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Darlingtonia
San Francisco. Tomorrow. Dylan is a millennial, a tech-worker, and bored out of her mind. Ricky is the one brown guy in the office and the most talented of them all. Both work for Chad, the manager of the advertising department, and are forced to listen to his inane commands. Their job is to design colorful ads for the Childhood Memory Game. The game is owned by Bilton Smyth, an eccentric CEO with a penchant for racism and free-market capitalism. 400,000,000 users have downloaded the psychological memory game of labyrinths and monsters. Everyone makes a lot of money. Dylan lives in a luxury apartment. Ricky wears expensive clothes. And then Ricky is found dead. A flower native to California begins to blossom, a plant that feeds off insects and uses nectar as bait. Its name is Darlingtonia. Dylan must discover what it means.
334 pages, Paperback
Published December 1, 2017
7 people are currently reading
112 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 27, 2018
In the first hundred or so pages of “Darlingtonia,” the following sentence (or some close variant of it) appears probably a dozen or so times in reference to the book’s main character, Dylan Kinsey: “She checks her Facebook, her Twitter, her Instagram, and her Gmail.” Big mistake, Dylan later learns, for these and other digital venues are tools of a massive corporate plot to beguile and manipulate people through their devices.
Dylan works for a San Francisco tech firm called Oingo Boingo, where she is one of the chief architects of a dynamic, interactive, personalized program called the Childhood Memory Game. Life is good, although she is vaguely troubled by occasional pangs of conscience about social inequality and concerns about her role in contributing to a culture where technology is ubiquitous and could, possibly, be put to nefarious uses if it ever got into the wrong hands. Her ambivalence turns into rage, though, when one of her closest colleagues at work washes up dead in the Bay. Dylan suspects that he was onto something, possibly something that got him killed. She’s determined to learn what that is.
“Darlingtonia” is a cyber-political-thriller with a plucky heroine and a resilient, likable cast of supporting characters. The vast crypto-network of evildoers that Dylan’s sleuthing eventually uncovers somewhat beggars credulity, for in the time-honored tradition of conspiracy theories it involves a rapacious capitalist industry, a corrupt government, a few unwitting accomplices, and a sinister overlord called “the director.” All that's missing is Darth Vader.
What “Darlingtonia” perhaps lacks in originality, though, it makes for in timeliness. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg tried to defend Face Book’s business model of mining personal data for fun and profit to the United States Congress. His obfuscations don't reassure anybody.
Darlingt0nia's author, Alba Roja, tends to become a bit overwrought when she writes lines for Dylan like:
“People don’t want to be slaves!... You trick them into being slaves, you put them in stasis and you make sure they stay that way, all for some dying system that barely works! People aren’t insects, people aren’t subjects. Your shit’s done! I’m the fucking organism that digested you!”
Still, this book deserves credit for its sincere (if sometimes over the top) social consciousness. Think about Darlingtonia the next time you “like” something online.
p.s. I bought this book in my local anarchist book store. Support you local anarchist bookstores!
Dylan works for a San Francisco tech firm called Oingo Boingo, where she is one of the chief architects of a dynamic, interactive, personalized program called the Childhood Memory Game. Life is good, although she is vaguely troubled by occasional pangs of conscience about social inequality and concerns about her role in contributing to a culture where technology is ubiquitous and could, possibly, be put to nefarious uses if it ever got into the wrong hands. Her ambivalence turns into rage, though, when one of her closest colleagues at work washes up dead in the Bay. Dylan suspects that he was onto something, possibly something that got him killed. She’s determined to learn what that is.
“Darlingtonia” is a cyber-political-thriller with a plucky heroine and a resilient, likable cast of supporting characters. The vast crypto-network of evildoers that Dylan’s sleuthing eventually uncovers somewhat beggars credulity, for in the time-honored tradition of conspiracy theories it involves a rapacious capitalist industry, a corrupt government, a few unwitting accomplices, and a sinister overlord called “the director.” All that's missing is Darth Vader.
What “Darlingtonia” perhaps lacks in originality, though, it makes for in timeliness. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg tried to defend Face Book’s business model of mining personal data for fun and profit to the United States Congress. His obfuscations don't reassure anybody.
Darlingt0nia's author, Alba Roja, tends to become a bit overwrought when she writes lines for Dylan like:
“People don’t want to be slaves!... You trick them into being slaves, you put them in stasis and you make sure they stay that way, all for some dying system that barely works! People aren’t insects, people aren’t subjects. Your shit’s done! I’m the fucking organism that digested you!”
Still, this book deserves credit for its sincere (if sometimes over the top) social consciousness. Think about Darlingtonia the next time you “like” something online.
p.s. I bought this book in my local anarchist book store. Support you local anarchist bookstores!
October 10, 2020
Once you're presented with its central conspiracy, it feels less accurate to call Darlingtonia "Speculative Fiction" than something more along the lines of "Extrapolative Fiction", even "Probable Fiction". It combines elements of the surveillance complex exposed by Snowden in 2013 with the full range of social media psy-ops that've been central to the Big Tech discourse since, and then presents it like Citizenfour if Citizenfour had instead been a queer, anarchist thriller. It's noir repotted from its native LA soil into Silicon Valley, and instead of dishing up sexual intrigue and taut plotting, it just sort of... drifts along and vibes out on its own schedule, with a quintessentially Millennial-feeling mix of listlessness and idealism.
Despite being published through a Seattle-based anarchist book collective, honestly surprised this hasn't blown up more since 2017.
Despite being published through a Seattle-based anarchist book collective, honestly surprised this hasn't blown up more since 2017.
December 18, 2017
from author's website:
"The setting is a sleek San Francisco deadened by tech wealth. The characters, willingly or not, are all entangled in oppressive projects of gentrification, mass surveillance, and the continual empowerment of a small elite. To cope they take solace in food, drugs, shopping, and repetitive entertainment. But then, a suspicious death sets off a chain reaction with international implications and our heroine must leave her previous life behind and plunge into a dangerous new reality from which she may never emerge. This setup may sound familiar, rote even, but what comes after is anything but. Like hiding a magical hallucinogen by rolling it into a regular looking cigarette, the Alba Roja collective has passed us something radical by concealing it within a familiar form. Darlingtonia presents a hopeful story of awakening within our current dystopic reality. It asserts the possibility that our sexuality and our hunger, our creativity and our restlessness can turn in an instant, into revolutionary weapons. Illicit and thrilling, this is a consciousness expanding, euphoria inducing novel. I loved it."
—Joni Murphy, author of Double Teenage
https://albaroja.noblogs.org/
"The setting is a sleek San Francisco deadened by tech wealth. The characters, willingly or not, are all entangled in oppressive projects of gentrification, mass surveillance, and the continual empowerment of a small elite. To cope they take solace in food, drugs, shopping, and repetitive entertainment. But then, a suspicious death sets off a chain reaction with international implications and our heroine must leave her previous life behind and plunge into a dangerous new reality from which she may never emerge. This setup may sound familiar, rote even, but what comes after is anything but. Like hiding a magical hallucinogen by rolling it into a regular looking cigarette, the Alba Roja collective has passed us something radical by concealing it within a familiar form. Darlingtonia presents a hopeful story of awakening within our current dystopic reality. It asserts the possibility that our sexuality and our hunger, our creativity and our restlessness can turn in an instant, into revolutionary weapons. Illicit and thrilling, this is a consciousness expanding, euphoria inducing novel. I loved it."
—Joni Murphy, author of Double Teenage
https://albaroja.noblogs.org/
November 20, 2017
Roja does an amazing job showing the daily horror of our current lives. The characters (like us) are dialed into social networking and, often, jobs that are meaningless and consumer and capitalist-based.
But the great part about this story is that it is a thriller, leading us into darker levels and layers, where the truths about the characters' lives are exposed. Part anarchist thriller, part social commentary, part true California novel--an engaging read.
But the great part about this story is that it is a thriller, leading us into darker levels and layers, where the truths about the characters' lives are exposed. Part anarchist thriller, part social commentary, part true California novel--an engaging read.
April 4, 2019
Probably the creepiest shit I've read in a while. If what the author's claim is true, the entire thing was written BEFORE the 2016 election! A tech CEO embodies some of Trump's characteristics, while the paranoia about Russian influence flows through the entire novel. This mystery also somehow manages to predict the entire Cambridge Analytica scandal while providing almost a manual for how to avoid surveillance/trigger a revolution. Crazy shit! Highly recommend.
April 4, 2019
Honestly, this isn't literary fiction or anything, but it really gets moving and keeps up the suspense until the end, a real page turner. Just finished as part of book group. Hope there's a sequel. Highly recommend. =)
February 5, 2018
Fast paced and exciting as much as it's mirror of our culture is frightening.
July 1, 2024
A very timely story about anarchy + resisting surveillance in our current political moment! I found the dialogue and romance a bit awkward at times which definitely pulled me away from the writing, and there were also a significant amount of grammar/copy errors (even with your/you’re) which just bothers me personally. The beginning and end are pretty slow, but I still think it’s worth sticking with for the climax of the story and to prompt reflection about engaging with social media, capitalism, technology, etc.
August 5, 2018
I can't stop thinking about the ideas in this book! In conversations I keep wanting to say, "Oh my gosh, that's just like in the book..." The portrait of the Mission feels electrically possible. But! the writing! Ay, it made the ride so jolting and unpleasant. In our book group we kept trying to imagine how this was perhaps intentional? Perhaps. But it doesn't work for me. It was too breathless and too often unproductively ambiguous for me to settle down and trust this as I wanted to.
January 10, 2020
I love a queer main character, especially one that acts to take down arbitrarily hierarchical systems in a near-future version of the U.S. I enjoyed the pacing and writing style of the first third of it. However, this book wrapped up so tightly and unbelievably that I was left thinking... "Really?? REALLY THOUGH!?!"
June 18, 2020
it’s a decent exploration of our contemporary dystopian state
May 30, 2021
Puts the 'punk' back in 'cyberpunk'
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews