazılan öyküler oldu. Jim Shepard'ın yazdığı Yalnız Yaşayanlar İçin Emniyet Tüyoları tarihi bir olayı etkileyici bir dille anlatıyor. Ya da Robert Coover'ın bana film noir tadı veren Şehrin Gece Vakti öyküsü kısa ama ilginç bir okumaydı.

Velhasılı epey güzel bir derleme olmuş. Yeni yazarlarla tanışmak için de iyi bir fırsat. Çeviri su gibi akıyor. Ama şöyle bir şey var, kitabın orijinalinde 32 öykü varken Türkçe baskıda 13 öykü -içlerinde bir adet de Etgar Keret öyküsü var- çıkarılmış ve 19 öykü yayınlanmış. Kitabın genel anlamda iyi olmasının sebebi bu azaltma olabilir tabi. Yine de ortada bir telif sorunu falan yokken tamamen Delidolu'nun isteği üzerine yapıldıysa bir okur olarak rahatsız olduğumu söylemeliyim. Nasıl bir roman Türkçeye çevrilirken tam metin olarak çevrilmesini istiyorsak öykü derlemelerinde de yayınevlerinden aynı itinayı göstermelerini bekliyorum haliyle. Bazı öyküler kötü olabilir, kitabın temasına uymuyor olabilir. Ama kitap bir kez bu şekilde yayınlandıysa artık buna karar verecek kişi okur olmalıdır, kitabı Türkçeye kazandıran yayınevi değil.

Benim gibi farklı yazarların toplandığı öykü derlemelerine ön yargılıysanız muhakkak şans verin Gözetleme Listesi'ne.

[Antonio Vena · Rating 5 out of 5]

I primi racconti e gli ultimi sono certamente i migliori.
Alcuni erano proprio da rifiutare, fuori tema/zero metafora.
Se non fosse per i paraculo che hanno partecipato alla raccolta mandando un racconto a cavolo sarebbe una raccolta da 5 stelle.
Per quanto pervaso nello spirito della raccolta c'è già un superamento dell'effetto culturale del caso Snowden in una qualche integrazione dell'individuo in una dolce e accomodante distopia del controllo, come se la sorveglianza elettronica di massa ben si adattasse al sentire di persone e personaggi.
I racconti di Cory Doctorow, Randa Jarrar, Katherine Karlin, Miracle Jones, Mark Irwin, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Bonnie Nadzam e soprattutto l'autore dell'ultimo racconto che non ricordo sono secondo me i migliori.

P.s. ripensando al casino di mettere tutti sti autori insieme niente: 5 stelle.

[Lingling · Rating 4 out of 5]

some pieces are very plain, don’t really get what the author is trying to say. made a deep impression, made one feel very depressed and a little scared, yet the experience/danger of gluing to a screen one can definitely relate. setting is unique, interesting to learn life on an oil rig.
is kinda of creepy and the ending a little sarcastic.《Ether》another piece about government surveillance, the part about an abusive father seems a little bit unfitting, like a fake mask that the author puts on to the main character to give him more blood and flesh, though poorly done.
Final one full of creepy ways of life in the future.

[Celeste Teng]

inconsistent. stories worked best when they didn’t rely on stale tropes about surveillance and the panopticon, dystopia, drones, snitches get stitches, blah blah. that’s not the scary thing about surveillance! my favourites were stories of/in place -

“isn’t moving on just moving back? Yielding? A surrender? I’ve never liked this state, it’s always felt uneasy to me, trembly, on the verge of explode, it’s the air, the winds, the fires, tides under ocean, deserts, I don’t know, such foreboding, just a sense is all.”

[Ümit Mutlu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bazı öyküler gerçekten çok güzel; mesela "Esir", ya da mesela "Aysız".

"Gençliğimde internet düşüncelerle, görüşlerle, tutkuyla doluydu. Hayat dolu gençler sanal dünyayı hiddetli Sokratik münazaralarla dolduruyordu, bu arada parlak zekâlı ama yabani tipler ballandıra ballandıra yeni bir sosyal düzen kurma rüyalarını anlatıyorlardı. Bilgisayar ekranının başında güneş doğana kadar hiç kıpırdamadan oturabilirdim, tıkladığım bağlantılar ruhumu fırtınalı seyahatlere çıkarırdı. Şimdiyse ilk sayfalarla bildirimlere bakıyorum ve tıklamaya değer tek bir konu başlığı bile bulamıyorum..."

[Brady Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of the stories in this volume are mindblowing and I'm likely to read it again. You should definitely check it out if you've really been wanting to think through privacy and our increasing digital dependence.
That said, some stories are quite skippable, so I give you permission to skip to the next story if you find any tedious. I definitely did.