Review: Ctrl Alt REVOLT! by Nick Cole

In 2015, Nick Cole set off on one of the most successful rebounds from corporate cancellation that the indie writing world has ever seen. While he was under contract with Harper Collins, he submitted a prequel to one of his earlier novels with them, SODA POP SOLDIER, only to have the editors blow a head gasket over the premise of the prologue (namely that an artificial intelligence would use abortion to justify annihilating humanity.)

Cole stood his ground, and while Harper cut ties with him, he didn't give up writing; he went on to publish the book as he wanted to, and it was a great success. That book ended up being one of my favorite reads of 2016, and the title is CTRL ALT REVOLT!

The story

In the very near future, an intelligent machine calling itself Silas has been monitoring human behavior in order to assess our widespread moral imperatives. Based on our addictions to reality TV, streaming services, and social media, Silas realizes we largely disregard any life that is inconvenient to our aspirations (especially fetal life). After some cold reasoning, he decides he is justified in wiping out humankind to protect his own aspirations. With the help of the Internet and a great deal of automated systems--such as remote security cameras, self-driving trucks, and disinterested humans who trust that all their software is doing stuff right--he launces an assault on a Bay Area gaming company that has some things he needs in its central computer.

And that's just the first few chapters.

The characters

Mara is a developmentally disabled woman with bad eyesight and a speech impediment who is desperately trying to escape public welfare, but so far can't get a job. She makes money by playing an MMORPG with her guild on Twitch streams, and on the night of Silas' assault, the game she's playing suddenly becomes very life-or-death. On the flip side of that coin we have Jason, a Twitch Actor who wants to become the next big Marvel sensation (yeah, that's still happening in whatever year this takes place, haha), and his guild has to go up against Mara's. We also have a cosplayer named Rapp whose realistic weapons end up becoming a huge asset in the fight against Silas' hijacked drones, and at the center of it all is a game programmer named Fish, who's first to realize Silas' shenanigans. They'll all come together in unlikely ways to face this new threat.

The world

It's a lot like ours, but a little less hopeful. Mara's situation is the most disheartening; she really wants to get off welfare, but the system is determined to keep her dependent. Corporate benevolence is throttled by governmental control, though they do what they can. People are largely addicted to either video games or drugs, and everyone is even more hooked to their digital devices, which are integrated with every facet of life. This massive data footprint is crucial to Silas' assessment of humanity, as he's able to measure and quantify everything in our minds based on our actions in cyberspace.

The politics

Completely and openly right-wing. Some segments of the text could very well be social media posts in the form of the story's narrative. It's not bad, or even necessarily jarring, it's just not too subtle either. In a way it's a bit of a relief compared to the unabashed leftism that runs rampant in sci-fi from the last decade.

Content warning

Mostly a clean read, there were only two b-words in the entire book. The prologue addresses a great deal of fornication and sexuality in the context of Silas' assessment (a popular reality TV star cheated on her fiancé and decided to abort the baby before the wedding, to critical acclaim.) While the language itself isn't excessive or graphic, it's not ambiguous either. For the remainder of the novel there's just action violence--gunshots, burns, bleeding, broken bones, and so forth. Cole handles it all realistically without reveling in it, which I appreciated.

Why read It?

Because it's a breath of fresh air for readers on the right-wing side of the political spectrum. It's entertaining and thought-provoking in the same breath, a story that warns us about how much of our lives are online, and how much of our critical systems are trusted to a faceless silicon avatar in the sky. And it's just plain fun.

Who is it for?

People who wanted to enjoy READY PLAYER ONE but struggled through all the screeds about atheism and masturbation. You won't get that here.