Beck Garrison lives on a seastead — an archipelago of constructed platforms and old cruise ships, assembled by libertarian separatists a generation ago. She's grown up comfortable and sheltered, but starts doing odd jobs for pocket money.
To her surprise, she finds that she's the only detective that a debt slave can afford to hire to track down the woman's missing sister. When she tackles this investigation, she learns things about life on the other side of the waterline — not to mention about herself and her father — that she did not expect. And that some people will stop at nothing to keep her from talking about . . .
A realistic near future vision, an excellent story
4 stars
An excellent commentary wrapped up in a well crafted story. Naomi Kritzer provides a realistic near future vision of an independant country established by those who feel they are outside of the responsibilities of society. Naomi manages to craft a story in this environment that feels balanced. Beck has only really known the world of this country, so the rules and social norms of this society are presented as normal. When something is wrong through Beck's eyes, we know it's wrong by her standards.
This is a near future story about Beck Garrison, a precocious teenager growing up on a libertarian seastead off the coast of California. Her part-time job is finding things (or people) for others, and this work gets her into things and places she's not supposed to, all while trying to stay out from under the eye of an overbearing father.
It's also got: Reality shows! Unions! (Un)believable backlash against said unions! Shitty controlling parents! Mad scientists!
This book certainly gets at everything you suspect would go wrong with a libertarian seastead. What situations would cause people to flee the United States to go there? What kind of immoral shady behavior would people get up to? What terrible capitalism is everybody living under? What sort of a sham of worker's rights even pretends like it exists here? BUT, if that were all this book were about, it'd be just another …
This is a near future story about Beck Garrison, a precocious teenager growing up on a libertarian seastead off the coast of California. Her part-time job is finding things (or people) for others, and this work gets her into things and places she's not supposed to, all while trying to stay out from under the eye of an overbearing father.
It's also got: Reality shows! Unions! (Un)believable backlash against said unions! Shitty controlling parents! Mad scientists!
This book certainly gets at everything you suspect would go wrong with a libertarian seastead. What situations would cause people to flee the United States to go there? What kind of immoral shady behavior would people get up to? What terrible capitalism is everybody living under? What sort of a sham of worker's rights even pretends like it exists here? BUT, if that were all this book were about, it'd be just another good book in the overflowing "capitalism is bad, actually" pile.
What works in this book especially for me, is that Beck likes the seastead she's grown up on (even as she moans about not getting to ever leave like her friends have). She cares about making it better. People listen to her. She has leverage to make things better, and goes out of her way to help people when she has the power to. I think her care for a place that is both broken and also hers makes the story work; it feels like a metaphor for our own broken and messy places that we still want to try to fix.
