The Lost Cause

by Cory Doctorow

Published by TOR.

(5 reviews)

It’s thirty years from now. We’re making progress, mitigating climate change, slowly but surely. But what about all the angry old people who can’t let go?

For young Americans a generation from now, climate change isn't controversial. It's just an overwhelming fact of life. And so are the great efforts to contain and mitigate it. Entire cities are being moved inland from the rising seas. Vast clean-energy projects are springing up everywhere. Disaster relief, the mitigation of floods and superstorms, has become a skill for which tens of millions of people are trained every year. The effort is global. It employs everyone who wants to work. Even when national politics oscillates back to right-wing leaders, the momentum is too great; these vast programs cannot be stopped in their tracks.

But there are still those Americans, mostly elderly, who cling to their red baseball caps, their grievances, their huge vehicles, their …

It’s thirty years from now. We’re making progress, mitigating climate change, slowly but surely. But what about all the angry old people who can’t let go?

But there are still those Americans, mostly elderly, who cling to their red baseball caps, their grievances, their huge vehicles, their anger. To their "alternative" news sources that reassure them that their resentment is right and pure and that "climate change" is just a giant scam.

And they're your grandfather, your uncle, your great-aunt. And they're not going anywhere. And they’re armed to the teeth.

The Lost Cause asks: What do we do about people who cling to the belief that their own children are the enemy? When, in fact, they're often the elders that we love?

1 edition

mathiasrudolph reviewed The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow

disappointed

2 stars

I like the premise and the wookness, but it's one of the worst written books I've read.

heavyboots reviewed The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow

Gets more interesting in the last third

4 stars

As usual, a lot of interesting ideas as he writes yet another recipe for escaping from the current global crisis that rampant kleptocracy and corporate welfare have created.

It starts quite slowly though and I was not really feeling the main character until somewhere into the middle of the book Even then I was hating his puppy-dog adoration of this girl he has a crush on so much for at least 2/3rds of the book, but thankfully he finally starts to seem a little more cohesive as a character towards the end.

But still worth the read and the final third definitely started to pull it together and make me care not only about the characters but about the attack they managed to do against the various tactics stages by the “plutocracy”.

sol2070@velhaestante.com.br reviewed The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow

Highly relevant socio-political fiction

4 stars

(em português: sol2070.in/2024/01/the-lost-cause-cory-doctorow )

"The Lost Cause" (2023), by Cory Doctorow, is a climate fiction set 30 years in the future. It's not hard to see why it went straight to bestseller lists. The story basically extrapolates the current rift in the US between Trumpists and society to the imminence of something close to a civil war, with a focus on the climate emergency.

It could also be described as Green New Deal fiction, about the (non-fictional) proposal for a massive government investment that, while mitigating the catastrophic consequences of climate change and creating resilience, generates jobs and new technologies.

The setting is the city of Burbank (Los Angeles). Decades after the program began, society is still adapting to the ruined environment but, for the first time, there is hope for a real chance that civilization will recover.

Right-wing extremists have hardened, especially in the face of the waves of …

(em português: sol2070.in/2024/01/the-lost-cause-cory-doctorow )

Right-wing extremists have hardened, especially in the face of the waves of climate refugees, because they are losing influence. Firearms have already become illegal. So they stockpile rifles in basements in preparation for the last resort.

Crypto-bros and billionaires have taken refuge in fleets of yachts, so as not to be subject to the laws of any country. From there, they continue their lobbying to destabilize governments in favour of their corporations, in alliance with the extremists on land.

In addition to this intensely relevant scenario for the present, Cory once again shows his ability to narrate in a captivating way what would normally be dull. Many of the pages describe the reconstruction not only of society, but of houses and buildings, with technical details of the process!

Exemplary socio-political fiction.