The Unincorporated Man | ||||||||
Dani Kollin & Eytan Kollin | ||||||||
Tor, 479 pages | ||||||||
|
A review by Greg L. Johnson
Here's the set-up. Justin Cord, a multi-billionaire from our own time, used his wealth to develop a working cryogenic
suspension device. When he is taken ill, he uses the device to freeze himself and is revived three hundred years
later in a world where governments hardly exist and society is run almost entirely by corporations. Even
individuals in this new society are incorporated, and most people spend most of their lives trying to acquire
enough of their own stock to have control over their own economic lives. It's a system that provides basic
health, food, and shelter to nearly all human beings, but to Justin the prospect of being owned by shareholders,
by other people and corporations, smacks of nothing less than slavery. Thus begins a basic conflict in which
Justin seeks to retain his freedom, while the forces of society conspire to force him to become incorporated
just like everyone else.
It's an interesting twist on the one man versus society plot, but it isn't long before problems of both style
and substance start getting in the way of what should be a novel that thrives on the competing ideals of
Justin's past and the new world he now finds himself living in. Let's tackle the stylistic issues first, as
those are the first clues a reader encounters as to the problems with reading The Unincorporated Man.
As you might guess, there are a lot of comparisons made in the novel between society in our own century and
life in the 24th. Fairly early in the narrative, an off-hand reference is made to a President Winfrey, who
was elected on a platform of reparations for the African-American descendants of slaves. Assuming this is
an oblique reference to Oprah Winfrey, it's the kind of statement that would fit right in with a satirical
novel like The Space Merchants, but feels out of place in a supposedly serious novel such as
The Unincorporated Man. It's a minor issue, but it's a crack in the credibility of the world created
in The Unincorporated Man, mostly because it's hard to believe that anyone who has followed U.S.
politics for the last thirty years or so could seriously believe that such an event could actually happen.
Other stylistic issues create bigger problems. Shortly after being revived, Justin Cord is interviewed by
a journalist, at the end of which we are told that his (the journalist's) life will be forever changed by
the actions taken by Justin Cord over the next few hours. The journalist then all but totally disappears
from the story, and we never learn anything about how Cord's actions personally affect him. In addition,
the story suffers from the authors' tendency to over explain things. Almost every line of dialogue by the
major characters is immediately followed by an authorial explanation of the character's motives and true
meaning. The result is to rob much of the narrative of dramatic tension, and takes away exactly the
kind of mystery that many science fiction readers enjoy as a major part of reading a good SF novel. As a
contrast, compare this approach to almost any novel written by Gene Wolfe or C.J. Cherryh, where the lack
of explanation creates tension and intrigue, compelling the reader to focus in on every word in search
of the clues that reveal hidden motives and strategies.
Now, as was stated at the beginning of this review, these are the kinds of problems that are typically
excused in the name of writing a serious novel of ideas. The biggest problem with reading The Unincorporated
Man is that the farther along the reader gets in the novel, the more apparent it becomes that the authors
are not as much interested in presenting competing ideas as they are in presenting their own take on things,
while brushing aside ideas that don't fit the world-view being presented in The Unincorporated Man. Here
are a couple of examples.
First, in the history that leads from our time to the 24th Century of The Unincorporated Man,
world governments collapsed around the end of the 21st Century when a world-wide catastrophe led to the
deaths of nearly two-thirds of the world's population. That allowed corporations to step into the power vacuum
and gain control of society. The question that immediately springs to mind is: Where are the churches? It's
extremely hard to believe that in the near apocalyptic scenario envisioned in The Unincorporated Man
that fundamentalist religions, be they Christian, Muslim, or otherwise would not have sought to expand their
power and influence over the survivors. Yet, in the 24th Century society presented to us in The
Unincorporated Man, organized religion seems to be almost completely non-existent, a situation that,
ironically, given the authors propensity for over-explaining other elements of the story, begs for some
kind of convincing explanation as to exactly how it happened.
Another example appears near the end of the novel. The corporate run society of three hundred years from
now, we are told, is nearly immune from economic recessions, because recessions are caused by an "event
or organization so imposing that it affected all economic institutions at once," and that "there was
only one organization that had the power to do this," and that organization could only be a
government. Yet our own recent experience casts doubt on truth of this proposition. The current economic
crisis arose out of the derivatives market, a practice in which banks and financial institutions
sold shares of risky debts in order to spread the risk around. The derivatives market was, in the United
States, intentionally left free from government regulation as an experiment in the ability of markets
to regulate themselves. The result was a bubble in the housing market as more and more risky loans were
issued. When the housing bubble burst, it threatened to bring the financial institutions holding the
debt down with it. Taxpayers were then told that a company like AIG had to be bailed out with taxpayer
money because it was "too big to fail." If that's not an assertion that the financial institutions stuck
with the bad debt had become so large and influential that their failure would "affect all
economic institutions at once," it's hard to understand what else it could mean. The causes of economic
recessions and depressions is one of the most debated issues in economics and history. The fault
of The Unincorporated Man is not that it adopts a particular school of economic thought, but that
it cheats the discussion not only by ignoring any contradictory facts or opinions, but goes so far as to
assert that as a matter of historical fact no dissenting opinion even exists.
That's a problem that runs throughout The Unincorporated Man, and because of it the book disappoints
in both the quality of its style and world-building technique, and also on the basis of its presentation of
ideas. Science fiction is full of examples of books that are somewhat crudely written, but succeed because of
the fascinating ideas they present. There are also numerous examples of novels that are compelling more for
their prose style and characterization than in their utilization of any new or controversial ideas. The
best science fiction novels, of course, combine both style and ideas into one great story. The
Unincorporated Man, unfortunately, fails on both counts.
Reviewer Greg L Johnson is wondering whether his own personal stock will go up or down after reviewing The Unincorporated Man. Greg's reviews also appear in the The New York Review of Science Fiction. And, for something different, Greg blogs about news and politics relating to outdoors issues and the environment at Thinking Outside. |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
If you find any errors, typos or other stuff worth mentioning,
please send it to editor@sfsite.com.
Copyright © 1996-2014 SF Site All Rights Reserved Worldwide