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Zed
Self-anointed guru of the Digital Age, Guy Matthias, CEO of Beetle, has become one of the world's most powerful and influential figures. Untaxed and ungoverned, his trans-Atlantic company essentially operates beyond the control of Governments or the law.
But trouble is never far away, and for Guy a perfect storm is brewing: his wife wants to leave him, fed up with his serial infidelities; malfunctioning Beetle software has led to some unfortunate deaths which are proving hard to cover up; his longed for deal with China is proving troublingly elusive and, among other things, the mystery hacker, Gogol, is on his trail.
With the clock ticking- Guy, his aide Douglas Varley, Britain's flailing female PM, conflicted national security agent Eloise Jayne, depressed journalist David Strachey, and Gogol, whoever that may be - the question is becoming ever more pressing, how do you live in reality when nobody knows anything, and all knowledge, all certainty, is partly or entirely fake?
But trouble is never far away, and for Guy a perfect storm is brewing: his wife wants to leave him, fed up with his serial infidelities; malfunctioning Beetle software has led to some unfortunate deaths which are proving hard to cover up; his longed for deal with China is proving troublingly elusive and, among other things, the mystery hacker, Gogol, is on his trail.
With the clock ticking- Guy, his aide Douglas Varley, Britain's flailing female PM, conflicted national security agent Eloise Jayne, depressed journalist David Strachey, and Gogol, whoever that may be - the question is becoming ever more pressing, how do you live in reality when nobody knows anything, and all knowledge, all certainty, is partly or entirely fake?
367 pages, Paperback
First published July 2, 2019
140 people are currently reading
6493 people want to read
About the author
Joanna Kavenna
19 books156 followersJoanna Kavenna is a prize-winning British novelist and travel writer.
Kavenna spent her childhood in Suffolk and the Midlands as well as various other parts of Britain. She has also lived in the United States, France, Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic States.
These travels led to her first book, The Ice Museum, which was published in 2005. It was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award in that year, and the Ondaatje Prize, and the Dolman Best Travel Book Award in 2006. Described by the The New York Review of Books as "illuminating and consequential," it combines history, travel, literary criticism and first-person narrative, as the author journeys through Scotland, Norway, Iceland, the Baltic and Greenland. Along the way, Kavenna investigates various myths and travellers' yarns about the northerly regions, focusing particularly on the ancient Greek story of Thule, the last land in the North. Before The Ice Museum she had written several novels that remain unpublished.
Kavenna has held writing fellowships at St Antony's College, Oxford and St John's College, Cambridge. She is currently the writer-in-residence at St Peter's College, Oxford. Themes of the country versus the city, the relationship between self and place, and the plight of the individual in hyper-capitalist society recur through Kavenna's novels and in some of her journalism.
She has written for The New Yorker, The Huffington Post, The London Review of Books, The Guardian, The Observer, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, among other publications.
Kavenna is now based in the Duddon Valley, Cumbria and has a partner and two young children.
Kavenna spent her childhood in Suffolk and the Midlands as well as various other parts of Britain. She has also lived in the United States, France, Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic States.
These travels led to her first book, The Ice Museum, which was published in 2005. It was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award in that year, and the Ondaatje Prize, and the Dolman Best Travel Book Award in 2006. Described by the The New York Review of Books as "illuminating and consequential," it combines history, travel, literary criticism and first-person narrative, as the author journeys through Scotland, Norway, Iceland, the Baltic and Greenland. Along the way, Kavenna investigates various myths and travellers' yarns about the northerly regions, focusing particularly on the ancient Greek story of Thule, the last land in the North. Before The Ice Museum she had written several novels that remain unpublished.
Kavenna has held writing fellowships at St Antony's College, Oxford and St John's College, Cambridge. She is currently the writer-in-residence at St Peter's College, Oxford. Themes of the country versus the city, the relationship between self and place, and the plight of the individual in hyper-capitalist society recur through Kavenna's novels and in some of her journalism.
She has written for The New Yorker, The Huffington Post, The London Review of Books, The Guardian, The Observer, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, among other publications.
Kavenna is now based in the Duddon Valley, Cumbria and has a partner and two young children.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 217 reviews
July 10, 2019
Joanna Kavenna is becoming one of my favourite writers - her four previous novels (Inglorious, The Birth of Love, Come to the Edge and A Field Guide to Reality) are all intelligent and interesting in different ways, and her writing is often very funny. I must admit that I was a little nervous when I heard that her latest book was a dystopian fiction set in the near future, as this genre is not normally one that appeals to me as a reader. When I was offered a chance to read an uncorrected proof copy by a friendly local bookshop, I couldn't resist it. Kavenna's imaginative vision is impressive, and the book is funny, clever, brilliantly realised and full of interesting philosophical ideas, but never loses track of the human (and often feminine) values at its core.
The Britain of the novel is dominated both socially and politically by Beetle, a mega-corporation that embodies all of the most rapacious features of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft (to name just five). They have monopoly control of almost all aspects of life - their cryptocurrency is the only remaining legal currency, to earn it you need to work for them, and to work for them you need to wear a Beetleband, which monitors everything you do and contains a Veep (or VIPA - very intelligent personal assistant), and they also control the apparatus of state security via their network of security cameras and robotic policemen (ANTs). Each person has an associated life-chain, computed by an algorithm, which predicts all of their important decisions and fates, and the law now makes a prediction of future criminal behaviour an offence in its own right.
The Beetle brand is owned by Guy Matthias, who sees himself as an idealistic visionary, and his project as essentially benevolent. However his personal life is messy - his wife is tired of his philandering and he uses lifechains to model his one night stands with a succession of brilliant young women. His internal communication system is conducted via Boardroom, a virtual reality system in which avatars meet in virtual rooms.
The book is full of dark humour, and Kavenna clearly had great fun inventing the terminology, acronyms and the names of the Veeps, which are full of allusions. The Veeps conversations are also very entertaining, as they often fail to see the sense of a word and spout irrelevant history.
The world of Beetle is disturbed when a man gets drunk and murders his wife and children. This has not been predicted by any of his lifechains, and the event is categorised as a Zed event. His arrest is bungled, resulting in an innocent man being murdered by an ANT, and the consequential chain of chaos threatens to destabilise the company, which effectively declares war on Zed events and creates its own simplified language Bespoke, making it mandatory for all interfaces with Beetle technology and resulting in more comedy of misunderstanding. There is also a human element to the destruction, as a group of maverick scientists succeed in building a new type of supercomputer which can hack Beetle's encryption system, and much of the second half of the book explores the chaos that ensues.
The book is not by any means perfect - there are many ideas at play and some of these require digressive explanations, but I found the whole thing compulsively readable and at times laugh out loud funny, and it certainly made me think about many elements of our society, the forces that control it and what it means to be human. I really hope this book will find a wider readership.
The Britain of the novel is dominated both socially and politically by Beetle, a mega-corporation that embodies all of the most rapacious features of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft (to name just five). They have monopoly control of almost all aspects of life - their cryptocurrency is the only remaining legal currency, to earn it you need to work for them, and to work for them you need to wear a Beetleband, which monitors everything you do and contains a Veep (or VIPA - very intelligent personal assistant), and they also control the apparatus of state security via their network of security cameras and robotic policemen (ANTs). Each person has an associated life-chain, computed by an algorithm, which predicts all of their important decisions and fates, and the law now makes a prediction of future criminal behaviour an offence in its own right.
The Beetle brand is owned by Guy Matthias, who sees himself as an idealistic visionary, and his project as essentially benevolent. However his personal life is messy - his wife is tired of his philandering and he uses lifechains to model his one night stands with a succession of brilliant young women. His internal communication system is conducted via Boardroom, a virtual reality system in which avatars meet in virtual rooms.
The book is full of dark humour, and Kavenna clearly had great fun inventing the terminology, acronyms and the names of the Veeps, which are full of allusions. The Veeps conversations are also very entertaining, as they often fail to see the sense of a word and spout irrelevant history.
The world of Beetle is disturbed when a man gets drunk and murders his wife and children. This has not been predicted by any of his lifechains, and the event is categorised as a Zed event. His arrest is bungled, resulting in an innocent man being murdered by an ANT, and the consequential chain of chaos threatens to destabilise the company, which effectively declares war on Zed events and creates its own simplified language Bespoke, making it mandatory for all interfaces with Beetle technology and resulting in more comedy of misunderstanding. There is also a human element to the destruction, as a group of maverick scientists succeed in building a new type of supercomputer which can hack Beetle's encryption system, and much of the second half of the book explores the chaos that ensues.
The book is not by any means perfect - there are many ideas at play and some of these require digressive explanations, but I found the whole thing compulsively readable and at times laugh out loud funny, and it certainly made me think about many elements of our society, the forces that control it and what it means to be human. I really hope this book will find a wider readership.
July 7, 2019
(3.5, maybe?) It's difficult to rate this. It reminded me most of my experience with Joshua Cohen's Book of Numbers: a book I hated at first, and continued to find frustrating throughout, but ended up loving, and now regard as one of the greatest novels the 21st century has yet produced. (There are also superficial similarities in the books' plots, for example chunks of the story being focused on a powerful tech mogul.) I'm not sure I can quite place Zed in the masterpiece category, but it's far more interesting than a middling star rating might suggest.
Reading between the lines, I think Zed must have been through some serious rewrites. When first announced, it focused on some of the same characters, but was set in 1999 and titled Tomorrow; it's since been significantly pushed back from its original release date of May 2018. Even now, a week before publication, there are noticeable differences between the blurb and the version I read. (For example, two of the characters referenced in the current blurb – the female PM and the hacker named Gogol – are only mentioned a handful of times in the book.) I perhaps ought to add a disclaimer that what I'm reviewing here may not be what appears in print.
With all that out of the way: the version I read is set in the near(ish?) future. Beetle, an enormous corporation whose closest real-world analogue is probably Amazon, dominates technology, employment and justice. The main characters are its CEO, Guy Matthias; his right-hand man, Douglas Varley; their 'Veeps', virtual personal assistants, who are sometimes embodied and sometimes not; Eloise Jayne, a senior anti-terrorism officer; and David Strachey, a newspaper editor. There's also a dissident who goes by many names, but is most often known as Bel Ami. The society these characters inhabit is founded on the idea that technology can reliably predict human behaviour. The plot – such as it is – deals with what becomes of such a society when humans suddenly start being dangerously unpredictable. This collapse is blamed on a factor known as 'Zed'; the term is a stand-in for 'human decoherence'.
It took me perhaps 80 pages to feel I'd made any sort of connection with the narrative. I was going to say that Zed is not an immediately engaging book, but that's not strictly true – it has entertaining details from the start. (The names of the Veeps never failed to raise a smile.) It's the plot that never quite seems to get going. The whole story feels like a tug-of-war: on one side there's a meandering philosophical/satirical account of a bunch of lost, lonely people, and on the other, the sense that someone's been trying their best to mould it into a plot-driven tech thriller.
The result is certainly enjoyable, yet somewhat muddled. This is a book which has clear undercurrents of brilliance, more intellect and imagination than whole swathes of current fiction, but is often sluggish, and mildly unsatisfying as a whole.
I received an advance review copy of Zed from the publisher through NetGalley.
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Reading between the lines, I think Zed must have been through some serious rewrites. When first announced, it focused on some of the same characters, but was set in 1999 and titled Tomorrow; it's since been significantly pushed back from its original release date of May 2018. Even now, a week before publication, there are noticeable differences between the blurb and the version I read. (For example, two of the characters referenced in the current blurb – the female PM and the hacker named Gogol – are only mentioned a handful of times in the book.) I perhaps ought to add a disclaimer that what I'm reviewing here may not be what appears in print.
With all that out of the way: the version I read is set in the near(ish?) future. Beetle, an enormous corporation whose closest real-world analogue is probably Amazon, dominates technology, employment and justice. The main characters are its CEO, Guy Matthias; his right-hand man, Douglas Varley; their 'Veeps', virtual personal assistants, who are sometimes embodied and sometimes not; Eloise Jayne, a senior anti-terrorism officer; and David Strachey, a newspaper editor. There's also a dissident who goes by many names, but is most often known as Bel Ami. The society these characters inhabit is founded on the idea that technology can reliably predict human behaviour. The plot – such as it is – deals with what becomes of such a society when humans suddenly start being dangerously unpredictable. This collapse is blamed on a factor known as 'Zed'; the term is a stand-in for 'human decoherence'.
It took me perhaps 80 pages to feel I'd made any sort of connection with the narrative. I was going to say that Zed is not an immediately engaging book, but that's not strictly true – it has entertaining details from the start. (The names of the Veeps never failed to raise a smile.) It's the plot that never quite seems to get going. The whole story feels like a tug-of-war: on one side there's a meandering philosophical/satirical account of a bunch of lost, lonely people, and on the other, the sense that someone's been trying their best to mould it into a plot-driven tech thriller.
The result is certainly enjoyable, yet somewhat muddled. This is a book which has clear undercurrents of brilliance, more intellect and imagination than whole swathes of current fiction, but is often sluggish, and mildly unsatisfying as a whole.
I received an advance review copy of Zed from the publisher through NetGalley.
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July 6, 2019
Dammit! Tricked by cover porn. Look at that cover, it is gorgeous!
It has a very intriguing premise, but was let down by the execution. It reads like an early draft. A few more rounds of revising and editing could elevate this story into a masterpiece. I did read an early copy so hopefully some of the issues I had with it were resolved before release.
It is a satirical look at determinism vs free will in the digital age and tech giants profiting from the subjection of humanity. In the not too distant future, societies are surreptitiously controlled by a monopoly of tech giants whose tech and AI are based on the theory: humans have free will but they are predictable. It is a precursor to an Orwellian society as people still have a choice to opt into the Predictive Lifechain, but if they don't they are manipulated or coerced into it or shunned by society as there is no data to verify they are a trustworthy citizen. Beetle is the largest and most influential of these mega-corps, and its tech is deeply ingrained in society. Guy Matthias, a philanthropist and CEO of Beetle, is an odious vile man who publicly believes the use of his deterministic AI platform to control the population creates a safe and stable utopia. However, privately, it is a tool for him to avoid responsibility and accountability for his and the company's actions, further his political agendas and petty vendettas against anyone who disagrees with him, and mine for successful hookups.
This one was a struggle to finish. Initially the balance between the world building and plot was off with paragraphs of info-dumps unexpectedly popping up. While the plot improved and was interesting, there are too many ideas crammed in and it becomes a muddled incoherent mess ... and that is before it introduces the Bespoke Beetlespeak language. Often it felt like it was written by a robot with the info-dumps being contrary and contradictory, for example:
Ended up skim reading the last few chapters. It was like the author didn't know how to wrap up the story after the climax.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.
It has a very intriguing premise, but was let down by the execution. It reads like an early draft. A few more rounds of revising and editing could elevate this story into a masterpiece. I did read an early copy so hopefully some of the issues I had with it were resolved before release.
It is a satirical look at determinism vs free will in the digital age and tech giants profiting from the subjection of humanity. In the not too distant future, societies are surreptitiously controlled by a monopoly of tech giants whose tech and AI are based on the theory: humans have free will but they are predictable. It is a precursor to an Orwellian society as people still have a choice to opt into the Predictive Lifechain, but if they don't they are manipulated or coerced into it or shunned by society as there is no data to verify they are a trustworthy citizen. Beetle is the largest and most influential of these mega-corps, and its tech is deeply ingrained in society. Guy Matthias, a philanthropist and CEO of Beetle, is an odious vile man who publicly believes the use of his deterministic AI platform to control the population creates a safe and stable utopia. However, privately, it is a tool for him to avoid responsibility and accountability for his and the company's actions, further his political agendas and petty vendettas against anyone who disagrees with him, and mine for successful hookups.
This one was a struggle to finish. Initially the balance between the world building and plot was off with paragraphs of info-dumps unexpectedly popping up. While the plot improved and was interesting, there are too many ideas crammed in and it becomes a muddled incoherent mess ... and that is before it introduces the Bespoke Beetlespeak language. Often it felt like it was written by a robot with the info-dumps being contrary and contradictory, for example:
"These tiny things are called qubits. If it helps, then think of them as imaginary spheres. If it doesn't help, then don't. A qubit is not what we imagine and yet it is. It is anything we would like, and yet all things at the same time. This makes it an improbably flexible basis for computing."
"Nothing you are told is real. Remember this, until we tell you that something you are being told is real. Actually, the thing we are telling you, that nothing you are told is real, is actually real. That thing is real, about nothing being real. Just that thing though and nothing else. Is that clear?"
Ended up skim reading the last few chapters. It was like the author didn't know how to wrap up the story after the climax.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.
September 30, 2019
This was a really frustrating book for me to read. I think the theme and issues are important, but there were several aspects of both the style and the plot that made it fall flat.
In terms of the style, this was a bad mix of scifi and literary fiction. I love both genres, so I was really excited for this and it didn't meet my expectations. It was bad scifi (way too many info dumps that led to an excess of telling an not showing) and I found the style and characters abysmal. At points it seemed allegorical and dreamy, but she clearly wanted us to care about the characters. And although she clearly wanted us to care about the characters, they were all incredibly shallowly drawn and oddly prone to fall in love with the central trickster figure.
In terms of the plot, I think the author was going for a modern 1984, where instead of Orwell's political techno-fascistic dystopia, she presented a softer, corporate dystopia, where people are nudged and influenced and governments are captured and tech manipulated to promote corporate goals. Fair enough - that's happening right now, and she did a great job of showing what a horror that society/our society is (although the comparison to China were a little too "hit the reader over the head").
But the details were maddening.
She made good points about nudges and libertarian paternalism (who gets to decide which way to nudge people?) but nudges don't nearly have the effect that she portrays them to have, and that reduces the power of her clarion call.
Second, I can't for the life of me understand why a tech company would want to take over police and justice functions from a government. Why would Google/Facebook want to be responsible for the liability of autonomous robots with guns and police power? What's in it for them to take over criminal justice and put at risk their core businesses?
Finally, and most annoying, the central conceit of the book was that "Zed" puts a spanner in the works of "Beetle's" lifechain predictive models that are supposed to perfectly predict the future behaviors of all citizens. And the techno gurus and data scientists are all astounded that their models have predictive error - that people sometimes suddenly do random things. Which is preposterous. Measuring and understanding predictive error is core to building a model! I can understand government and non-data corporate officials not understand how models fail, but portraying statisticians and data scientists as flummoxed by a model's error is just silly.
It's entirely possible I've missed something major with her style, but on the whole, I wanted better.
*Read an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*
In terms of the style, this was a bad mix of scifi and literary fiction. I love both genres, so I was really excited for this and it didn't meet my expectations. It was bad scifi (way too many info dumps that led to an excess of telling an not showing) and I found the style and characters abysmal. At points it seemed allegorical and dreamy, but she clearly wanted us to care about the characters. And although she clearly wanted us to care about the characters, they were all incredibly shallowly drawn and oddly prone to fall in love with the central trickster figure.
In terms of the plot, I think the author was going for a modern 1984, where instead of Orwell's political techno-fascistic dystopia, she presented a softer, corporate dystopia, where people are nudged and influenced and governments are captured and tech manipulated to promote corporate goals. Fair enough - that's happening right now, and she did a great job of showing what a horror that society/our society is (although the comparison to China were a little too "hit the reader over the head").
But the details were maddening.
She made good points about nudges and libertarian paternalism (who gets to decide which way to nudge people?) but nudges don't nearly have the effect that she portrays them to have, and that reduces the power of her clarion call.
Second, I can't for the life of me understand why a tech company would want to take over police and justice functions from a government. Why would Google/Facebook want to be responsible for the liability of autonomous robots with guns and police power? What's in it for them to take over criminal justice and put at risk their core businesses?
Finally, and most annoying, the central conceit of the book was that "Zed" puts a spanner in the works of "Beetle's" lifechain predictive models that are supposed to perfectly predict the future behaviors of all citizens. And the techno gurus and data scientists are all astounded that their models have predictive error - that people sometimes suddenly do random things. Which is preposterous. Measuring and understanding predictive error is core to building a model! I can understand government and non-data corporate officials not understand how models fail, but portraying statisticians and data scientists as flummoxed by a model's error is just silly.
It's entirely possible I've missed something major with her style, but on the whole, I wanted better.
*Read an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*
June 28, 2019
Joanna Kavenna’s Zed is a pitch-dark comedy about an Orwellian future where Big Brother is not only watching but controls every aspect of society. Imagine if Google merged with the NSA, CIA, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple, as well as owned almost every media channel and newspaper in the country. This is Beetle. Everything is constantly filmed, everyone is forced to wear a smartwatch that kept telling you what to do, your refrigerator tries to control what you eat, and personal assistants called Veeps–an A.I. comparable to a super-advanced Alexa--monitors you and reports everything to Beetle. The dominant form of money is a cryptocurrency created and maintained by Beetle, and around 90% of the population works for the company, or a subsidiary of it. If something negative were to befall the company, then the public would never hear about it. Why? Well, it would be a matter of national security, as the issue would have to be first treated as a potential terrorist threat. And the good of society must come first, of course! Keep in mind, there’s freedom of choice. This is a free society, after all. No one is forced use Beetle’s technology. It’s just that they would be labeled unverified, so they wouldn’t have access to any Beetle jobs. Or transportation. Or money. But its their choice!
Nightmarish, right? That’s not the worst part. The company has developed something called a lifechain, which is series of algorithms that predicts all possibilities of what a person might do on any given day. Probabilities are calculated with these lifechains and they are so accurate that Beetle has been able to influence the government to enact a law to “pre-arrest” someone before they commit a crime. The lifechain says they’re going to, so why wait until they do it? This saves everyone lots of time and grief! (This theme also appears in Philip K Dick’s short story, “Minority Report.”) Beetle has also invented ANT’s, which are headless droids, armed with guns, who are perfectly programmed to arrest and secure their targets, and in no way can anything go wrong, since lifechains and Beetle’s AI are perfect. What a perfect society! Guy Matthias, the head of Beetle, just keeps making society better and better! Citizen’s faces have become completely blank over the years so as not to express any kind of feeling in front of cameras or machines, and Guy is so proud that citizens are now able to live in a society without offending anyone!
But, what’s this? Something starts to go wrong. The lifechain seems to have some errors. People commit horrible crimes without the lifechain predicting them. ANT’s start shooting innocents without provocation. Since the AI’s and lifechains are perfectly programmed, then it all must be attributed to human error, of course. Despite Beetle’s efforts, this error gap between perfection and reality starts to widen. This gap is called Zed, named after the last letter of the alphabet, representing all things that don’t quite fit within every paradigm. Undefinable, unquantifiable things, things that shouldn’t be. And Zed keeps getting bigger.
Kavenna’s wry wit shines throughout the story; the humor is both sharp and depressing as it feels like some form of this future isn’t far off from becoming a reality. We view this society through the lens of several different characters: the head of Beetle, the nervous lackey, a tech-hating employee who sees through all the bullshit, a top newspaper reporter, a protesting citizen, and various A.I. Veeps. One of the most humorous and depressingly real scenarios is the adoption of something called Bespoke. Guy Matthias, the head of Beetle, was once part of a conversation where someone much smarter than him was using words that he didn’t understand. In response, he now wants to make communication simple enough for everyone to understand, so he invents a system that dumbs down vocabulary into fewer phrases to make it easier for everyone to communicate. It’s hilarious and frightening and hits too close for comfort.
Zed is a satirical comedy of errors, hilarious and poignant and horrifyingly relevant. It is an extreme example of the direction our larger companies, government, and privacy laws are headed, and if left unchecked, it could lead to some form what this book portrays. Even if you just take this story at face value, it is still an entertaining, intelligent, and thoughtful read.
ARC via NetGalley. Zed is being published by Doubleday Books and will be released on January 14, 2020.
8.0 / 10
Nightmarish, right? That’s not the worst part. The company has developed something called a lifechain, which is series of algorithms that predicts all possibilities of what a person might do on any given day. Probabilities are calculated with these lifechains and they are so accurate that Beetle has been able to influence the government to enact a law to “pre-arrest” someone before they commit a crime. The lifechain says they’re going to, so why wait until they do it? This saves everyone lots of time and grief! (This theme also appears in Philip K Dick’s short story, “Minority Report.”) Beetle has also invented ANT’s, which are headless droids, armed with guns, who are perfectly programmed to arrest and secure their targets, and in no way can anything go wrong, since lifechains and Beetle’s AI are perfect. What a perfect society! Guy Matthias, the head of Beetle, just keeps making society better and better! Citizen’s faces have become completely blank over the years so as not to express any kind of feeling in front of cameras or machines, and Guy is so proud that citizens are now able to live in a society without offending anyone!
But, what’s this? Something starts to go wrong. The lifechain seems to have some errors. People commit horrible crimes without the lifechain predicting them. ANT’s start shooting innocents without provocation. Since the AI’s and lifechains are perfectly programmed, then it all must be attributed to human error, of course. Despite Beetle’s efforts, this error gap between perfection and reality starts to widen. This gap is called Zed, named after the last letter of the alphabet, representing all things that don’t quite fit within every paradigm. Undefinable, unquantifiable things, things that shouldn’t be. And Zed keeps getting bigger.
Kavenna’s wry wit shines throughout the story; the humor is both sharp and depressing as it feels like some form of this future isn’t far off from becoming a reality. We view this society through the lens of several different characters: the head of Beetle, the nervous lackey, a tech-hating employee who sees through all the bullshit, a top newspaper reporter, a protesting citizen, and various A.I. Veeps. One of the most humorous and depressingly real scenarios is the adoption of something called Bespoke. Guy Matthias, the head of Beetle, was once part of a conversation where someone much smarter than him was using words that he didn’t understand. In response, he now wants to make communication simple enough for everyone to understand, so he invents a system that dumbs down vocabulary into fewer phrases to make it easier for everyone to communicate. It’s hilarious and frightening and hits too close for comfort.
Zed is a satirical comedy of errors, hilarious and poignant and horrifyingly relevant. It is an extreme example of the direction our larger companies, government, and privacy laws are headed, and if left unchecked, it could lead to some form what this book portrays. Even if you just take this story at face value, it is still an entertaining, intelligent, and thoughtful read.
ARC via NetGalley. Zed is being published by Doubleday Books and will be released on January 14, 2020.
8.0 / 10
July 30, 2025
I was warned by another reader about the “cover porn” factor with this book. I willfully ignored that warning, and ... I read a pretty bad book. I’ve noticed that some other reviews here, even with 3 or 4 stars, have a “trying to be nice” tone. In line with my blunt and honest style, I’m gonna say that Zed has some real sparks of genius but, overall, it lacks a solid infrastructure and it doesn’t work.
Douglas Varley, an employee of a tech super-company called Beetle (a metaphorical Google or Amazon) is woken up by his Alexa-like “Very Intelligent Personal Assistant”, which he has named Scrace Dickens. Scrace informs him of an urgent situation that needs his attention, and a self-driving Beetle car called a Custodian is soon on its way.
Varley has been woken early because a fellow employee, George Mann, has suffocated and stabbed his wife and two sons, then disappeared. Varley’s expertise is in the “lifechain”, a Beetle program of algorithms with the goal to predict everyone’s future behavior (like in Minority Report), and Mann seems to have broken their futurology. Nobody expected it, and therefore it is a problem. It is a “Zed” event: the unpredictable within a system of prediction.
The head of the company is an adulterous egomaniac called Guy Matthias, and not even his own software has the capacity to predict how erratic he will become over the course of the novel. Guy is obsessed with wealth, his ex-wife, immortality and his concept of “Real Virtuality”. The other main character is police officer Eloise Jayne, who is tasked with solving the reason for the murder, rather than finding the murderer.
Et cetera.
Zed presents a lot of reflections on syntax, language, grammar and meaning - far more of them than what I felt would be enough.
These reflections are spot on in their relevance and acuity. However, what is missing underneath them is a well-structured and functioning novel.
The first 3 chapters have real greatness in them and in their potential to lead to a strong novel, but then it all falls apart like a house of cards, under the weight of endless wanderings about language and the concept of ZED, an interesting idea which soon becomes a dead horse that the author keeps kicking without mercy.
The rest of the book sounds to me like someone found the first 3 chapters written by a much better writer, and riffed for another 21 chapters on the same concepts and ideas, incredibly managing to write 21 more chapters without adding anything new or original.
Only repetitions and aimless ruminations about the handful of ideas contained in the first 3 chapters.
All in all, I would summarize the flaws of this work as follows:
1) all the sparks, futuristic ideas and concepts are exhausted in the first few chapters;
2) too many messy and rambling chapters. An overall lack of direction, despite the fact that typically a murder at the beginning helps a novel to self-propel.
3) a sense of humor that I cannot see too many people enjoying: the kind where the person telling the joke is the only one laughing. During the endlessly frustrating human-to-A.I. dialogues (a point in themselves, of course, but not enjoyable to me), or during the repetitive bits of narration, I could sense the author feeling like she was writing something hilariously ironic or sarcastic, while I didn’t find any of it funny at all.
Possibly, that’s because I’ve been reading a lot of SF in my life , so I had already heard about talking fridges and AI gadgets in hundreds of stories before, while the author seems to be at her first foray into the genre, and therefore she presents these trite ideas with the enthusiasm of someone who’s just found out about them, and once she has introduced them in the story, unfortunately she doesn’t let go.
For this reason, I think Zed might be better classified as “avant-garde” rather than science fiction. And for me, that’s not a good thing. Despite being a completely different book, it reminded me of “The road” by Cormac McCarthy, for the literary approach to science fiction - a combination that I’ve NEVER seen work.
Kudos to the cover art designer. That cover is a bloody work of genius.
Douglas Varley, an employee of a tech super-company called Beetle (a metaphorical Google or Amazon) is woken up by his Alexa-like “Very Intelligent Personal Assistant”, which he has named Scrace Dickens. Scrace informs him of an urgent situation that needs his attention, and a self-driving Beetle car called a Custodian is soon on its way.
Varley has been woken early because a fellow employee, George Mann, has suffocated and stabbed his wife and two sons, then disappeared. Varley’s expertise is in the “lifechain”, a Beetle program of algorithms with the goal to predict everyone’s future behavior (like in Minority Report), and Mann seems to have broken their futurology. Nobody expected it, and therefore it is a problem. It is a “Zed” event: the unpredictable within a system of prediction.
The head of the company is an adulterous egomaniac called Guy Matthias, and not even his own software has the capacity to predict how erratic he will become over the course of the novel. Guy is obsessed with wealth, his ex-wife, immortality and his concept of “Real Virtuality”. The other main character is police officer Eloise Jayne, who is tasked with solving the reason for the murder, rather than finding the murderer.
Et cetera.
Zed presents a lot of reflections on syntax, language, grammar and meaning - far more of them than what I felt would be enough.
These reflections are spot on in their relevance and acuity. However, what is missing underneath them is a well-structured and functioning novel.
The first 3 chapters have real greatness in them and in their potential to lead to a strong novel, but then it all falls apart like a house of cards, under the weight of endless wanderings about language and the concept of ZED, an interesting idea which soon becomes a dead horse that the author keeps kicking without mercy.
The rest of the book sounds to me like someone found the first 3 chapters written by a much better writer, and riffed for another 21 chapters on the same concepts and ideas, incredibly managing to write 21 more chapters without adding anything new or original.
Only repetitions and aimless ruminations about the handful of ideas contained in the first 3 chapters.
All in all, I would summarize the flaws of this work as follows:
1) all the sparks, futuristic ideas and concepts are exhausted in the first few chapters;
2) too many messy and rambling chapters. An overall lack of direction, despite the fact that typically a murder at the beginning helps a novel to self-propel.
3) a sense of humor that I cannot see too many people enjoying: the kind where the person telling the joke is the only one laughing. During the endlessly frustrating human-to-A.I. dialogues (a point in themselves, of course, but not enjoyable to me), or during the repetitive bits of narration, I could sense the author feeling like she was writing something hilariously ironic or sarcastic, while I didn’t find any of it funny at all.
Possibly, that’s because I’ve been reading a lot of SF in my life , so I had already heard about talking fridges and AI gadgets in hundreds of stories before, while the author seems to be at her first foray into the genre, and therefore she presents these trite ideas with the enthusiasm of someone who’s just found out about them, and once she has introduced them in the story, unfortunately she doesn’t let go.
For this reason, I think Zed might be better classified as “avant-garde” rather than science fiction. And for me, that’s not a good thing. Despite being a completely different book, it reminded me of “The road” by Cormac McCarthy, for the literary approach to science fiction - a combination that I’ve NEVER seen work.
Kudos to the cover art designer. That cover is a bloody work of genius.
did-not-finish
April 22, 202020/4/20
Looking back, I wasn't taking with the story, because I felt that the message/commentary was louder than the actual story.
28/2/20
Had to put this one down for now, there seems to be a lot of commentary here on society that I'm not grasping too well.
30/11/19
Thank you to Doubleday for gifting me a copy of Zed.
You can find me on
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Looking back, I wasn't taking with the story, because I felt that the message/commentary was louder than the actual story.
28/2/20
Had to put this one down for now, there seems to be a lot of commentary here on society that I'm not grasping too well.
30/11/19
Thank you to Doubleday for gifting me a copy of Zed.
You can find me on
Youtube | Instagram | Twitter | Tumblr | Website
July 24, 2019
It started well, a great concept and very witty. I want to know what the ending is, but I just don't want to read it any more. It seems to be going nowhere slowly.
March 3, 2020
Kavenna is an established writer, but she is new to me. I saw the description and—okay, yes, the cover—and I knew I had to read it. Thanks go to Doubleday and Net Galley for the review copy. This book is for sale now.
At the outset this story is electrifying. It’s set in future Earth in what was once London. Beetle is an all-powerful company that governs both business and government; it resembles Future Amazon more than a little. Its employees have Real Life selves, and they have virtual selves that make it possible for them to attend meetings without physically being there. They have BeetleBands that measure their respiration, pulse, perspiration and other physical functions, and those bands are supposed to stay on:
“The Custodians Program tracked people from the moment they woke (having registered the quality of their sleep, the duration), through their breakfast (registering what they ate, the quality of their food), through the moment they dressed, and if they showered and cleaned their teeth properly, if they took their DNA toothbrush test, what time they left the house, whether they were cordial to their door, whether they told it to fucking open up and stop talking to them, whether they arrived at work on time, how many cups of coffee they drank during the course of an average day, how many times they became agitated, how many times they did their breathing relaxation exercises, if they went to the pub after work and what they hell they did if they didn’t go to the pub, how late they went home, if they became agitated, angry, ill, drunk, idle at any point during any day, ever.”
Of course, it is possible to avoid the entire Beetle system, but there’s almost nothing that someone that is off the grid can do for a living; these people scuttle about in abandoned buildings, living miserably impoverished, private lives.
Those in high positions of responsibility have Veeps, which are virtual assistants that run on artificial intelligence. There are few human cops out there because those jobs are done by ANTS—Anti-Terrorism Droids—and these in turn follow the protocol, which says they should shoot at their own discretion. And all of these things lead up to the murder of Lionel Bigman, who bears an unfortunate resemblance in both body and name to George Mann, who has just cut the throats of everyone in his family. The ANTS find Bigman and kill him.
The aftermath features the sort of government whitewash and cover-up that every reader must recognize. The error was caused, say the higher-ups, by two factors: one was Mary Bigman, the uncooperative widow of Lionel who demands answers and is therefore conveniently scapegoated; and Zed, the term for chaos and error within the system. And Zed, unfortunately, is growing and creating more errors which must also be swept under the virtual carpet.
Those dealing with this situation are Guy Matthias, the big boss at Beetle; Eloise Jayne, the security chief who’s being investigated for saving the life of a future criminal that the ANTS had been preparing to shoot; Douglas Varley, a Beetle board member; and David Strachey, a journalist torn between his paramount duty to inform the public, and his self-interest that suggests he shouldn’t rock the boat.
Once the parameters of this book are defined, I am excited. The book could be the bastard antecedent of some combination of Huxley, Rand, Vonnegut and Orwell. The possibilities! But alas, though the premise is outstanding, the execution is lacking. I have gone over it multiple times trying to figure out what went wrong and what could fix it, and I am baffled. All I can say is that by the thirty percent mark, though a major character is running for her very life, the inner monologue drones until I am ready to hurl myself into the path of the ANTS just to end it. All of the fun stuff has been offered up already, leaving us to slog our way out of it. How could a story so darkly hilarious and so well-conceived turn so abstruse and deadly dull?
Nevertheless, I would read Kavenna again in a heartbeat. Someone this smart will surely write more books that work better than this one. But as for you, read this one free or cheap if you read it at all.
At the outset this story is electrifying. It’s set in future Earth in what was once London. Beetle is an all-powerful company that governs both business and government; it resembles Future Amazon more than a little. Its employees have Real Life selves, and they have virtual selves that make it possible for them to attend meetings without physically being there. They have BeetleBands that measure their respiration, pulse, perspiration and other physical functions, and those bands are supposed to stay on:
“The Custodians Program tracked people from the moment they woke (having registered the quality of their sleep, the duration), through their breakfast (registering what they ate, the quality of their food), through the moment they dressed, and if they showered and cleaned their teeth properly, if they took their DNA toothbrush test, what time they left the house, whether they were cordial to their door, whether they told it to fucking open up and stop talking to them, whether they arrived at work on time, how many cups of coffee they drank during the course of an average day, how many times they became agitated, how many times they did their breathing relaxation exercises, if they went to the pub after work and what they hell they did if they didn’t go to the pub, how late they went home, if they became agitated, angry, ill, drunk, idle at any point during any day, ever.”
Of course, it is possible to avoid the entire Beetle system, but there’s almost nothing that someone that is off the grid can do for a living; these people scuttle about in abandoned buildings, living miserably impoverished, private lives.
Those in high positions of responsibility have Veeps, which are virtual assistants that run on artificial intelligence. There are few human cops out there because those jobs are done by ANTS—Anti-Terrorism Droids—and these in turn follow the protocol, which says they should shoot at their own discretion. And all of these things lead up to the murder of Lionel Bigman, who bears an unfortunate resemblance in both body and name to George Mann, who has just cut the throats of everyone in his family. The ANTS find Bigman and kill him.
The aftermath features the sort of government whitewash and cover-up that every reader must recognize. The error was caused, say the higher-ups, by two factors: one was Mary Bigman, the uncooperative widow of Lionel who demands answers and is therefore conveniently scapegoated; and Zed, the term for chaos and error within the system. And Zed, unfortunately, is growing and creating more errors which must also be swept under the virtual carpet.
Those dealing with this situation are Guy Matthias, the big boss at Beetle; Eloise Jayne, the security chief who’s being investigated for saving the life of a future criminal that the ANTS had been preparing to shoot; Douglas Varley, a Beetle board member; and David Strachey, a journalist torn between his paramount duty to inform the public, and his self-interest that suggests he shouldn’t rock the boat.
Once the parameters of this book are defined, I am excited. The book could be the bastard antecedent of some combination of Huxley, Rand, Vonnegut and Orwell. The possibilities! But alas, though the premise is outstanding, the execution is lacking. I have gone over it multiple times trying to figure out what went wrong and what could fix it, and I am baffled. All I can say is that by the thirty percent mark, though a major character is running for her very life, the inner monologue drones until I am ready to hurl myself into the path of the ANTS just to end it. All of the fun stuff has been offered up already, leaving us to slog our way out of it. How could a story so darkly hilarious and so well-conceived turn so abstruse and deadly dull?
Nevertheless, I would read Kavenna again in a heartbeat. Someone this smart will surely write more books that work better than this one. But as for you, read this one free or cheap if you read it at all.
January 26, 2020
What a crazy fun ride: both incredibly smart and uncannily funny. The story reads like a Douglas Adams novel in terms of humor, but it's a wry satirical take on the very real dangers of giving monopolies and the government way too much power, while the public ends up receiving less and less accountability. The algorithm is the theme of this year in fiction. There is a lot of dystopian lit warning us that we are being manipulated by algorithms, and if we don't stop the trend now, we may not be able to. I adore smart + funny. This author seems to have a complete working understanding of social sciences, political science, bio-tech, philosophy, economics, and marketing. I've never seen such competence across so many arenas. And she also has a deft hand with references to poetry and classic literature.
Her style, of revealing truths in nesting eggs, or through the slight variations on a repeated phrase, may be irritating to some, but I found the tactic hilarious and resonating. This is a very timely, and a timeless warning about trying to control the existence of variability.
Her style, of revealing truths in nesting eggs, or through the slight variations on a repeated phrase, may be irritating to some, but I found the tactic hilarious and resonating. This is a very timely, and a timeless warning about trying to control the existence of variability.
October 14, 2019
I reserved ‘Zed’ at the library when it was still on order, so it retains that divine New Book Smell. I was very excited to read it, as Kavenna’s A Field Guide to Reality was unexpectedly wonderful and ‘Zed’ appeared to be a zeitgeist novel about surveillance capitalism. And indeed, that is what it is. The contrast with A Field Guide to Reality is so strong that I’m rather surprised they’re by the same author. Whereas A Field Guide to Reality had a dreamlike, whimsical atmosphere, ‘Zed’ has a distinctively bleak and deadpan narrative voice. Although both are very well executed, I found A Field Guide to Reality more emotionally satisfying. The appeal of ‘Zed’ is more on the intellectual side, although I greatly appreciated the dark humour. The plot centres upon Beetle, which is essentially google five years from now. In near-future London, everyone wears BeetleBands that tell them to calm down, owns fridges that nag them to eat better, and uses Beetle’s cryptocurrency. Most unsettling of all, policing has been outsourced to Beetle algorithms and ANTs (Anti-Terror Droids). Of course, Beetle continues to espouse choice, freedom, etc, etc. The cast includes the extremely narcissistic CEO of Beetle, several of his underlings, and a few people who are trying to cause disruption. The title refers to an error term in the predictions made by Beetle. The ‘Zed’ unknown error triggers outbreaks of chaos and undermines Beetle’s reliability.
Of the uncanny technologies mentioned in the book, I found ‘Bespeaking’ the most interesting. This is an extrapolation of that gmail feature that tells you how to respond to an email. (I hate that and have switched it off - which you can do now, although when first introduced this was not the case!) When videochatting, Beetle’s ‘Bespeak’ feature essentially dumbs down what you’re saying into what it thinks you meant. Automatic newspeak for the 21st century, in the name of clarity and efficiency. The problems that this causes for Guy, the CEO of Beetle, are very funny:
I also found it very amusing when the AI personal assistants, all of whom have Dickensian names, are afflicted by Zed and start mocking humanity in a peculiarly existential manner. By contrast, the sections concerning an automated justice system in which people are to blame for being shot by robots were rather chilling. The court scenes have a distinct whiff of Kafka:
Thus ‘Zed’ is a rather effective dark comedy of monopoly surveillance technology. I liked the little detail of the Beetle logo slowly metamorphosizing on the chapter title pages. The business about quantum computing, however, did not work as well. What held the book together so neatly was dialogue and narrative voice. Appropriately enough, the characters were largely ciphers. I found the ending rather less memorable and interesting than what had come before, Nonetheless, ‘Zed’ is the best satire of big tech that I’ve come across. It barely has to exaggerate and does so just enough to be both funny and alarming.
Of the uncanny technologies mentioned in the book, I found ‘Bespeaking’ the most interesting. This is an extrapolation of that gmail feature that tells you how to respond to an email. (I hate that and have switched it off - which you can do now, although when first introduced this was not the case!) When videochatting, Beetle’s ‘Bespeak’ feature essentially dumbs down what you’re saying into what it thinks you meant. Automatic newspeak for the 21st century, in the name of clarity and efficiency. The problems that this causes for Guy, the CEO of Beetle, are very funny:
"We need to stop humanity making so many errors,” he said, the next time he spoke to Guy.
“The Real Douglas Varley, when you are Bespoken I not understand you,” said Guy. “You need to make your input more clear otherwise your output is unclear.”
“Am I being translated into Bespoke?”
“Of course! Deity!”
“My input is clear, I think,” said the Real Douglas Varley. “Maybe Bespoke needs adjusting.”
“I need you to tell me what is happening. Or you will lose your job. It’s very easy.”
But it wasn’t easy!
[...]
“Deity! I’m ending the call! I’m extremely angry with you. This is totally not good, at all!”
“Yes of course.”
“Swearing Deity! Penis!”
I also found it very amusing when the AI personal assistants, all of whom have Dickensian names, are afflicted by Zed and start mocking humanity in a peculiarly existential manner. By contrast, the sections concerning an automated justice system in which people are to blame for being shot by robots were rather chilling. The court scenes have a distinct whiff of Kafka:
"What about Lionel Bigman?” said Laura Adebayo.
“In the case of the tragic suicide by droid of Lionel Bigman, I am afraid there was nothing we could do,” said Varley.
“How did he commit suicide exactly?”
“His behaviour was suicidal. All the available footage has corroborated this.”
“Which we can’t see, because of the New Official Secrets Act,” said Laura Adebayo.
“Beetle is not responsible for legislation in our country,” said Dougas Varley.
“Are you sure?” said Laura Adebayo.
“Objection!” said Ted Henderson, again.
“Objection sustained,” said the judge.
Thus ‘Zed’ is a rather effective dark comedy of monopoly surveillance technology. I liked the little detail of the Beetle logo slowly metamorphosizing on the chapter title pages. The business about quantum computing, however, did not work as well. What held the book together so neatly was dialogue and narrative voice. Appropriately enough, the characters were largely ciphers. I found the ending rather less memorable and interesting than what had come before, Nonetheless, ‘Zed’ is the best satire of big tech that I’ve come across. It barely has to exaggerate and does so just enough to be both funny and alarming.
December 2, 2019
3.75⭐️s rounded up to 4. I honestly don’t even know how to begin to review this book. A work of dystopian fiction, Zed is quite funny, more than a bit sad, like “aww... bless their hearts” sad (& for those of you who don’t speak southern that means: those poor dumb/otherwise impaired people),not need a box of tissues sad, slightly terrifying and crazy.
In the very near future, Beetle is the huge tech company that runs the world. Literally. It’s the NSA, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc., etc., all rolled into one & on steroids. People drive beetle made smart cars, actually the smart cars drive the people. Beetle-bits are the only accepted currency, everyone has their own Beetle personal assistant that can come in both real-fake bodies and a disembodied voice on their Beetle-bands (which everyone has to wear on their wrists in order to do anything in society, like work & buy things), appliances and everything else. Beetle has cameras on every street, only to keep people safe (wink wink), and in every room in your house (again, solely for safety). Your Beetle fridge tells you if you’re eating right and that: ‘maybe you’d like a yogurt instead of that bacon for breakfast’, to keep you as healthy as you can be. Beetle owns the media, but there is no bias and reporters, or robo-hacks, can still write whatever they want (wink, wink). Thanks to Beetle, the world is full of cities and copies of cities and copies of copies of cities that are all smart and PERFECT (wink, wink)! Beetle does your “lifechain”where you see exactly what decisions you will make and exactly what happens to you when you make them. That way the authorities can arrest people for future crimes so nothing bad ever happens anymore! Obviously, Beetle is all about the health and happiness of the people, nothing more or less (okay, do I need to keep saying: ‘wink wink?’ Or do you get it?)! Then Zed happens. What is Zed you ask? That is a great question. Zed is bad. That we know. Zed events cause the lifechains to go wonky as things happen that weren’t predicted. People do things for unknown reasons, the personal assistants go just as crazy as real people and all because of Zed.
Like I said, this book was quite funny and also a bit scary as some of it hit a bit close to home in the age of technology we live in, which I’m pretty sure was the point (I catch on fast) but surely this could and would never happen... wink wink?? It was a bit like reading the thoughts of someone high on shrooms while riding ‘ it’s a small world’ at times, but it was meant to be that way, so even those slightly confusing, all over the place parts were funny and easy to get through. This was my first Joanna Kavenna book but it won’t be my last. I won this book in a goodreads giveaway.
In the very near future, Beetle is the huge tech company that runs the world. Literally. It’s the NSA, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc., etc., all rolled into one & on steroids. People drive beetle made smart cars, actually the smart cars drive the people. Beetle-bits are the only accepted currency, everyone has their own Beetle personal assistant that can come in both real-fake bodies and a disembodied voice on their Beetle-bands (which everyone has to wear on their wrists in order to do anything in society, like work & buy things), appliances and everything else. Beetle has cameras on every street, only to keep people safe (wink wink), and in every room in your house (again, solely for safety). Your Beetle fridge tells you if you’re eating right and that: ‘maybe you’d like a yogurt instead of that bacon for breakfast’, to keep you as healthy as you can be. Beetle owns the media, but there is no bias and reporters, or robo-hacks, can still write whatever they want (wink, wink). Thanks to Beetle, the world is full of cities and copies of cities and copies of copies of cities that are all smart and PERFECT (wink, wink)! Beetle does your “lifechain”where you see exactly what decisions you will make and exactly what happens to you when you make them. That way the authorities can arrest people for future crimes so nothing bad ever happens anymore! Obviously, Beetle is all about the health and happiness of the people, nothing more or less (okay, do I need to keep saying: ‘wink wink?’ Or do you get it?)! Then Zed happens. What is Zed you ask? That is a great question. Zed is bad. That we know. Zed events cause the lifechains to go wonky as things happen that weren’t predicted. People do things for unknown reasons, the personal assistants go just as crazy as real people and all because of Zed.
Like I said, this book was quite funny and also a bit scary as some of it hit a bit close to home in the age of technology we live in, which I’m pretty sure was the point (I catch on fast) but surely this could and would never happen... wink wink?? It was a bit like reading the thoughts of someone high on shrooms while riding ‘ it’s a small world’ at times, but it was meant to be that way, so even those slightly confusing, all over the place parts were funny and easy to get through. This was my first Joanna Kavenna book but it won’t be my last. I won this book in a goodreads giveaway.
September 18, 2019
This book was an incredibly hard one with which to keep slogging on. It has an interesting premise that draws on today's issues and takes the strength of the IT megacorporations and extends that to a point at which society is over-run by algorithms and machines. I was reminded of the Terminator films where the machines take over, of Philip K Dick's Minority Report in which people can be prosecuted for what they will do in future but haven't yet done, and of course the Google - Amazon - Apple superpowers and their Chinese equivalents are seldom far from the front of mind.
The problem is that a clever idea will only take you so far if you've got an absurd rambling plot that rarely makes much sense and completely relies on the author being able to change the rules as she goes along. The mysterious 'Zed' stands for all the uncontrollable, unpredictable things that can't be managed by systems alone. In short, it's chaos.
The book takes some interesting ideas and then rambles about all over the show without really developing anything that you could really call plot or characters. I didn't care about any of the people in this book - except perhaps the victims of Zed, Sally Bigman in particular. The rest were hard to like since you barely know if they're real or virtual characters. The blurring of reality and fantasy is so entrenched that nothing really feels like it matters at all.
As for the ending......it really did nothing at all for me, other than making me wish I'd followed my instincts and given up a LOT earlier when my instincts told me this just wasn't worth the time and effort.
The problem is that a clever idea will only take you so far if you've got an absurd rambling plot that rarely makes much sense and completely relies on the author being able to change the rules as she goes along. The mysterious 'Zed' stands for all the uncontrollable, unpredictable things that can't be managed by systems alone. In short, it's chaos.
The book takes some interesting ideas and then rambles about all over the show without really developing anything that you could really call plot or characters. I didn't care about any of the people in this book - except perhaps the victims of Zed, Sally Bigman in particular. The rest were hard to like since you barely know if they're real or virtual characters. The blurring of reality and fantasy is so entrenched that nothing really feels like it matters at all.
As for the ending......it really did nothing at all for me, other than making me wish I'd followed my instincts and given up a LOT earlier when my instincts told me this just wasn't worth the time and effort.
July 20, 2019
I enjoyed some of this book and some of it I found a slog. The story begins well as a black and bleak comedy then loses its way, suddenly ups a gear and is almost exciting before simply fading away. The premise isn't particularly new - Big Bad Business and Big Bad Government collude in high-tech monitoring of everyone and everything for the usual ends of money power and control. It sometimes reminded me of Alena Graedon's The Word Exchange except that had heart - here the primary characters felt for the most part just plot devices. The only one who seemed real and written with some feeling was Guy Matthias, particularly his Damascene moment about his estranged wife and family.
As I mentioned, it all fizzles out rather unsatisfactorily but in and amongst there is some good writing and I will explore more of Ms Kavenna's work.
As I mentioned, it all fizzles out rather unsatisfactorily but in and amongst there is some good writing and I will explore more of Ms Kavenna's work.
January 13, 2020
I really really wanted to like this book. I tried really hard to like this book. I attempted to get through it so many times. The concept is one that grabbed me. The world building was great. It was too jumbled. Conversations between characters were too repetitive and circular. I appreciate what the author was going for but it didn't work for me. Unlike yhencharacters in the book, I can opt out. And I did.
I received a Advance Reader Copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. All opinions my own.
I received a Advance Reader Copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. All opinions my own.
January 11, 2020
I received a copy of this from Netgalley and the Publisher in exchange for my open and honest review.
Joanna Kavenna’s highly unusual and unpredictable novel, Zed is not what you expect. Going into the story, and looking at the gorgeous cover, you would think that what you are in for is a deep science fiction story. While reading it, your perception of the story changes to confusion. Then you realize what this is, is a stylistic darkly humorous techno-thriller that is more about how digitally enthralled we are with technology and human nature, then the ins and outs of the technology itself.
The story starts with Douglas Varley, a technologist for a large company called Beetle. Beetle reminds me of what Amazon could be in 10 years and no laws. Beetle has integrated itself into every facet of human life. From the regulation of physiological things, “You might need to do some deep breathing Eloise. Your pulse is elevated, and something is burning.” To society, people are paid in beetle credits. Predictive algorithms predict crimes before they happen, programs speak for you, and humanity is quantified down to data points and numbers. Other characters, company owner Guy Matthias, and police officer Eloise Jayne also have interesting parts that balance out the weird dynamics of such a dizzying computer-driven world. All of these data points and prediction, belie the one unquantifiable behavior humans have, choice. The choice humans have to behave unpredictably.
This story is written in almost a frenetic style. It bounces from one character to the next, then through technical jargon and back again. It is spastic and, at times, challenging to follow. Stylistically, the idea behind the novel is excellent. Technology has infused our existence. We talk to our phones more than we talk to people. We talk about idealistic human behavior but often lack context. We live in soundbites in this digital world. But because of the frenzied pace of the story and dialog, I had a difficult time making connections with the story. Instead of caring about any of the characters, It all blended in a freewheeling cacophony of digital noise. In hindsight, this may have been the point all along from author Joanna Kavenna. But for me, as a reader, it felt very flat.
If you would like to read more of my reviews or various other bookish things please come by my blog
at https://beforewegoblog.com/
Joanna Kavenna’s highly unusual and unpredictable novel, Zed is not what you expect. Going into the story, and looking at the gorgeous cover, you would think that what you are in for is a deep science fiction story. While reading it, your perception of the story changes to confusion. Then you realize what this is, is a stylistic darkly humorous techno-thriller that is more about how digitally enthralled we are with technology and human nature, then the ins and outs of the technology itself.
The story starts with Douglas Varley, a technologist for a large company called Beetle. Beetle reminds me of what Amazon could be in 10 years and no laws. Beetle has integrated itself into every facet of human life. From the regulation of physiological things, “You might need to do some deep breathing Eloise. Your pulse is elevated, and something is burning.” To society, people are paid in beetle credits. Predictive algorithms predict crimes before they happen, programs speak for you, and humanity is quantified down to data points and numbers. Other characters, company owner Guy Matthias, and police officer Eloise Jayne also have interesting parts that balance out the weird dynamics of such a dizzying computer-driven world. All of these data points and prediction, belie the one unquantifiable behavior humans have, choice. The choice humans have to behave unpredictably.
This story is written in almost a frenetic style. It bounces from one character to the next, then through technical jargon and back again. It is spastic and, at times, challenging to follow. Stylistically, the idea behind the novel is excellent. Technology has infused our existence. We talk to our phones more than we talk to people. We talk about idealistic human behavior but often lack context. We live in soundbites in this digital world. But because of the frenzied pace of the story and dialog, I had a difficult time making connections with the story. Instead of caring about any of the characters, It all blended in a freewheeling cacophony of digital noise. In hindsight, this may have been the point all along from author Joanna Kavenna. But for me, as a reader, it felt very flat.
If you would like to read more of my reviews or various other bookish things please come by my blog
at https://beforewegoblog.com/
October 4, 2020
For most of the time I was reading Zed, I was drawn in by what Joanna Kavenna was doing. After all, here was a satirical novel that seemed ready to land some punches, and the scarcity of any contemporary authors pulling this off made it seem as though Zed might be a rare treat.
The story of Zed is set in a world that very much resembles our own, except that it is effectively run by a single behemoth of a company named Beetle - imagine Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google all rolled into one. Kavenna gives Beetle even more power over the people, with algorithms to predict arrest people for future crimes, blanket surveillance of the population, "inspiration" (i.e. mind control) to persuade those in power, and complete control over the media.
Each of the main characters has a BeetleWatch that monitors their health, and an electronic personal assistant called a Veep. There is Douglas Varley (Veep: Scrace Dickens), an executive at Beetle who is in charge of the lifeline algorithms; Guy Matthias (Veep: Sarah Coates), the head of Beetle; his wife, Elska; David Strachey, the editor of The Times; Wiltshire Jones, a robot reporter; Frannie Amarensekera, a hacker whose skilled impressed Matthias into hiring her; and Eloise Jayne, the good-guy cop.
The "Zed" in the title basically refers to the principle of chaos and indeterminism. It first manifests when a guy named George Mann unexpectedly leaves work, gets very drunk, and murders his wife and two boys: none of this behavior had been predicted. Things are made worse when Beetle's bots go to arrest George Mann and end up killing Lionel Bigman in a case of mistaken identity.
Beetle is thrown into a crisis by the number of "zed" events that start to multiply as the narrative unfolds. Add to this picture the mysterious figure of Bel Ami, who sports multiple identities and is working with a group of hackers to subvert the Beetle system. The hackers somehow use water droplets to achieve this feat.
Zed is a novel that I really wanted to like, but as the story unfolded I became increasingly frustrated. First, there is far too much repetition - yes, it is amusing to be told, for instance, to point out the disparity between free choice and the obvious manipulations that Beetle undertakes, but the point is made over and over until the joke becomes stale.
The second problem I had with the novel is that, at a certain point, it was clear that Kavenna did not really know what to do with her story and her characters. What was going on, for instance, with Douglas Varley suddenly falling in love with Frannie? It simply made no sense, and did not move the narrative along at all. The water droplet hacking subplot was ridiculous. The conclusion was deeply unsatisfactory.
Despite showing glimpses of promise, Zed really failed to deliver as either a compelling or a critique of modern, technological society. As a novel, Zed takes a few confident steps, but ultimately fails to come close to the standard set by, for instance, Hari Kunzru's brilliant Transmission.
The story of Zed is set in a world that very much resembles our own, except that it is effectively run by a single behemoth of a company named Beetle - imagine Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google all rolled into one. Kavenna gives Beetle even more power over the people, with algorithms to predict arrest people for future crimes, blanket surveillance of the population, "inspiration" (i.e. mind control) to persuade those in power, and complete control over the media.
Each of the main characters has a BeetleWatch that monitors their health, and an electronic personal assistant called a Veep. There is Douglas Varley (Veep: Scrace Dickens), an executive at Beetle who is in charge of the lifeline algorithms; Guy Matthias (Veep: Sarah Coates), the head of Beetle; his wife, Elska; David Strachey, the editor of The Times; Wiltshire Jones, a robot reporter; Frannie Amarensekera, a hacker whose skilled impressed Matthias into hiring her; and Eloise Jayne, the good-guy cop.
The "Zed" in the title basically refers to the principle of chaos and indeterminism. It first manifests when a guy named George Mann unexpectedly leaves work, gets very drunk, and murders his wife and two boys: none of this behavior had been predicted. Things are made worse when Beetle's bots go to arrest George Mann and end up killing Lionel Bigman in a case of mistaken identity.
Beetle is thrown into a crisis by the number of "zed" events that start to multiply as the narrative unfolds. Add to this picture the mysterious figure of Bel Ami, who sports multiple identities and is working with a group of hackers to subvert the Beetle system. The hackers somehow use water droplets to achieve this feat.
Zed is a novel that I really wanted to like, but as the story unfolded I became increasingly frustrated. First, there is far too much repetition - yes, it is amusing to be told, for instance, to point out the disparity between free choice and the obvious manipulations that Beetle undertakes, but the point is made over and over until the joke becomes stale.
The second problem I had with the novel is that, at a certain point, it was clear that Kavenna did not really know what to do with her story and her characters. What was going on, for instance, with Douglas Varley suddenly falling in love with Frannie? It simply made no sense, and did not move the narrative along at all. The water droplet hacking subplot was ridiculous. The conclusion was deeply unsatisfactory.
Despite showing glimpses of promise, Zed really failed to deliver as either a compelling or a critique of modern, technological society. As a novel, Zed takes a few confident steps, but ultimately fails to come close to the standard set by, for instance, Hari Kunzru's brilliant Transmission.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 7, 2020
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and it is still sitting with me weeks later. I work in the world of social media and technology, so this really sang to my ongoing worries about the privacy we are giving up in sacrifice for convenience. It's a fresh take on the dystopia that was first imagined in Brave New World and 1984 but with the much more real possibilities that companies such as Google and Facebook bring to the table today, stripping us of privacy, bombarding us with propaganda, all with the promise of making our lives better. There were some bumps in the road that a little more time on the editing table might have smoothed out, but overall I thought it was a fantastic story, one that definitely captured (uneasily so) my imagination.
December 3, 2020
Had to stop reading this one. It’s very clever but 40% in and I feel like it’s all cleverness and hardly any plot, and what plot there is, is kind of hard to follow. Maybe she will eventually get to a clearer plot and action but it feels like too much a confusing slog to begin with.
Giving it two stars for cleverness and commentary on a dystopian tech future — part of me feels like I am probably missing out by not finishing but it is just too painfully slow and confusing a read so far.
Giving it two stars for cleverness and commentary on a dystopian tech future — part of me feels like I am probably missing out by not finishing but it is just too painfully slow and confusing a read so far.
February 2, 2020
Me: Here are quotations! Actually! from! this! dystopian! future! book!:
"Cool"! "Glitch! " "You are a prick!" "That's not the point!" "Why do birds sing?"* "Oh, it was appalling!" Me: Yes, appalling! 1 star! At one point, terms are messed up within a fictional language. "U.S. President" turns into "rabid lunatic"...as in..."Rabid Lunatic Calls for Monumental Waffle and Further Bullshit to End Appalling Outbreak of Freedom." Okay, 1 more star! *Actual title of great cd by the Violent Femmes.
"Cool"! "Glitch! " "You are a prick!" "That's not the point!" "Why do birds sing?"* "Oh, it was appalling!" Me: Yes, appalling! 1 star! At one point, terms are messed up within a fictional language. "U.S. President" turns into "rabid lunatic"...as in..."Rabid Lunatic Calls for Monumental Waffle and Further Bullshit to End Appalling Outbreak of Freedom." Okay, 1 more star! *Actual title of great cd by the Violent Femmes.
January 10, 2020
Loved the concept, and so relevant to now. The dangers of trusting big tech and data without question, ignoring that everything has a political agenda - someone has to make the AI intelligent and whats their agenda. And to an extent I appreciated the convoluted and confusing text, reminded me of catch-22.
But...
I didn't really have any interest in any of the characters till about half way in. About 60% in it finally feels like there's an actually story and not just a prolonged description of the beetle world. It finally feels like some things about to happen and then it all judders to an end with one of the most pretentious nothing endings I've read in a while. What a start to the year.
But...
I didn't really have any interest in any of the characters till about half way in. About 60% in it finally feels like there's an actually story and not just a prolonged description of the beetle world. It finally feels like some things about to happen and then it all judders to an end with one of the most pretentious nothing endings I've read in a while. What a start to the year.
October 20, 2020
This book has too much of too little. I enjoyed the witty word play most, but Ms Kavenna has lost control. Do we really have to read "The Real Douglas Varley" 159 times? Four years ago reading it once would have been funny enough. Of course there is also content. The premise -- what if the future becomes knowable and commercialized -- is not new. Here it is well embedded in contemporary technology and popular scientific speculation, to the extent that the book feels like a gold mine for conspiracists. Posting excerpts from this book at the appropriate places could start a mass movement (if it hasn't already).
Then, of course we have action. The predictable future is undermined by Zed, the name for events that shouldn't happen. The book begins with an example, a triple murder committed without apparent motive. Not every killing without motive is worth an existential discourse, and becomes suspicious when the descriptions of the act itself are all too gleeful.
There is a lot of fluff, most of it satirical, which is good, because it is not substantial enough for anything else. When the company that is in possession of our future keeps insisting that they believe in free will, this is to make us smile, not think. I might have lost some of my humor over this book.
Then, of course we have action. The predictable future is undermined by Zed, the name for events that shouldn't happen. The book begins with an example, a triple murder committed without apparent motive. Not every killing without motive is worth an existential discourse, and becomes suspicious when the descriptions of the act itself are all too gleeful.
There is a lot of fluff, most of it satirical, which is good, because it is not substantial enough for anything else. When the company that is in possession of our future keeps insisting that they believe in free will, this is to make us smile, not think. I might have lost some of my humor over this book.
December 17, 2023
Not quite sure what that ending was, but it freaked me out.
This is a classic Goodreads 3.11. Uneven, but at times completely brilliant, mis-marketed by miles...I feel as if the elevator pitch was as simple as, "it's kind of like Egger's The Circle" it would have attracted more readers? I dunno, 875 ratings and <200 reviews seems criminal for something as consistently intelligent as Zed.
This is a classic Goodreads 3.11. Uneven, but at times completely brilliant, mis-marketed by miles...I feel as if the elevator pitch was as simple as, "it's kind of like Egger's The Circle" it would have attracted more readers? I dunno, 875 ratings and <200 reviews seems criminal for something as consistently intelligent as Zed.
July 28, 2021
I just loved this book. I very rarely laugh out loud when reading, but this book is fucking hilarious.
June 4, 2025
Great read. The worst thing I could say about this is you can't write a book and call it dystopian fiction if that's where we already are. The most outlandish fictions can't even keep up with the truth of our reality.
December 27, 2020
Hello, I think Zed is pretty good. I'd give it a higher score, but not 4 stars.
I m grateful it turned out to be something I liked. I did a filtered search through my Large Print Library (LPL), who offer books that typically range from derivative to reactionary and occasionally offer something in the Exceedingly Dull department. However, Zed turned out to be an exception in this typical experience.
It's somewhere between a Burn After Reading and Brazil, with faint bits of their sort of absurd humor set in a hellish bureaucratic surveillance state meets technocracy. Maybe in a hypothetical team of William Gibson giving technical advice to Douglas Adams in a darker mood than usual. Which is to say is all elements I know and in some cases enjoy.
Sometimes there's a theme in cyberpunk and speculative fiction that Order is Actually Very Bad, and there's this brave anti hero who shows that "safety" is at the cost of living freely. Typically this character seems extremely antisocial, but is set up in the narrative as to be lauded for their brave stance. It feels like a weak argument, sneering at society as something for the weak. Zed doesn't quite roll out in the same fashion. The tale tracks individuals failing to see how they guide society to becoming as monstrous as they smugly tell themselves they aren't.
The tone is adequately detached from the horror , which kept me at a distance that didn't make the experience too real. Truly, everything in this fiction is happening in terms of corporate overreach and the security state having completely wiped-out civil liberties. The author shows talent to weave a narrative of these dire conditions lightly enough for me to appreciate the themes without it being too stressful. There was brief recognition of tech's indifference to worsening poverty, which is not addressed nearly as much as the invasion of privacy, quashing dissent and commuting immoral and unethical acts to justify itself. It would have helped to show more of this. I guess Sorry to Bother You captured of that too, maybe watch that first?
Suffice to say, an enjoyable read, with some deeper themes. Of course I named a good deal of other works and authors who did similar things, which should be enjoyed too. I'd give it 3 1/2 Gold Beetles Found Under a Bridge.
I m grateful it turned out to be something I liked. I did a filtered search through my Large Print Library (LPL), who offer books that typically range from derivative to reactionary and occasionally offer something in the Exceedingly Dull department. However, Zed turned out to be an exception in this typical experience.
It's somewhere between a Burn After Reading and Brazil, with faint bits of their sort of absurd humor set in a hellish bureaucratic surveillance state meets technocracy. Maybe in a hypothetical team of William Gibson giving technical advice to Douglas Adams in a darker mood than usual. Which is to say is all elements I know and in some cases enjoy.
Sometimes there's a theme in cyberpunk and speculative fiction that Order is Actually Very Bad, and there's this brave anti hero who shows that "safety" is at the cost of living freely. Typically this character seems extremely antisocial, but is set up in the narrative as to be lauded for their brave stance. It feels like a weak argument, sneering at society as something for the weak. Zed doesn't quite roll out in the same fashion. The tale tracks individuals failing to see how they guide society to becoming as monstrous as they smugly tell themselves they aren't.
The tone is adequately detached from the horror , which kept me at a distance that didn't make the experience too real. Truly, everything in this fiction is happening in terms of corporate overreach and the security state having completely wiped-out civil liberties. The author shows talent to weave a narrative of these dire conditions lightly enough for me to appreciate the themes without it being too stressful. There was brief recognition of tech's indifference to worsening poverty, which is not addressed nearly as much as the invasion of privacy, quashing dissent and commuting immoral and unethical acts to justify itself. It would have helped to show more of this. I guess Sorry to Bother You captured of that too, maybe watch that first?
Suffice to say, an enjoyable read, with some deeper themes. Of course I named a good deal of other works and authors who did similar things, which should be enjoyed too. I'd give it 3 1/2 Gold Beetles Found Under a Bridge.
August 29, 2020
Interesting premise. Predictable and lazy execution, which was so disappointing given the timeliness posed by the issues raised in the book (eg, AI/ML and the manipulation of behavior for people’s “own good”, vs the concept of “free will”). Very one dimensional characters - the AI itself was often more interesting than the human beings. Flabby plot leading to a very draggy ending.
February 13, 2020
This was brilliant, utterly bizarre, hilarious to the point of making me laugh out loud, a bit too recognizable for comfort at times, and incredibly well-written. I loved every bit of it, except the ending, which fits the novel perfectly but was extremely sad.
July 26, 2019
I’m sat here writing this review on my notebook PC while my smartphone randomly provides new music based on previous choices I’ve made. Meanwhile, my smartwatch feeds me a constant stream of various e-mails and alerts. Technology is just super convenient isn’t it? That idea that everything you could ever want, or need, is available at the touch of a button is a real lifesaver. If you think about it though, it’s also mildly disturbing. Spotify and Amazon aren’t just giving me what I want anymore, they are telling me what I should want. When you look at it that way, it suddenly becomes a bit more invasive doesn’t. My choices are no longer determined by me.
Zed by Joanna Kavenna, is a wry look at how technology has the ability to help but also frequently hinder when it comes to leading a modern life.
Guy Matthias is a particularly intriguing character. The CEO of Beetle is such a jumble of conflicting emotions, addictions and neuroses that it’s no surprise he craves order in all things. Matthias worships at the altar of technology. In his eyes, it holds the answer to all things. Using his software, Matthias believes every potential action of a human can be predicted, and if it can be predicted, then rules can be imposed. Flawless models of behaviour can be designed, and uncertainty becomes a thing of the past. It all sounds terribly sensible and within reasonable parameters but, of course, humans are far too chaotic for that sort structure to be implemented easily. Life is gloriously messy, bringing order from chaos is not an easy thing for anyone to do.
As Matthias seeks out a sleek, easily manageable answer to his various conundrums, we get to follow various people as they attempt to navigate the pitfalls of this new technological utopia. Can a security officer do her job effectively when partnered with autonomous machines that are supposedly incapable of making mistakes, but frequently do? Is the press still free when every newspaper is owned by the company they may want to investigate? Is it possible to live a life outside the confines of the omnipresent world-spanning conglomerate that is Beetle or is bowing to the corporate machine inevitable? It quickly becomes obvious that every facet of existence has a link to technology in one form or another.
Events spiral further out of control as Matthias becomes more and more desperate to achieve his dreams. He attempts to simplify language replacing multiple words with a single alternative. The subtle nuances of communication may have been removed, but doesn’t that just make everything easier? I’ll give you a quick hint, the answer is a resounding no! Elsewhere, algorithms created at Beetle headquarters, designed by artificial intelligence, are used to offer subtle suggestions and insights into all decisions people make. Before you know it, things are starting to appear far more sinister than they were before. It’s all rather insidious.
I’ll be the first to admit modern life can sometimes feel unnecessarily complicated. We have to wade through such a colossal morass of irrelevant minutiae every day that we never have the time to concentrate on the important details. We spend our time obsessively seeking the best deal on this or the latest version of that. Mass consumerism is the new religion and information drives the world. With each new technological advancement, it seems we willingly give away our freedoms and blindly accept comfy reassurance in return. Ok, I may be ranting a little here, but we’ve already seen the seeds of Beetle-esque changes on the horizon. Insurance companies are pondering the use of smart wearables to determine the best quotes for policies*. Smart fridges are able to re-order your weekly shop, track your calendar and keep an eye on your health. Zed does a great job of tapping into all these fears and following their threads to a logical conclusion.
Joanne Kavenna’s latest novel is a pitch-black satire that unpicks the madness of the modern condition. How can technology and order be the answer to all of our woes when humanity is beautifully erratic and unpredictable even on a good day. I don’t dispute that technology can be life changing in many positive ways, I merely urge caution. The narrative in Zed eloquently illustrates this exact point.
Witty, circular arguments and razor-sharp social commentary delight and inform throughout. This novel highlights, pretty convincingly, that the best way to undermine foolish notions is to eviscerate them in fiction. Humanity is, above all else, nonsensical and Zed quite happily proves that. I always enjoy a book that manages to be both funny and mildly terrifying in the same breath. I can heartily recommend Zed to anyone who has ever pondered where all their data goes when accepting the terms and conditions on a website. I suspect collecting “anonymous” statistics is only the start. Smart, darkly comic and genuinely thoughtful I enjoyed every page.
*I have Google Fit on my watch. I’d imagine it won’t be long until I will have to submit the information it collects for some reason of another.
Zed by Joanna Kavenna, is a wry look at how technology has the ability to help but also frequently hinder when it comes to leading a modern life.
Guy Matthias is a particularly intriguing character. The CEO of Beetle is such a jumble of conflicting emotions, addictions and neuroses that it’s no surprise he craves order in all things. Matthias worships at the altar of technology. In his eyes, it holds the answer to all things. Using his software, Matthias believes every potential action of a human can be predicted, and if it can be predicted, then rules can be imposed. Flawless models of behaviour can be designed, and uncertainty becomes a thing of the past. It all sounds terribly sensible and within reasonable parameters but, of course, humans are far too chaotic for that sort structure to be implemented easily. Life is gloriously messy, bringing order from chaos is not an easy thing for anyone to do.
As Matthias seeks out a sleek, easily manageable answer to his various conundrums, we get to follow various people as they attempt to navigate the pitfalls of this new technological utopia. Can a security officer do her job effectively when partnered with autonomous machines that are supposedly incapable of making mistakes, but frequently do? Is the press still free when every newspaper is owned by the company they may want to investigate? Is it possible to live a life outside the confines of the omnipresent world-spanning conglomerate that is Beetle or is bowing to the corporate machine inevitable? It quickly becomes obvious that every facet of existence has a link to technology in one form or another.
Events spiral further out of control as Matthias becomes more and more desperate to achieve his dreams. He attempts to simplify language replacing multiple words with a single alternative. The subtle nuances of communication may have been removed, but doesn’t that just make everything easier? I’ll give you a quick hint, the answer is a resounding no! Elsewhere, algorithms created at Beetle headquarters, designed by artificial intelligence, are used to offer subtle suggestions and insights into all decisions people make. Before you know it, things are starting to appear far more sinister than they were before. It’s all rather insidious.
I’ll be the first to admit modern life can sometimes feel unnecessarily complicated. We have to wade through such a colossal morass of irrelevant minutiae every day that we never have the time to concentrate on the important details. We spend our time obsessively seeking the best deal on this or the latest version of that. Mass consumerism is the new religion and information drives the world. With each new technological advancement, it seems we willingly give away our freedoms and blindly accept comfy reassurance in return. Ok, I may be ranting a little here, but we’ve already seen the seeds of Beetle-esque changes on the horizon. Insurance companies are pondering the use of smart wearables to determine the best quotes for policies*. Smart fridges are able to re-order your weekly shop, track your calendar and keep an eye on your health. Zed does a great job of tapping into all these fears and following their threads to a logical conclusion.
Joanne Kavenna’s latest novel is a pitch-black satire that unpicks the madness of the modern condition. How can technology and order be the answer to all of our woes when humanity is beautifully erratic and unpredictable even on a good day. I don’t dispute that technology can be life changing in many positive ways, I merely urge caution. The narrative in Zed eloquently illustrates this exact point.
Witty, circular arguments and razor-sharp social commentary delight and inform throughout. This novel highlights, pretty convincingly, that the best way to undermine foolish notions is to eviscerate them in fiction. Humanity is, above all else, nonsensical and Zed quite happily proves that. I always enjoy a book that manages to be both funny and mildly terrifying in the same breath. I can heartily recommend Zed to anyone who has ever pondered where all their data goes when accepting the terms and conditions on a website. I suspect collecting “anonymous” statistics is only the start. Smart, darkly comic and genuinely thoughtful I enjoyed every page.
*I have Google Fit on my watch. I’d imagine it won’t be long until I will have to submit the information it collects for some reason of another.
May 3, 2023
Zed is about the inherit chaos of being human. It focuses on how being monitored, being predicted and being influenced affects us profoundly and deeply. Overall, I was really caught between a 3 star and a 4 star for this novel. While I enjoyed the writing style, poems and other literary flavors of this book, I do agree that the plot took a back burner to some of the concepts (which can be fine). However, I found myself really liking some of the characters and found others really bland. I wanted more scenes for these standouts and I think some of other scenes could have been cut while still getting to the root of the emotional depth with the shallower actors.
____________________________________
Minor Spoilers:
As a sci-fi novel, most of the concepts we have seen before (over monitoring, word/definition culling etc). At first, the idea that each of the AI had individual human names was confusing, then after getting to know each of these AI servants, I really liked how the phones/fridges/VEEPs developed their own personalities based on their human counterparts. (Note: this was not an explicit development in the novel, but it was hinted at).
____________________________________
Major Spoilers:
The madness at the end with Eloise was something I need to sit further with. Her descent into total chaos and her final escape with the help of Bel was fine, but it felt weird and over the top. Maybe we needed more with Eloise. She was one of my favorites and I did want more time spent with her.
____________________________________
Minor Spoilers:
As a sci-fi novel, most of the concepts we have seen before (over monitoring, word/definition culling etc). At first, the idea that each of the AI had individual human names was confusing, then after getting to know each of these AI servants, I really liked how the phones/fridges/VEEPs developed their own personalities based on their human counterparts. (Note: this was not an explicit development in the novel, but it was hinted at).
____________________________________
Major Spoilers:
The madness at the end with Eloise was something I need to sit further with. Her descent into total chaos and her final escape with the help of Bel was fine, but it felt weird and over the top. Maybe we needed more with Eloise. She was one of my favorites and I did want more time spent with her.
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