Review: The Fortunate Fall

 The Fortunate Fall was ChatGPT Pro's recommendation after I asked it to find similar novels to There is no Antimemetics Division. I got even more excited when I read Jo Walton's introduction, which praised the book claiming that it deserved to be an important book instead of becoming an obscure piece.

At first, the book seemed promising, since it clearly anticipated the rise of the social media influencer (known in the book as a Camera, --- the book's protagonist is Maya), who not only records what she sees but also her feelings and has the skill to imagine scenes on the fly as she watches an event. The camera is assisted by a screener to make her feelings cohere for an audience. 

So far as good. One day, her current screener is replaced by a mysterious new one, whom she tries to reject but seems to have so many super powers and works so hard that she admits that she has value. The rest of the plot then becomes how Maya is manipulated both by her screener but one of her interviewees into revealing a McGuffin and that broadcast is meant to spread brain viruses to the entire population.

From there the entire climax of the book falls apart. Usually when a plot falls apart it's because the author wrote himself/herself into a corner and couldn't figure out how to resolve it. In this case, the author completely abandons any coherence about what the book is about and turns the book into philosophical exposition, backstory about Maya (which is also only semi-coherent) and the book completely falls apart the same way Battlestar Galactica fell apart in its final season.

The book clearly anticipates several trends (it was written in 1996), but to be honest, I think the book fell into obscurity for very good reasons. There's no emotional payoff for reading the book (the ending is a giant mess and none of the characters are likeable), and several ancillary features in the book demonstrate that the book was woke well ahead of its time (the author is now transgender), but that by itself cannot (and did not) save the book.

That's a couple of hours of my life I'll never get back. I guess I've learned that I can't trust ChatGPT's recommendations or even Jo Walton's.