Against the Machine: Manifesto (194)

Against the Machine

by Brian Van Norman

Mel Buckworth, dependable family man, loses his manufacturing job through recession. Having lost his sense of purpose his pride sidelines him as he discerns his lack of digital skills so apparent in his children’s generation. He is galled by his daughter Dani’s university friend, Stanley Best, who is about to achieve fame in the fields of nano technology and artificial intelligence. As Mel desperately attempts to find equilibrium he estranges his family, leaves his wife and enlists the help of a greedy grad student. Will Baker teaches Mel the skills he will need to wreak revenge on a system seemingly discarding him. As his aptitudes grow he begins to use the internet, the very thing he despised, as a weapon to inflict his reprisals. Slowly he turns terrorist to deliver his message: that humans will succumb to machines and the social system controlling them. As his acts grow more lethal, Mel knows he must make an indelible declaration. A “manifesto” to be remembered.

400 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2021

About the author

Author of of five novels: The Betrayal Path (Amazon), Immortal Water (Guernica Editions), Against the Machine: Luddites (Guernica Editions), Against the Machine: Manifesto (Guernica Editions) and Against the Machine: Evolution (Guernica Editions).

Once a teacher, theatre director and adjudicator, Brian Van Norman left those worlds to travel with his wife, Susan, and take up writing as a full time pursuit. He has journeyed to every continent and sailed nearly every sea on the planet. His base is Waterloo, Ontario, Canada though he is seldom found there.

Reviews

[John Oughton · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Against the Machine Manifesto, Brian Van Norman interlaces some unexpected threads. Updating the story of the original Luddite, a weaver who led others in smashing the new power looms taking their jobs, Van Norman introduces us to a dysfunctional family in Waterloo, Ontario. His protagonist Mel Buckworth loses his long-time industrial job, while the “winners” seem to be those at the local university riding the new cybernetics waves of AI, the Dark Web, and big data. Van Norman portrays how Mel, a jock who still plays amateur hockey and doesn’t like to overthink things, gradually turns his focus to updating the legacy of the Unabomber. You end up both caring for Mel and his fractured family, and hoping that he doesn’t succeed in his “against the machine” statement. Along the way, Van Norman raises questions about the nature of work, the effects of our wired world on the human psyche, and the ways in which people both love and hurt each other. Well worth reading.

[Deborah L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet another huge round of applause for Brian Van Norman! In his most recent book, Against The Machine: Manifesto, the remarkably talented Mr. Van Norman shares his ingenious vision by defining the progressive debate over the grind of arguably mindless physical labor vs the intellectual skill of contemporary technology.
Although Against The Machine: Manifesto stands strong on its own exceptional merits, it's my belief that to even better absorb Manifesto we can do ourselves a favor by reexamining Van Norman's 'Against The Machine: Luddites' (2020), his first installment in a series of three novels actualizing the Luddite movement beginning with the early 1900's Industrial Revolution. Luddites is rooted in historical fact with Manifesto advancing into imaginative, relatable modern technological perceptions. Van Norman has compelled us to recall the fears of yesterday to face today's fears of the future.
In Manifesto, Van Norman cleverly parallels his character Mel Buckworth's chaotic descent into modern societal disassociation after being shockingly dismissed from his decades long manufacturing job, comparing this with Mel's progenitor, Luddite character, fired British factory worker George Mellor, whose impactful protest of the ramifications generated by the familial threats of 19th century progressive technology can be exemplified by the tenacious Luddite aphorism, "Dropping Enoch's Hammer'.
After having his life's purpose soul-wrenchingly ripped away by being fired, Mel sinks into an alarmingly unbalanced depression. He is antagonized by his misgivings about his estranged daughter, Dani, and her live-in boyfriend, Stanley Best, a brilliant young man on the precipice of acclaimed cutting-edge electronic Nano technology: the antithetical opposite of recently dismissed aging working stiff Mel Buckworth. Further adding to his growing psychosis, Mel's only son, the apathetic overweight college drop-out pizza delivery boy, MJ, is an accomplished computer game addict. Consumed by raw anger and rapidly disconnecting from reality Mel realizes the very solution to his problems lie in embracing the very thing he has fought against: technology.
Mel abandons his family and assimilates the deranged philosophy of Theodore Kaczynski, the 20th century terrorist Unabomber, whose pseudo-Marxist Manifesto places the blame for the breakdown of conventional values on the intensified achievements of technologic and scientific advancements. Mel hires the egocentric computer nerd, Will Baker, to hastily educate him on the computer skills required to accomplish his twisted mission to annihilate what he regards as a -personal- technological war on humanity. The demented irony lies in Buckworth using his paranoid abhorrence of technology to combat the replacement of human workers by electronic components.
With every gripping page, deeper down the demented rabbit hole plummets our torment​ed protagonist, Mel Buckworth. A warning to us all of what might imaginably lurk in the unknown shadows of our future. In the words of Van Norman's character, Will Baker, "We work to create artificial intelligence when we don't even know the extent of our own."

[David Menear · Rating 5 out of 5]

Find here, in the pages of ‘Manifesto’ the struggle of man against machine against man. The past raging against the present will surely define the future.

Van Norman's ‘Manifesto’ is so richly dense and detailed with all of the descriptions so vivid that we are unwittingly taken outside of ourselves and magically transported to a different time and place. A complex and vibrant world of science, pizza, sex and revolution. ‘Manifesto’ X-ray’s the broken bones of the past and aims a powerful telescope at what’s to come. If this is the work of a wonderful writer...Van Norman is definitely doing his job.

[Howard Pell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mel Buckworth works a machine. He has for years and he is good at it. So are the people he works with. The trouble is they've all be replaced by robots in a distant factory. Some pick up the pieces and move on. Not Mel. If you can't fight them, join them, isn't for Mel. Instead, he decides to do both.

This is a fascinating look at how one man deals with something we all fear: being replaced by technology.

[John Drudge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love under pressure and the dysfunction of modernity. A tragedy. A manifesto. A complex depiction of progress and rebellion set against a backdrop of personal, societal, and familial disintegration. Visionaries and Luddites grace the pages of Brian Van Norman’s insightful new book. A poignant and timely commentary on our times that is well worth the read.

[Nancy Silcox · Rating 4 out of 5]

An inspired concept by author Brian Van Norman. Take his fascinating and insightful study of the Luddite movement of 19th century England: Against the Machine: Luddites and relocate the revolution to contemporary Canada in his sequel Against the Machine: Manifesto. Computers against the common man. A battle for survival.

[Lianne McLean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crisply-drawn characters in a deeply compelling story. This is the kind of novel that sticks in your brain well after you have finished reading it. Wonderful!

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another terrific book by Mr Van Norman!

[Georgia Coon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A big tribute to the author, who has laid out the events in a very fascinating way. The action happens practically on every page.