Have you ever read a book
that made you excited for what the future holds? Did it make you marvel at all of the wondrous
things that could be made reality by the force of imagination and the human
spirit? Did it make you wish the future
would just hurry the hell up and get here already so you could experience the
magic yourself?
Well, Thank You for Your Cooperation isn’t that book.
Welcome to The Bunker. It’s paradise on Earth—or rather Mars, but
who’s counting? It’s a utopia, after
all. Control keeps it that way, distributing
resources, rooting out traitors and social deviants, and making sure that every
citizen’s life is safe, equitable, and hygienic. Control selects your profession, assigns
living quarters, and manages every facet of the bunker—from shooting down
terrorist-launched nuclear warheads, to making the trains run on time. And if the trains don’t run on time, citizen,
please check the train schedule again.
There must have been a schedule change you were unaware of, because
Control is never wrong, and to question Control is an act of treason. You aren’t a traitor, are you?
So work hard, citizen,
knowing that you are contributing to the greatest civilization mankind has ever
known. Eat your government-approved
slop, sleep in your government-approved bunk, and watch your
government-approved programming like “Ten Things I Hate about Treason Hosted by
Van Johnson.” And always, always be on the lookout for treasonous
activity. Traitors are everywhere, and
as a responsible citizen it is your duty to report traitors wherever they are
found. Failure to report treason is
considered treason, and treason of all forms is punishable by immediate
termination. After all, your safety is
of the utmost importance.
The narrator that guides us
through this mucked up (yet hilariously funny) future reality is Terry
Renfield. He runs a crew of rock
breakers in one of the lower-level quarries of Q-sector mining for… well, we’re
really never told. I don’t think Terry
even knows. Suffice to say that he
pounds rocks all day because that’s what he’s been told his job is. Things suddenly turn upside down when one of
the ever-present video screens shows a bit of special breaking news about
“terrorist activity” featuring footage of a man who looks exactly like Terry
running from some government facility as the place explodes in spectacular
fashion. His supervisor suggests that he “take some time off” and then gives
him a package and asks him to deliver it to one of the other sectors. Terry is immediately suspicious. You don’t get to be thirty-something years
old in the Bunker by blindly doing anything anyone tells you—especially when
you’ve never before been asked to do anything similar and you’ve just seen your
face on an episode of “Ten Things I Hate about Treason Hosted by Van Johnson.”
- His girlfriend is a member of The Underground, an
organization of misfits, social deviants, and traitors dedicated to
resisting Control’s… control.
- Control is actually a computer and the Alphas
(those citizens with alpha clearance) are programmers that program said
computer and are all constantly fighting and trying to betray each other
to curry favor with Control and/or scoop up more power for themselves.
- Earth is in fact healing from the global
catastrophe and is populated by more privileged members of society. The truth is held back from the lower
classes “for their own protection.”
- Terry Renfield isn’t Terry Renfield. He’s actually the clone of Terry Renfield
that was created for use in a plot to take down Control, but the real
Terry switched places with the clone at the last minute.
And so Terry (or Clone Terry)
goes along with the little band of conspirators for lack of a better
option. I mean, what is he going to
do? Turn them in and try explaining to Control
why he was keeping company with known terrorists? It’s a good thing he doesn’t, because we
wouldn’t have nearly the amount of satirical fun otherwise. Adam Wasserman (He’s the author. Did I forget to mention that?) has a biting
wit tailor made for a black comedy like Thank
You for Your Cooperation. We’re
treated to satirical scenes and commentary related to bureaucracy, Homeland
Security, television, child-rearing, environmentalism, politics, and socialized…
anything. In doing so, he borrows from a
lot of other classic dystopian works such as Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave
New World, and Soylent Green (to
name a few) and combines them with some of his own ideas to craft a rich and
darkly hilarious world.
Part of what makes the satire
so funny is the fact that much of the world in Thank You for Your Cooperation isn’t that different from our
own. We’ve all bitched and complained
about some of the same things. How many
times have you spent an hour in line at the DMV only to be told, when you
finally get to the front, that the line you want is at the other end of the
office and you’ll need to go through that one, too? Who hasn’t, upon going through security at
the airport, wondered what kind of pervert decided that having naked pictures taken
of you should be a mandatory step in domestic travel? Except in Thank
You for Your Cooperation, it’s all been puffed up and hyper-realized into a
distortion of reality. It makes it
easier to laugh at the sneering fourth grader ground into chunks by a mining
drone, or the TV star dying of radiation poisoning, or any number of the
hundreds of people that bite the dust due to government oversight and political
backbiting. Of course, it helps that
it’s a book and it’s not real, but it doesn’t change the fact that the satire
is, in the words of my favorite English professor, “well taken.” Dystopia is
mostly a serious genre, and these days it seems like there’s no shortage of
dystopian books coming out with tales about hardship, loss, “the endurance of
the human spirit,” and other bullshit buzz phrases. Wasserman’s facetious treatment of the genre
reminded me of the Escape from New York
franchise, which is something sorely needed to balance out the “serious books
are serious” vibe.
What’s the bad part, you
might ask? Well there’s not much, I can
tell you that. The structure of the
story is a little here and there at one point, jumping forward to another
scene, and then backtracking to explain how they all got there. And sometimes there are important details
that come out of nowhere, such as the revelation that Terry is a hacker about ¾
of the way into the book. Wasserman
treats it rather flippantly, with a, “You didn’t know that? Oh well!” sort of attitude. It fits with the overall tone of the book,
though, so it’s forgivable. It still
doesn’t explain why, if Terry is such a good hacker, he didn’t know at least
some of the shit about Mars and Earth and Control before the events of the
story, but never you mind that. Worrying
about those kinds of trivialities is how traitors are born, and you don’t want
to be a traitor, do you? And besides, little
things like that are what gives the book its Hitchhiker’s-Guide-to-the-Galaxy-crushed-under-a-government-issued-boot
feel, so I was able to ignore it for enjoyment’s sake.
Overall, I give Thank You for Your Cooperation four out
of five stars. And if all this talk
about psychotic robots, degenerate traitors, and horrible gruesome death has
piqued your interest, then you’re in luck.
Tomorrow I’ll be hosting Adam (the guy who wrote the book, remember?)
for an interview and giveaway of his
novel. Stay tuned!
I really hate your reviews and by hate I mean love the way you write them I'm just totally jealous. You could make a book about a stick of butter sound fascinating and intellectual. My rambling and oh it's good uber lame, but I want to read this now so a giveaway I will be back for and more fantastic reviews. I love dystopian reads great stuff always nice when a little humor can be thrown in to counter the depressing oh this is exactly how my life is feeling they tend to make a person have.
ReplyDeleteAnd Happy Birthday :):):):):)
No, your interviews are great. You've got a great tone and style, and you have a shit-ton more followers than me. I'm sure my blog turns a lot of people off given that my reviews are so damn long. I've tried to shorten them, but it never seems to work out. Oh well. Is what it is, I guess. At least you seem to like them though. ;)
DeleteAnd thanks for the birthday wishes!
omg no don't shorten they are awesome I do like them very much. I have great tone and style, well shucks if you say so I believe it.
DeletePlease don't shorten them.
DeleteYou know how some authors will tell people "this book just demanded to be longer"? Well my reviews demand to be longer. I tried to shorten them, but I just couldn't. They didn't want to be short, and bitch-slapped me every time I tried. So now I just write my reviews/novels and deal with it. :)
DeleteSounds like another great read! You sure know how to pick them. I will come back later to read the interview.
ReplyDeleteDorothy - The Alaskan Bookie - Squeak
Blog ~ http://alaskanbookie.blogspot.com/
Twitter ~ http://twitter.com/AkChocoholic
Oh ... btw Happy Birthday. Was your birthday on the 13th or 14th?
DeleteThanks! It was the 14th. I'm a flag day baby. :)
DeleteI dig the concept of this book. But then again, anyone who craps out a narrative that comes within spitting distance of a Ray Bradbury idea wins in my books. I'm all over this one! The fact that it takes the piss out of the current trend in dystopian novels only makes me love it all the more. I'm on board!
ReplyDeleteI know, right? I loved that it was a complete reversal of the prevailing trends and--let's face it--I'm a satiric little cuss myself, so the humor sat well with me.
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chenzhen20160428
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The dystopian, cynical future of the Bunker is perfect for Wasserman's brand of acerbic satire. It made me chuckle in ways that reminded me of Terry Pratchett's work, if Sir Terry were a lot angrier about life. I'd definitely recommend this for anybody interested in satirical science fiction, as well as those looking for a good adventure story.
ReplyDeleteMariz
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