Communications Breakdown opens with a typical Strahan introduction: a high-falutin' raison d'etre for the title and theme. I say high-falutin' as, Strahan rarely sticks to theme—which is a good thing. But why then the waffling? Regardless, it sets in place the theme of: “when the future doesn't quite make it to your door”. A recipe for victim narratives? Let's see.
Communications Breakdown opens with “Here Instead of There” by Elizabeth Bear. A gratuitous vignette, it reminds me of a 90s Sterling “story”. About an alternative community of punk rockers floating on a giant metal raft in the sea, they scramble to proverbially batten down the hatches when a hurricane swirls in. On a positive note, it does have nice echoes of our modern gig culture—musically and job-wise. “Moral Hazard” by Cory Doctorow gives homeless people LLCs, then convinces the government to bail them out for a couple thousand per person/business. Potentially the most rose-tinted story ever written, Doctorow knows it, to the point the rest of the story is so candy sweet it makes your teeth hurt. Inane, not even a thought experiment, just a wild idea with woke tropes. Scraping for the good, Doctorow does write short, sharp sentences that snap.
A non-victim story, “Sigh No More” by Ian McDonald tells of an Earth where a solar flare has left electrical and internet grids in their death throes. And yet life goes on. In this case, a group of young creatives attempt to keep theater alive on the dark streets with a generator powered by fuel their attendees have smuggled in plastic bottles. Sort of a mini-Station Eleven, McDonald plays with the value of artistry in a setting strapped for the basics of life.
One of the most immature stories I've read in a long time, “Less Than” by Lavanya Lakshminarayan tells of a gamer girl living in Free India, a country purported to be open to everything. But through her media feeds, a message beyond freedom is subtly being spread (those pesky algorithms), leading to a “climactic moment”. Diction is poor to serviceable in the story. Tension/purpose is minimal. But these are not in themselves the worst. The worst is the audacity to attempt to pull off a conspiracy in such a juvenile manner. A high schooler would/could write the same. After the long history of sf dystopias, such a story in a professionally edited and published anthology is mind-boggling.
Communications Breakdown, at about the halfway mark, pauses for an interview, that of Tim Maughan and Chris Gilliard. In Maughan's introduction, Gilliard is presented as an expert skeptic on AI and facial-recognition software, leading the reader to believe the interview will break down the ways in which this technology may be bad for humanity. Instead what follows is a fair amount of speculation, typically more subjective than objective, interspersed with a lot of fear. I am not blindly pro-tech, but forgive me for expecting a more intellectual, educational discussion on what is an extremely important topic from an expert. I was hoping for BBC level discussion, but got Fox News. I will agree with Gilliard in the sense that, if we don't get this right there may be major consequences for human power structures. But at least back it up with informed facts. There is a paucity of these, which makes the interview feel more paranoid than awareness-raising.
Getting back into fiction, “The Excommunicates” by Ken Macleod takes the prevalence of contemporary disinformation and combines it with a strong liberal political backdrop which allows for a wide variety of... beliefs. It tells of a family whose father uses a loophole in the law to protect himself, but in doing so sacrifices his children's experiences with technology and their love. Told in oscillating parts (past and present), it goes on to show how humans are suckers for communication breakdown/disinformation. Any Trump voters listening? I thought happily-ever-after stories were dead, but in “Noise Cancellation” S.B. Divya proves not. Instead of princes and princesses, however, we have a lesbian couple with a child with special needs. While the special needs fully live up to the anthology's title, the resolution of the challenge it presents to the parents is resolved in a social worker's wet dream—optimistically to say the least.
A stronger thought experiment than Doctorow's, “My City Is Not a Problem by Tim Maughan puts London's economic, infrastructure, and social challenges to an AI for its thoughts (“thoughts”?). While we've yet to see the full potential of AI in reality, this brief story speculates on the nature of its intelligence in making recommendations for the ways we organize the world and society, and what humanity's reaction may/may not be. In what may be the best story in the collection, “Cuttlefish” by Anil Menon is a tight, tight story about a hotel concierge with an unusual guest—not a shape shifter, but a skin-color-changer (think octopus). Using subtly good technique, Menon builds a mystery, then pulls back the curtain on the underlying social commentary. I don't think I agree with the inherent politics, but there is nothing about the story to complain about.
From good execution to poor, “Company Man” by Shiv Ramdas fails to match tone with substance. The story tells of a man who buys a much needed artificial heart on credit, but Ramdas fails to imbue the story with the gravitas needed to make the conclusion effective. The tone is too light. I would also complain that the reader can practically write this story themselves based on the aforementioned premise. There is not really anything here to grab the reader save a weak attempt at sympathy.
Closing the anthology is a novel-sized idea packed into a short story. “At Every Door a Ghost” by Premee Mohamed tells of a big tech company which responds to a massive terrorist attack by converting all the world's IOT gadgets into a massive surveillance system. That not enough, the story centers on a lab scientist who finds her cancer research ironically deemed "insecure" by the new security system and goes about trying to protect it. A ghost of a story (sorry) lurking inside a BIG IDEA, this needed to be at least a novella for the Big Brother portion to be properly internalized. For me this story defines much of the Meh of sf—not terrible but not good.
In the end, Communications Breakdown is an anthology not likely to make a mark. There are one or two stories that can be recommended (“Cuttlefish” by Anil Menon, and maybe “Sigh No More” by Ian McDonald). The remaining selections are mediocre to poor. For those interested, the anthology checks a lot of woke boxes (representation of minorities, non-hetero characters, special needs people, socialist values, etc.). But that doesn't automatically translate to quality fiction, not to mention leads to a collection featuring an extensive amount of victimhood (which, to be fair, was likely brought about by Strahan's theme not the writers themselves). Execution is often lacking, let alone style, which exists only in a couple pieces. I will continue to read Strahan's anthologies for the manner in which they capture the zeitgeist. But if Communications Breakdown is an indication, the zeitgeist is weak at the moment...
The following are the eleven pieces anthologized in Communication Breakdown:
Here Instead of There by Elizabeth Bear
Moral Hazard by Cory Doctorow
Sigh No More by Ian McDonald
Less Than by Lavanya Lakshminarayan
What about Privacy? (Tim Maughan interviewing Chris Gilliard)
The Excommunicates by Ken Macleod
Noise Cancellation by S.B. Divya
My City Is Not a Problem by Tim Maughan
Cuttlefish by Anil Menon
Company Man by Shiv Ramdas
At Every Door a Ghost by Premee Mohamed
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