(2023-03-26) Doctorow Silicon Valley Noir

Cory Doctorow: Silicon Valley Noir. Red Team Blues and the Role of Bitterness in Technothrillers.

My next novel is Red Team Blues, an anti-finance finance thriller starring Martin Hench, a high-tech forensic accountant who’s spent 40 years busting Silicon Valley grifters large and small.

At 67, Marty’s seen it all, and while he is full of compassion for the victims of the scams he unwinds, his overwhelming feeling is bitterness.

the third, Picks and Shovels (Jan. 2025) is Marty’s origin story, starting in the early 1980s when Marty drops out of MIT and comes west to San Francisco in the first heroic years of the PC revolution. Marty’s semi-voluntary defenstration from MIT is caused by his fascination with technology, which may seem ironic. But it’s a common tale —filmmakers drop out of film school because they love film, writers drop out of MFAs because they love writing, and technologists drop out of elite engineering programs because they love technology. passion

the people who want to use technology as a source of empowerment, connection, and collective action have lost to our enemies, who want to use technology for surveillance, extraction and control.

When I set out to write a noir series, I went back to the classics, the old favorites that I hadn’t read in decades, writers like Chandler and Hammett.

what I had either missed or forgotten about those books was the bitterness of the noir hero. I remembered their affect as being wry, smart-assed, even dry. But the bitterness surprised me.

they are just smouldering with rage at is the way that the America they fought for has changed. (later detective Moses Wine was smoldering with sadness at the loss of the 60s)

They come back to an America where women, Black and brown people and queers are visible and unashamed of it. They come back to an America where the rich have revealed themselves to be deviants and perverts. The affect of the noir hero is bitterness over progress. (clinger party)

revisiting those noir novels made me realized that those hard-boiled tough-guys I loved were reactionary creeps.

Marty’s not bitter because the Silicon Valley he believed in has been poisoned by marginalized people who love technology as much as he ever did. He’s bitter because the finance bros — always the serpents lurking the technology’s Eden — have won.