The Big Ask: Zero Privacy Culture & Violence

The question I get asked most about Gamechanger, hands down, is always a variation on: “Do you really think this future human society you’ve created could really do away with sexual assault?”

The short answer is yes. The medium answer is yes, if we really want it to. The long answer is … well, it’s this super tl;dr essay.

Until recently, I hedged my bets when answering this. Fiction is fiction for a reason. Even if you’re trying to believably extrapolate current trends, everything’s easier in story. So I’d talk about the imperfections of human-built systems, but also mention my heartfelt belief that men can choose not to be violent.

Getting deeper into my novel and its solution, I’d go into two ideas that are key to my optimistic future society. One of those ideas goes by the phrase “total accountability culture.” The other is “mutually assured disclosure.” Because it’s changes in how humans see things—even more so than the technology involved—that brings societal change.

Lately, though, I’ve been wondering if I needed to hedge. If my answer couldn’t just be yeah, we could do this.

This summer I listened to the latest season of Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast Revisionist History. Among other things, he had a three-week conversation with Mo Katibeh from AT&T, about the coming 5G revolution. This was ad content, sprinkled into other stories, very upbeat… it wasn’t hard-hitting journalism, if you get me. Even so, it was fascinating.

Katibeh explained that latency in tomorrow’s digital networks, when we all move to 5G, is about to achieve a speed that’s just barely slower than the speed of human thought. Examples of what this will mean for us, he went on, included surgeons in one part of the world operating—safely and routinely—on people in another. The reaction time on remote surgical devices will be that fast.

Katibeh painted a world where everyone’s digital helpers—the apps—in the gadgets from their watches and bikes and cars to the traffic cams around them—would coordinated to intervene in crashes before they happened. In Gamechanger, the exact same interventions seek to prevent human collisions—events like rape.

The technology is already all but there. All we need is someone to write the code, someone else to train the AIs to recognize everything from grooming and boundary-testing and negging to straight-up attacks… and crucially, for everyone else to agree that it’s time to consider going there.

(Oh, and there’s a small matter of considering whether privacy is less of a right and more of a privilege… and a problematic, #metoo enabling privilege at that.)

Every day, more of what we say and do and think and post and buy goes into corporate and public archives, possibly forever. It happens, more or less, with our permission. We sell our information for convenience. And so iTunes knows how many times I’ve rewatched Parade’s End. Google Maps can give you an alibi for my every waking moment since at least 2013.

What might we sell everything for? And what does a culture look like where you have no secrets at all? Does it have to be a horror show?

In Gamechanger, I go for a mix of utopian and creepy. (Aren’t all utopias a little creepy?)

Here’s how it works: By 2101, when the book’s happening, all our communications tech is implanted. As a kid you have wearables; then you have an operation when you’re fourteen and you get a microphone set near your trachea, speakers in your ears, and cameras in your eyes. Your uplink lets you switch from an unadjusted view of the world around you to an augmented one, full of info and tags. Or you can go fully virtual, bang back some buy-in drugs, and experience other digital realities. Full-immersion VR, in other words.

In this world, unless you are silently screwing in a darkened room, you are on the record in realtime. In public, views of you are multiplied by as many people and street cameras and mobile lenses as can see you and cross-reference your locator chip. Leaving aside futuristic surgical implants, the above is really just an amplification of something that is already happening.

The second amplification, in the book, is how social media interacts with everyone’s data. If I see you chucking a disposable coffee cup into the ravine, I can send a big thumbs down to the network—a strike. So can everyone else who’s witnessed your anti-social behavior.

(Kidding! Of course there are no disposable coffee cups!)

Once I complain, the system figures out who you are and sends those strikes, if they’re valid, to the social capital arbiter, Cloudsight. If enough other witnesses agree with me, it might impact your economic well-being. Prosocial people—the good and the much-Liked, basically—get discounts on goods and services. Generally speaking, a person who wants a good quality of life and the fewest possible hassles is going to be picking up the coffee cups and boosting their Cloudsight score, rather than littering.

Some of you may know that this, too, is something that’s already being prototyped in the real world. Here’s the article, and this one will get you right in the Orwells.

Get it straight… I am not saying the idea shouldn’t raise your hair. But consider the implications if you’re in a fight. Start with the slightly comical side of things–your entire extended family tuning in from around the world to offer opinions when you’re fighting with your kid about the length of their hair or skirts.

Family scraps aside, imagine getting belligerent in a bar. All the people who want to drink in peace are giving you strikes. As things escalate, you get an alert saying there’s a drone-mounted taser, piloted by a remote conflict-analysis specialist, on its way. A couple live law enforcement giggers are also waiting to see if they’re gonna get greenlighted to haul you off to the drunk tank.

Meanwhile, the censure of the folks in the bar continues to raise the price of your next beer to a point where you’re going to be too broke to drink unless you make nice with the Internet for six months.

Okay, though. Bar brawls. Do we care? Maybe not. So, let’s level the thought experiment one more time, and fold in smart tech and sexual violence.

Picture being a young adult with freshly minted VR implants.

One of the things you just do, as part of future high school here in 2101, is load up and learn to use a consent assessment app. Greenlight or Enthusiastic is running in the background of your heads-up display, all but forgotten, with your virus protection and sports scores.

But one day you meet someone, or several someones, and as things start getting romantic, the app goes from passive into active mode, patiently monitoring your realtime feed for words like Yes and No! and Ow! and More! It’s listening for your safe word, your secret “Call 911” code, sifting the transcript for gaslighting and negging, rating the physiological clues that indicate crying—because of course your mic monitors your pulse and respiration.

We’re on the verge of being able to nip bike accidents in the bud, remember? Right now, here in consensus reality, we’re using machine learning to teach AI to recognize faces and predict disaster scenarios. These consent apps could be trained using real trial transcripts and attack footage, as well as forced kisses in movies and everything else rape culture has thoughtfully provided over the years. They’ll be capable of parsing a lot of nuance. They’ll have settings to accommodate our preferences and kinks.

In this imaginary romantic encounter, imagine the mood shifting—something starts to go wrong. The app prepares to pop a text into your augmented display, reminding you it’s okay to slow things down or even leave. It’s ready to summon your loved ones, turn on all the lights, and if necessary call for more robust support.

And it’s just as ready to send you a brisk, impartial warning if you’re the one pushing the boundaries of your partners’ comfort zones.

This probably sounds weird and intrusive. The idea of having a future version of Alexa beep during a romantic moment to say “You didn’t check whether they wanted that, and facial analysis indicates they’re having feels…” Sure, that might be a real blast of cold water. I mean, that’s the beef people raise with asking for consent, right? We’re taking the fun out of it? Leaching out the sexy?

Pshaw. What if we took a minute to adjust to the idea that consent was nonnegotiable—and why the fuck have we gone on so long thinking otherwise?—and that tech could intervene on certain branches of the foreplay decision tree? What if–whether there was intent to commit harm or just a failure to read the room–an app-mediated safety alert wasn’t seen as party pooping or cock blocking? What if it was about ensuring sex without fear, for all parties? What would it be like to grow up in that world?

So… that’s the imaginary How in this particular Gamechanger worldbuilding element: no privacy, logistical challenges to being violent, a world where everybody has support from software while they’re learning to do sex with new partners, and most of all widespread societal agreement on consent always, always, goddamn always.

Amazing, right? Except. There is the creepy part. What about the part where people shouldn’t necessarily have every moment of their lives and especially every mistake or moral slip up on video forever, just waiting for someone clever enough to access and exploit it?

Friends, remember that we’re already more than halfway there. Your secrets are already endangered. Unless you take the trouble to police the mics and cameras in all your phones and other gadgets, unless you make your friends lock up their phones in a quiet box when you get together, unless you never selfie, don’t use your GPS, don’t play Pokemon, and you pay cash for everything, I am left to conclude that like me, you’re not terrified of losing your privacy. At most, you’re resigned. Mildly disquieted.

The problem doesn’t have to be the data. The problem is that you and I, the mildly disquieted, are end users. We’re Winston Smith. Consumers with virtually no financial or political power on any kind of grand scale. Caught in capitalism, and unable to participate fully unless we ante up our info.

But what if the answer isn’t locking the barn door? What if it’s cracking the vaults on the people we don’t know anything about—the Big Brothers, the people who do still have the privilege of privacy?

In Gamechanger, the other social adjustment is this: when those future humans talk about total accountability culture, they aren’t just talking about you and me and random average Joes. CEOs and politicians have to come clean too. Backroom deals and private boardroom meetings cease to exist. Everything’s on the public record. Everyone can log on to the room where it happens.

And, indeed, in a world where everyone is wearing surgical implants and they are on all the time, how do you have a secret meeting anyway? (I actually do answer this in the book.)

In Gamechanger our feeds all go into the Haystack, and they mostly sit there in the archive until someone ends up in a “Who said what?” type argument with a loved one and the sifting for the moral high ground begins. Though anyone can find out another person’s entire history, they aren’t necessarily going to want to. Under the mutually assured disclosure provisions, if someone is following your feeds that closely, you get a notification… and a copy of their cradle-to-current transcript.

You wanna know every single thing about that human you’re about to go on a date with? No problem: here are the files. By the way, they’ve received a date-stamped copy of your request and have an option to review your personal history too. They’re starting with whether you audited your last three romantic connections.

The result? At its best, we’d build a technologically mediated large-scale village effect, the same reality experienced by people living in itty bitty towns where everyone knows each other’s business.

Is this still something that makes you uneasy? It totally should. Getting the world to go for it would be really really hard. And is it better to imagine everyone having to drop their drawers to that extent? Sure, maybe.

But is that a harder sell, given what we’ve handed over already, than blithely imagining that the current world’s governments are somehow going to place significant limitations on the ways Facebook and Apple and Amazon and all the other players out there mine and sell the data we’ve already offered up or had stolen? How much interpersonal violence would have to disappear from the earth to make it worth each and every one of us becoming the star of our very own low-rated Truman Show?

It would take a huge change in our thinking. There would have to be no exceptions. You tell me what it would take for it to be worth it.

Tour Tour Tour!!

Gamechanger will be released on Tuesday, September 17th and to kick off the celebration I will be reading at Chiseries on September 18th, at the Round Venue at 8pm. Bakka Phoenix Books will be there with copies for sale, and I won’t be the only one reading: Mugabi Byenkya, Victoria Dalpe, and Halli Villegas will be there too!

Next, on September 22nd, Amal El Mohtar and I will be at Word on the Street’s Across the Universe Stage, giving a panel on Alternate Futures, hosted by Leah Bobet.

The official Toronto Gamechanger Launch will be at Bakka-Phoenix Books, 84 Harbord Street on October 5th, 3pm.

Meanwhile, On October 18th to 20th, I’ll be appearing at CanCon in Ottawa, along with so many other amazing writers!

Last for the moment, and certainly not least, my Vancouver B.C. launch will be at Massy Books at 229 East Georgia Street, at 7pm on November 5th.

You are all welcome at very single one of the events–I would love to see and meet you. Meanwhile, there is a week to go before the actual book birthday, which means there’s still time to preorder!

Gamechanger Release in Two Weeks!

With two weeks to go to the release of my book, it’s getting pretty damned excited around here.

Not at all by chance, I’ve been interviewed about the book, hopetopia, Internet shame culture and potential good future outcomes for human society at Clarkesworld by Arley Sorg. Here’s a snippet and a link:

“A century from now, in my world, compassionate, cool people are living smart, productive lives in an ecosphere they worked incredibly hard to preserve.”

The Toronto launch for Gamechanger will be on October 5th at 3pm, at Bakka-Phoenix Books. There will be a reading, signing, jokes, desserts, and fun. I hope I’ll see you there!

Gamechanger launch dates, coast to coast!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if your book is coming out on September 17th, as mine is, you’re probably reading it somewhere. And I am!

On the very day after Gamechanger’s birthday, I will be reading at ChiSeries Toronto, at the Round Venue in Kensington Market, along with Victoria Dalpe and Halle Villegas (and with music by Kari Maaren!)

The official Toronto launch for the book, meanwhile, will be on October 5th at 3pm, at Bakka-Phoenix Books at 84 Harbord Street.

And Vancouver’s launch date will be November 5th at 7pm, at Massy Books, at 229 E. Georgia Street.

This fall I will also be appearing at Word on The Street, and at CanCon in Ottawa. Catch me at any of the above… or watch my social feeds for future appearances!

Getting my Lex on at Worldcon

The annual science fictional migration is about to begin, and soon I will be winging my way to Dublin… with a few days’ stop in London with my beloved, first. If you want to see me, here are my programming items. I’d love it if you came and said hello!

How We Became LV426 (aka, Lex Talks Terraforming).

16 Aug 2019, Friday 11:30 – 12:20, Odeon 5 (Point Square Dublin)

We’re having global conversations about climate change and human impacts on Earth’s biosphere. But random acts of human terraforming have brought us to the brink of disaster before. We’ll discuss how we made a huge swath of the world unfit for human habitation a century ago. Here’s what it took to reclaim it and how we can apply those lessons in the future.

Quick warning: Expecting jokes? This is not, strictly speaking, one of my stand-up routines. There may be a chuckle here and there, but mostly this is science talk. On the plus side, this does mean lots less profanity.

Getting your Speculative Plays into Theatres

16 Aug 2019, Friday 15:00 – 15:50, Wicklow Room-1 (CCD)

From Broadway and The Abbey Theatre to small local community groups, theatres are always looking for new material. How do you get your play performed – and is it harder to get a speculative stage play produced, given the extra tangles caused by science fiction and fantasy themes? Join us for a theatrical discussion on how to get your speculative play published, performed, and seen.  With James Patrick Kelly, Maura McHugh, & Bruno Puelles

Kaffeeklatsch: Lex Beckett

17 Aug 2019, Saturday 11:00 – 11:50, Level 3 Foyer (KK/LB) (CCD)

My first Kaffeeklatch. I’ll bring the jokes and the box of swears!

Beyond Binary

17 Aug 2019, Saturday 14:00 – 14:50, Wicklow Room-1 (CCD)

This panel seeks to explore the concept of gender in SFF. In particular, it will focus on societies in literature and other media that do not follow binary definitions of gender. What examples already exist and are they presented favourably? What are some good and bad examples? Do the panellists have ideas for how they would write a non-binary society? With Alex Acks, Sarah Groenewegen and Rei Rosenquist

Reading: Lex Beckett Gamechanger

18 Aug 2019, Sunday 10:00 – 10:20, Liffey Room-3 (Readings) (CCD)

I will throw it to the audience: would you rather I read the action prologue or showed you a non-binary parent at the end of their rope?

There’s a Gamechanger excerpt live now!

Free taste time! You can now read the first chapter of Gamechanger at the Tor/Forge blog, here. Here’s where we begin:

Cherub Whiting’s first realworld police raid was nothing like the sims.

She was in a chic Parisian neighborhood with a view of the Eiffel Tower, waiting on a meeting. When @Interpol showed up in her pop-in conference room, she’d been sending pings to a no-show client for the better part of an hour.

Luce, you’re late. Luce, it’s time for our face-to-face. Where are you?

The whole of that police raid is up for the reading. You’ll have to get the book to run back to the prologue, where I basically run multiple tornadoes over the remains of West Edmonton Mall. Never let it be said that writers aren’t malicious.

Between giving you this taste and launching the book September 17th, I will be attending and speaking at the World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin, Ireland. I’ll post my official schedule soon, but the current plan is for me to read, do a coffeeklatch, give my terraforming talk, and even talk about getting more science fiction theater projects into the world. If you’re there, I’ll hope to see you!

With 69 days to Gamechanger, preorders are love!

Gamechanger will be out in the world on September 17th, 69 short days from now, and to say I am excited might be a bit like saying the surface of the sun is a bit toasty.


Ahhhhh book book book book book!!!

You can all expect this space, and my fabulous newsletter, The Lexicon to get ever more Gamechange-y. There will be excerpts, Goodreads Giveaways, bragging about reviews (I already told you Publishers’ Weekly called it a delightful pinball machine of a book and compared it to Snow Crash, right?)

But before we get there, I want to do the thing where I ask for pre-orders. If you’re gonna buy Gamechanger, and you’re inclined to get the book at one of the following vendors, I’d appreciate it so much if you ordered early and … well, order often if you want to give it to deserving readers for the holiday season.

Barnes & Noble. Amazon. Powells. Kobo. Chapters Indigo. Google Books. (iTunes keeps linking me to its store in Brazil, but I’m working on it!)

If you prefer audio, here’s the Audible link.

If you are curious about why this pre-order thing is important, here’s author Yashar Ali in a thread explaining it all.

Gamechanger imagines our world just over a century from now, after we’ve really begun grappling with carbon levels and climate change. It’s a book where we look at the grandchildren of Generation Z and the future the youngs of today and tomorrow are building. As a result, there will also be sciencey articles coming your way from me, both about technologies we’re developing to address the problem and how they might be (or are already being!) deployed. I’ll post about those too, as they appear.

Love me. Order me. Use me and reviews me. Tweet me sweetly. I appreciate it all so much.

Holy spectacular Gamechanger cover! – courtesy @TorBooks and artist @smartiniere

I’ll cut to the chase. Check out this beautiful beautiful cover, by Stephan Martiniere, for Gamechanger.

Stunning, right? It captures exactly what I want for this fictional future—a world still recognizably the one we’re living in now, and yet changed, mostly (though not all) for the better.

(The Gamechanger outcome is actually what I want for our actual future, as far as that goes.)

Cover reveals often happen when a book becomes available for pre-order, and mine is! Powells and iTunes don’t have pages yet, but for those of you who dollar-vote at any of the following retailers, here are links. .

[Amazon HC] [Kindle][B&N] [Kobo]

Things have been very exciting around the Lex Cave these days. Some of you may have heard that “Freezing Rain, a Chance of Falling” is a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, hobnobbing with SF stars like Kelly Robson and Annalee Newitz. Naturally, I’m over the moon!

But rather than staying up there, I’m gonna come down to earth and stare at this beautiful cover some more. I’ll talk more about the Sturgeon, and the novella, and many other things, soon!