The Lost Cause

by Cory Doctorow

It's thirty years from now and we're making progress, mitigating climate change, slowly but surely. But what about all the angry people who can't let go?

For young Americans a generation from now, climate change isn't controversial, it's just an overwhelming fact of life. But so are the great efforts to contain and mitigate it. Entire cities are being moved inland from the rising seas. Vast clean-energy projects are springing up everywhere. Disaster relief, the mitigation of floods and superstorms, has become a skill for which tens of millions of people are trained every year. The effort is global. It employs everyone who wants to work. Even when national politics oscillates back to right-wing leaders, the momentum is too great; these vast programmes cannot be stopped in their tracks.

But there are still those Americans who cling to their red trucker caps, their grievances, their anger, their nostalgia for the golden age of assault rifles. Their 'alternative' news sources reassure them their resentment is right and pure and 'climate change' is a con.

They're your grandfather, your uncle, your great-aunt. They're not going anywhere. And they're armed to the teeth.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia, Young Adult, Climate Change, Speculative Fiction, Audiobook

368 pages, Hardcover

First published November 14, 2023

About the author

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, and young adult novels like Homeland, Pirate Cinema, and Little Brother and novels for adults like Rapture Of The Nerds and Makers. He is a Fellow for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Asher · Rating 3 out of 5]

There have been a number of books over the last few years engaging with the question of what a post-climate-emergency world will look like; I think of The Ministry for the Future, A Half-Built Garden, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047, and Doctorow's own Walkaway. Compared to those, this feels like it's aimed at a fundamentally different audience, specifically at the same younger audience that Little Brother was. Maybe it's because I read Little Brother when I was a teenager and I'm rather older now, and maybe it's because I've read more political philosophy now, but I found the reading experience of this book deeply frustrating, which was a shame because I think there's a lot of really great worldbuilding in here and another editing pass might have been all it needed.

First, the good. While the above books tended to look more at technological, financial, and process aspects of societal change, The Lost Causes really dives deep into cultural aspects, and I think it's all the stronger for that. I totally believe Doctorow's imaginings of what a Maga cultural movement (now reduced to a proper noun, not an acronym, and stripped of any present-day political figures) might look like and how people who are today protesting against basic science with things like pandemic management might be behaving when the planet is on fire. I liked the depiction of the psychology of these movements, the refusal to either play up their cool factor or downplay the very real damage they do. These days, this is a group of people that statistically died at a higher rate in COVID due to rejection of masks and vaccines; of course they're going to be doing themselves harm from climate reasons in the future.

Additionally, I have a particular interest in the way that technology terminology does or does not date a book; by referring to all electronics as just "screens," Doctorow does a good job of making them timeless, acknowledging that they're increasingly become interchangeable. By avoiding reference to specific messaging platforms or social media feeds (and constructing a world in which social media seems to be federated), this feels like it isn't going to be immediately out of date.

But then we get to my complaints, which are largely about characterisation and dialogue. Our protagonist is Brooks, an 18/19 year old who is just graduating high school at the start of the book. He refers to himself as queer/pansexual, but then proceeds to effectively exclusively get horny for the attractive young women in his life (to the point where every time a new one of them is introduced, there's an evaluation of whether or not they are a romantic prospect); this isn't inherently a problem, except that the way his desire to be around those women for romantic purposes interacts with his desire to be around them for activism purposes (and the fact that there's a runner about him mixing up Ethiopians and Eritreans) makes the activism feel weirdly performative. Brooks is impulsive, which again is fine in theory, but it feels more like Doctorow is applying characteristics to him to demonstrate immaturity rather than having a proper understanding of his mind. My comparison here is Marcus Yallow, the protagonist of Little Brother, who I remember reading and loving when I was about the age that he was in the story. In comparison, Brooks feels a little more thinly and inconsistently characterised, his traumatic history not always perfectly integrated with the rest of his character. The result of this was that he just annoyed me, and I didn't like him enough for that to be a motivation to continue reading.

Brooks's 2-3 attractive female friends are given various degrees of Manic Pixie Dreamgirl (I don't think I can come up with a proper description of the personality of the one that eventually becomes his partner, apart from "flawless, always correct badass") and seem to serve the role of conversation partner for didactic dialogue in which Doctorow can hammer out ideas and have Brooks either explain or be explained to. I'm certainly not opposed to a didactic dialogue in a fiction novel (hell, Anathem is one of my favourite novels), but I found that the integration of this with romantic interactions served to weaken both. The conversation ended up feeling stilted, artificial, and entirely unlike a 19-year-old, and so weakened both the romantic connections and the ability to convey the ideas.

I've not mentioned the plot much here, and that's because there wasn't a huge amount. I'm also not sure that there needed to be: there was just enough to hang the ideas on, and plenty of danger to keep up a sense of tension at the requisite moments. This book seems like it wants to do for climate change what Little Brother did for cybersecurity, and I think it might, though as I am no longer of the age I was when I read that book, I can't really know for sure. If I were recommending a climate crisis book to a teenager, I very well might recommend this one. However, if I was recommending one to an adult, I think I would be more likely to recommend Doctorow's other similar work, Walkaway. This was a shame; I nearly DNF'ed the book at 45% of the way through out of frustration at the dialogue, but kept going because I wanted to like it so much. This book has some great ideas in places that we as a society need to have great ideas, and so I pushed through.

[Allison Hurd · Rating 1 out of 5]

Time of death: 50%

An overly masturbatory, meandering, rant-filled book about capitalism, MAGA, and climate change from an extremely Californian white dude perspective. I like rants about all of those things and I think California is fascinating in the things it's trying as part of our nation's experiment, so you'd think that'd be a good thing.

It is not. Turns out, more than I like thinking about a future that makes definitive progress, I hate dudes explaining the tragedy of the commons to me in a monologue.

Also, for a book that is the equivalent of winning every argument with the straw man you put up, there's sure a lot of the gross parts of the world in big bold display and a weird removal of violence against the people who pipe up. The trauma isn't ringing true, and as always I'm of the firm camp that if you can't deal with the realities of a trauma for your characters, you are not safe to write about it. Too many people know what it's like to live in hatefilled homes, to be orphans, to be afraid of conflict to brush it aside when the reality of it is inconvenient. It's rude to real people, and lazy to boot.

I count books that I read at least 50% of as complete. I gave this book several hours of my time and it did not move me. I tried. It failed. Onward!

[Justine · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF @ 52%

I’m so disappointed this didn’t work for me. I read a great deal of mostly downbeat climate change and near future fiction, and the tagline “A novel of truth and reconciliation in our polarized future” appealed to me.

The first problem for me is that the characters in the book all come off a caricatures rather than actual, complex people. The main character is so cutesy and upbeat that it is annoying rather than endearing. The dialogue reads as forced and performative, and generally contributes to the sense of box-ticking that permeates the story. The second problem is that “story” should be in quote marks because there isn’t much here. It’s more a vehicle for describing the playing pieces in the most reductive way possible rather than showcasing the depth and complexity of an actual game.

I can live with a thin plot if the characters are interesting and their interactions have substance. I can tolerate thin characters if the story is rich and thick. What I can’t take is two dimensionality on both counts, headed by a character whose deepest observation is to continually say “wow.”

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published: November, 2023

My rating for this book is probably a 3.5, mainly because the main character in the story is a young man living in Burbank, CA in the near future, quite irritated me. He is immature, rash and I never completely am pulled into his character. Yes, he means well and wants a better world than the one he is living in. The social issues are relevant and touch areas of real concern. I recommend the book, perhaps other readers will see more in the main character than I found. Well written. Definitely a read for the issues alone.

My thanks to the author, Cory Doctorow, and the publisher, TOR, for my ARC of this book. #Goodreads Giveaway

[Janelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some great ideas in this book but mostly it just annoyed me, probably too YA for my tastes. Narrated by 19yo Brooks, the dialogue is so bad (wow is used 37 times, amazing 41 times) and I really didn’t need all the relationship stuff or just the description of every vegan meal they cook and sit down too (it’s all amazing). The description of a society that is coping with climate change has a lot of positive initiatives (all the young people are sooo positive), refugee programmes (these are internal refugees) etc. Brooks lives with his grandfather who is against all these initiatives, he’s a member of a Maga club and his buddies are all the same. The inevitable clash of the two groups made this a read I didn’t give up on even though it takes a fair while to get going.

[Sharondblk · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been reading a lot of near future / climate change sci-fi and this one was disappointing. I wouldn't call it sci-fi, this is more of a political novel and, since I share Doctrow's politics I thought I would enjoy this book. But I didn't. It's written with so much detail around things that don't matter (please stop describing what people are eating) and so little about things that do matter. (why does the Flotilla accept tourists? How much did it cost to visit?). There is no cause and effect - when the refugees leave his garden, they plant a garden bed. This would take time and money and supplies. These are people crossing America on foot. If they had resources, would they be camping? Maybe they could catch a bus. It's just not thought out - the refugees are there to make a point, not to be people.
Most of what happens seems to be a chance for Doctrow to lecture us about his very good ideas, rather than actual plot.

Possibility the biggest issue is that Brooks, our main character, does not feel real. He's an example of what a politically engaged young person could look like, and all of his interactions are teachable moments. Oh no, he's so shocked when he learns that you can be a refugee AND believe in the blockchain. Oh no, he can't remember the difference between Eritrea and Ethiopia. That was basically his whole personality. That and despite telling us he was pansexual, sizing up every woman (and only the women) he met as potential romantic and sexual partners. Its just tedious.

All of this was a shame, because the worldbuilding was strong. This just needed a whole lot more editing.

Thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus for the e-Arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contemplating Blue Skies and The Lost Cause has made me realise I'm getting quite touchy about what genre climate change novels are assigned to. It is my firm opinion that Blue Skies isn't sci-fi and The Lost Cause isn't dystopian; the former is general literature and the latter is utopian, if anything. I care about this because climate change is happening right now. 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded and featured droughts, floods, superstorms, heatwaves, and wildfires all over the world. Depicting that in fiction isn't speculative or science fiction, it's realism. Moreover, extrapolating climate change getting worse in the future isn't dystopian. If it was, then Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports would also be dystopias.

I think of dystopian literature as exploring extrapolated or exaggerated systems that are worse than the present. The Lost Cause depicts better systems than the USA has in the present; it is a best case scenario in which America has somehow implemented an effective Green New Deal and suppressed monopoly capitalism/techno-feudalism. The fact that it focuses on remaining flaws in that system and groups that are resisting decarbonisation doesn't change that, in my view. The title is ironic to the point that I kept mis-remembering it as 'The Last Chance' (which would be similarly ironic). This passage really convinced me that The Lost Cause is utopian in structure and spirit:

I was free. If Burbank caught fire and burned to the ground, I could go anywhere and start over, as long as there was a library, solar panels, and good panels. The world was on fire, and the fires would burn every year for many years to come. This might be the best year for wildfires we'd have for the rest of my life. When things weren't on fire, we'd be harrowed by plagues, scoured by storms, flooded and droughted.

And yet... And yet. I had arrived at a place of circulating abundance amid all of that tragedy and terror. Wherever I was, I could be happy, fed, surrounded by good people and hard work.

Genre quibbles aside, I think Doctorow is doing something interesting and original here. I found it invigorating, distinctive, timely, and genuinely tense. I particularly enjoyed his subversion of the gun on the mantlepiece trope and the final scene. The Lost Cause is less emotional and epic than Hopeland, another recent utopian sci-fi novel about climate change, but the two compliment each other well. The great strength of Doctorow's fiction is his insight into the dynamics between technological, political, and social change in the US. I'm glad he's turned his attention to climate change, as this novel makes thoughtful points about community resilience, generation gaps, and policy struggling to keep up with technology, among other things.

On the other hand, having read six of Doctorow's other novels, I knew exactly what to expect from the protagonist as he's essentially the same guy every time. Your man is adept with technology, an energetic problem-solver, drinks cold brew, likes cooking, and has a hot girlfriend who is inexplicably really into him. (I would hypothesise that it's his cooking, except everyone in Doctorow's novels is enthusiastic about food and great at cooking somehow.) This isn't a problem, as the Doctorow protagonist exists as a viewpoint from which to observe the technological, political, and environmental stuff going on around him. I found The Lost Cause a grounded, ingenious, and hopeful vision of the 2050s - not a dystopia.

[Mike Phelan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"These were the people who’d spent half a century telling us that we didn’t need to do anything about climate change, and the next half century telling us it was too late to do anything about it."

In 2050s Burbank, CA, eighteen year old Brooks Palazzo is part of "the first generation in a century that doesn't fear the future". He does important, hands-on work as part of the Green New Deal's Jobs Guarantee and political work with the DSA improving the city he loves and preparing it to receive a convoy of climate refugees. His only problem is figuring out what to do with an unusual and unwanted inheritance from his grandfather. And his grandfather's revanchist friends trying to push him around. And the red-hat Maga Club terrorists with squirt guns full of hydrochloric acid, the Flotilla of techbro plutocrats trying to John Galt their way to personal bliss while the rest of the world burns, and, oh yeah, everything is actually on fire. So sure, there are some problems to solve. But with enough creative organizing and strong kombucha, Brooks and friends just might be able to show the world a better way.

Is it weird that Doctorow's vision of a world both on fire and drowning from climate change almost feels like a Utopia? His strength as an author and futurist is that he can unflinchingly portray actual consequences of the terrible choices we're making on climate issues while simultaneously showing us that joy, love, and hope can bloom even in these dystopic circumstances.

[Kristen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is near future sci-fi; a thoughtful examination of what might be in store for our society as recent political and social divisions widen. The state of the world is showcased through the lens of a young man and his city (Burbank, CA to be specific). While there is a lot to ponder with the potentially prescient nature of the narrative, there isn’t enough of an emotional core to overcome the feeling that it’s all too soon, too political and too depressing to read right now.

[Vivian]

DNF 30% ish.

Writing is good, but the subject matter isn't where I want to be mentally. Get enough in real life to find the warring extremes of political ideology in the US not diverting.

[Hank]

DNF 40% Narration is below average and this is really a series of poorly connected thoughts about a future that already exists

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5

This book has such a compelling premise: If we finally start making progress on the climate, the divisions in our society aren't going to go away - what will that mean? But, sadly, execution lets The Lost Cause down badly.

First, the positives. In one sense this book does exactly what it promises - it looks at how the divisions and disparate views that characterise modern western societies could play out against the backdrop of a worsening humanitarian disaster. And no effort is spared fleshing out the author's world and ideas about those divisions. It's also a fairly quick read.

But, even for an "idea forward" novel (which this is), the plot and characters are weak. More than anything, they respectively seem a setting and props to facilitate the author's musings and opinions. Without spoiling the storyline, certain events start and stop when it's time to move on to new ideas, rather than for reasons that feel authentic to the world Doctorow has created. The characters are generally thin, and hold the (sometimes inconsistent) views the author needs to show off the various competing "sides" in this near future world. The romantic arc is also really implausible - it's feels like it is there to provide more props for the author to work with and to tick a box.

The prose, while readable, is ... cliche. Rather than feeling like it belongs in a near future world, it feels like an attempt to be cool *now; for instance, I doubt slang will stay that static over the coming decades.

If you like the premise, try something like A Half Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys instead.

Thanks to Head of Zeus, Netgalley and Cory Doctorow for this ARC (provided in exchange for an honest review).

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cory Doctorow has been writing novels that give blueprints on how to evade, disturb, and overcome authoritarianism. He especially focuses on using technology to foil the technology employed by government to suppress citizen voices and opinion.

There is a through line from his 2008 novel 'Little Brother' to this one, including another 'crumbling civilization' novel, 'Walkaway'. In 'The Lost Cause' it's the climate crisis and refugee immigration that stirs the pot, something that is very timely. The book is set some decades in the future, so the dial is turned up to 11 on the critical scale.

The citizens of Burbank CA want to do the right thing and help those less fortunate, but there's a MAGA contingent that resists changes that increase density and allow more people to live there from elsewhere. Our 16 year old protagonist Brooks owns a house after his MAGA grandfather died, and wants to help house refugees while gramps's MAGA friends don't like it. Brooks teams up with some technical geeks (a Doctorow specialty) who help solve the problems, foiling the do-nothing politicians and taking direct action to get the housing built.

It's not all a black and white issue. There's an interesting moral dilemma that Doctorow raises here. To what extent do we relax the regulations on environmental protection and the built environment in order to house people who are at immediate risk of dying on the streets? Is the perfect the enemy of the good enough, especially when 'good enough' means saving lives?

The title refers, of course, to the Civil War and some people's obsession over the losing side, making the point that old grievances never completely die out. The snake on the cover is a call-back to the Gadsden flag, the 'don't tread on me' flag that has come to represent right-wing extremism. Doctorow's point is that the MAGA grievances won't just disappear because the other side wins a victory or an election. This will require sustained effort and alertness.

Doctorow always delivers cool techno solutions but couches the arguments in terms we can relate to, and reflect arguments we see in the news every day.

[Florin Pitea · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit disappointing, especially when compared to Red Team Blues or Attack Surface. Ironically, as the author gets older, his novels get preachier - a bit like Robert Heinlein's.

[Lindsay · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a story about Brooks Palazzo, a 19 year-old living with his grandfather in Burbank, Southern California. It's set at a time where the world is coping with climate change and in a period where there is a political backlash to an earlier left-wing regime that implemented some fairly extreme left-wing goals, like a national job guarantee and comprehensive banning of guns. The city of Burbank has a strong social democrat movement as well as "maga clubs", movements of aggrieved older people raging against the government, immigration and climate action.

The book postulates a world where pretty much all the left-wing wish-list items have been achieved, and the right-wing has been reduced to an angry group of senior citizens, still dangerous, but largely fuming about their own irrelevance. It feels like a low-impact sequel to a much more interesting novel about how a progressive government came to power in the most regressive western nation on Earth. At several points in the novel I wanted to be reading *that* novel instead. My biggest issue is that I can't see how we get to this point from where we're at.

The main character Brooks comes off as naive and annoying most of the time, but I think the author has done a good job of depicting a character that is a product of an education system that prioritizes social justice and climate remediation. A little bit too much of one to be honest, as at many points it feels like Brooks is the product of a very particular brain-washing program. I did have an issue with the writing of him in several places though, as the narrative felt quite emotionally distant from the events of the book. At one point he says that he's feeling enraged and I remember being quite surprised to read that as there'd been no hint of any emotional state other than detachment up to that point.

[GONZA · Rating 3 out of 5]

As much as the idea is good and ideal (pun intended), this book by Doctorow does not have a good rhythm in my opinion, and somehow drags, especially from the middle on, as if the protagonist and therefore the author somehow, did not know how to go on, undecided between the beautiful ending of the fairy tale or the more realistic ending of the tragedy. I have read better books by him.

Per quanto l'idea sia buona e ideale (perdonate il gioco di parole), questo libro di Doctorow non ha un buon ritmo secondo me, e in qualche modo si trascina, specialmente dalla metá in poi, come se il protagonista e quindi l'autore in qualche modo, non sapesse come andare avanti, indeciso tra il bel finale della favola o quello piú realistico della tragedia. Ho letto di meglio da parte sua.

I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.

[Eilonwy · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 2034 Burbank, CA, there are plenty of Maga clubs, and 18-year-old Brooks Palazzo's grandfather is a lifelong member. But he's been kind to Brooks, and when Gramps dies of a heart attack, Brooks inherits the house, just in time to fill the backyard with climate refugees. There are guaranteed jobs for a day's pay and a lot of plans for creating housing and greenspace. But there are also a lot of people deadset against trying to save the world.

I read this because it was promised as "solar punk," i.e., a portrayal of a positive, hopeful future. But this book is not really set in 2034. It is very definitely now, just slightly worse, and reading it made my stomach ache.

A bigger issue I had was that while some background gets set up early on, this isn't really a story with a plot. It's more like a manual with characters telling readers how to fight or cope with people who will resist all change. That got boring and wearing after a while. The situations that were set up were interesting and highly fraught., and some of the solutions were pretty creative, but by two-thirds of the way through, I just didn't care anymore. I wasn't particularly invested in Brooks, although I did find himself perfectly likable.

It took me until just before another character tells Brooks what "the lost cause" was to realize that this book is titled for the bullcrap pretense that the US Civil War was somehow "not about slavery" which I guess shows how long I've been out of school. O_o

So this book was okay, but it had no "solar" aspect. I just felt despair reading it and thinking about how tenuous women's rights, and LGBTQ rights, and immigrant rights, etc. are because we are all just political footballs, and how there's no telling if meaningful climate change measures will be taken or if and when they'll have any effect. Living in this book was like living in the newspaper. Just a grind.

[Olivia · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF'ed at 50%

The thing that kept me reading for as long as I did was my respect for Doctorow as a cultural commentator, the thing that finally killed it for me was the dialogue. That being said, this book didn't work for me on multiple levels. As a thought experiment I don’t think I’ve ever read something so utopian, but this is a kind of criticism in and of itself. There’s a reason we don’t actually like utopias so much; they ring hollow. In Doctorow’s universe the conflict, the fly in the socialist ointment, is the generation that is being left behind, the old white guys who will never get with the program. But that doesn’t address the shiny-eyed idealism with which the protagonist treats the system he lives within: he loves his city, he loooves the Democratic Socialists of America, he looooooves the Green New Deal etc etc. This is, quite simply, not teenage boy behaviour, it’s not believable, it's not interesting political commentary, and it’s not what I hoped for from Cory Doctorow.

I can’t help but compare this book to Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed - which is maybe unfair, but hey you wrote a leftist utopia novel! You get compared to the master! And calling The Dispossessed a utopia feels like a gross simplification anyway, when Le Guin spends so much time on logistics (including the logistics of famine), on the shortcomings of the system, on the ways in which her protagonist is limited by the system in which he lives, even as he remains loyal to it. The Lost Cause, in comparison, feels skin deep. I’ll admit I picked this book up because of my enduring love for Little Brother, but it’s hard to reconcile the author of that book with the author of this one (if anything his writing of dialogue - and especially flirting - has only gotten worse). It’s almost like in an attempt to imagine a government he could love, Doctorow overcorrected hard in the opposite direction and lost the sense of (justified) skepticism toward authority and the state which made Little Brother so good to my teenage self.

It felt like this book was written for me - I'm the target audience as a millennial environmentalist who has had a lifelong flirtation with leftist politics. But it completely failed to connect. Almost nothing felt believable; not the interior life of the protagonist, not his relationships with the people around him, not the behaviour of the government and its devoted citizens. It's really disappointing, because buried in the godawful dialogue (seriously I cannot emphasize how cringey the flirting is - if you're that bad at writing it, just don't put it in), simplified generational struggle, and overly optimistic government structure are some really interesting worldbuilding nuggets of the solarpunk/hopepunk variety. I wish I could have spent more time in that world, but a world is not enough; to write a good story you need engaging conflict and believable characters, and this book had neither.

[Evan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Turns out, I can agree with an author's politics and still think their book is a total waste of time. The best praise I can give this is that it's as if a one-liner idea from "Ministry for the Future" were fleshed out into a YA novella. Maybe a younger audience would find this more compelling, or relate to the immature and naive protagonist. I didn't.

And yet, I can't imagine a young audience getting excited about a book that devoted half it's length to detailed description of a flat-pack prefab housing construction process.

And those who aren't already on the author's side (no "Magas" allowed in this club) won't find any empathy here, as they are all characterized exclusively as out of touch relics, preventing the future from coming.

And that future? Despite the protagonists' optimism (or delusion), the best possible future the novel can imagine is one beset by constant forest fires, decimated coastlines, abandoned cities, and a lot of time spent cooking and cleaning for community potlucks, yet the connections these people make never seem stable or valued.

Too bad. I enjoyed "Walkaway" but won't be picking up another Doctorow book any time soon.

[John Adkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

In many ways this book is Doctorow meets Kim Stanley Robinson. The Lost Cause shows a post Climate Crisis world where an aggressive Green New Deal has passed and people are banding together to save as many lives and as much of the planet as possible. People are, but not all people. Some folks persist in believing that all of the problems they see around them are just another in a long line of liberal myths. Some other folks know what is happening but use their vast wealth and violence to try and maintain the great privileges they have been accustomed to.

As in so much of Doctorow's work, there is cause to be hopeful. A group of mainly young, tech-savvy, diverse folks band together to fight the oligarchs and elderly refuseniks who oppose progress. More importantly, they band together to fight for each other. This is a very hopeful novel and one that I truly hope is read by as many people as possible.

[Arcade Wise · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of Cory's best, sincerely amazing.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in California in the 2050s, Cory Doctorow's latest novel, The Lost Cause - referencing the white supremacist Civil War myth - is narrated by nineteen-year-old Brooks, who is committed to social justice and angry at his grandfather's Maga friends, who, in his words, 'were the people who'd spent half a century telling us that we didn't need to do anything about climate change, and the next half century telling us it was too late to do anything about it'. When a new wave of internal refugees reach Brooks's town, the Magas mobilise, securing an injunction against the building of emergency housing, which scuppers Brooks's plans to provide the refugees with somewhere safe to live. Although Brooks has grown up being told that his is 'the first generation that doesn't need to fear the future', due to transformative policies like the Green New Deal and the Jobs Guarantee Programme, he feels like this progress is being undone - and he needs to act.

Like Doctorow's earlier and superior novel, For the Win, a lot of The Lost Cause is about the practicalities of activism: how to organise, and which strategies will actually work. It's enormously refreshing to read a vision of the future that is neither utopian or dystopian, although maybe this is a new trend: Naomi Alderman's The Future, also out this month, takes a similar tack. And although it's pitched as about generational conflict, and starts with a simplistic match-up between the bad Magas and the good activists, it ends up in more interesting places, as Brooks finds himself in conflict with people that he thought were on his side. Doctorow does a good job, too, of not excusing the Magas but not presenting them as mindlessly evil: as Brooks comes to realise, 'they weren't wrong because they were cruel. They were cruel because they were wrong'. And as ever, Doctorow shines in his imagining of new technological and micro-political advances, from teens suddenly flooding live-streamed townhall meetings to prefab high-rise apartments you can put up in a matter of days.

So, good novel: shame about the protagonist. Brooks is easily the weakest part of The Lost Cause, and one of the biggest reasons I preferred For the Win, with its larger, more diverse cast. He feels like a bit of a wish-fulfilment fill-in for woke white men, although Doctorow is careful to show him getting things wrong. He has a traumatic backstory, but it barely seems to slow him down except when he evokes it for credibility points, and he is implausibly attractive to women, entering an easy #instalove relationship with an older woman whom everybody agrees is out of his league. (Brooks self-defines as pansexual, but this never comes into play.) Frankly, he's a bit annoying to spend time with, and I wished we'd been able to get out of his head. The generations also felt skew-whiff to me, which robbed the book of some cultural plausibility, despite its interesting politics and economics. In the 2050s, I'll be in my sixties, so surely part of the Maga generation (!), and yet Doctorow writes as if boomers are still around and millennials are still young; indeed, Brooks reads more as a millennial to me than anything else, and yet he's actually at least a couple generations younger. This is still absolutely worth reading just because it's so different to most other fiction out there, but I'd recommend For the Win above this one.

I received a free proof copy of this novel from the publisher for review.

[Peter Baran · Rating 5 out of 5]

The ambiguity at the heart of Doctorow's near future climate and political work-out is key. The book is pitched with an idealistic teen in a 2040's America which has finally taken the climate crisis seriously. Except politics remains the same so after a few terms of a visionary President with bold Green New Deal policies, the other side are back in. But more importantly, there are aging but militant MAGA's still around, fighting against the mitigation and belligerently looking to willfully ignore the science, not even for short-term goals but almost out of spite. Our hero Brooks's grandfather is one of them, with a cache of arms in the basement and his buddies coming over to discuss insurrection. But is their's the Lost Cause, or is the greater truth that the climate itself is a lost cause because it is all too late?

Doctorow has often delighted in teasing ideas out from basic principles, and it is clear that here he is a dog with a bone with some of these things. He applauds the idealism of the younger generation that he talks about here, but cannot let go of the difficulties that they will face and the assumptions of their idealism. Brooks in quick order becomes a teenage property owner in a relatively affluent part of California (Burbank), or at least affluent in as much as it is not poisoned, or suffering too much from catastrophic climate crisis. But his idealism is challenged by the refugees he wants to help, the UN worker and the reality of being embroiled in a one-sided war against a bad-faith opponent. Doctorow takes pot-shots at some of his regular bugbears, he takes onboard the few good arguments for cryptocurrency for example whilst still arguing firmly against it. And there is a joy in watching the more quotidian aspects of scientific progress locking horns with a thoroughly out-of-date legal system and enforcement system.

The Lost Cause is good polemical science fiction, it never loses sight of its base edict to entertain whilst being a late coming-of-age romance. The idealism combined with the fast learning curve of reality, coupled with a solid central voice means the more philosophical political arguments do not happen in a vacuum, and are relatable. And that questioning of idealism, and the one-sided warfare aspect, leaves Chekov's cache of guns as a central part to its denouement where youth and cynicism come into direct opposition, and you see if and when idealism dies. Entertaining first, but a proper serious post-climate disaster thought experiment too,

[Camille McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and it was uplifting to read a utopian rather than dystopian novel. It takes place a few decades from now, and shows what life is like in Burbank, California after the Green New Deal is adopted and put into practice, refugees are protected and welcomed, and people have their basic needs met. There are still grumpy conservatives who hate refugees and think climate change isn't real, but they become a minority that doesn't have much of a say because everyone is reaping the benefits of a society that's built on preserving and enriching life rather than profits for the rich.
I love Doctorow's ideas, but his writing isn't the best quality - some of the dialogue is so unnatural, and he uses a lot of annoying slang, especially since the book is told from the point of view of a teenager. Also, I was frankly alarmed by the amount of drinking the characters do in this book - it never explains whether the drinking age has been lowered, and I was kind of confused by these 18 and 19-year-olds drinking beer, bourbon, whiskey, and hard kombucha every single day. I also had to laugh at the idea that the DSA would be that successful, seeing as how they have largely become focused on electoral politics and while individual chapters may be doing a lot, I think they've already passed their heydey. But it was still cool to see a version of an organization like that being so successful and efficient. The food descriptions were cool though, and I liked the detail of the Eritrean restaurant. I also liked how people had much more community and were more used to sharing things and making food and drinks for each other in this version of the future, because if our society changed its priorities to caring for each other, I definitely think people would also become more caring towards one another and our culture would shift.
A very fun read, which made me sad that we aren't currently working towards positive things but also gave me a lot of hope for the future!

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The next generation of young people are leading the charge with the climate crisis in Doctorow's new novel. It's 30 years from now and areas all over the world are becoming uninhabitable. Burbank, CA native Brooks is stuck living with his red hat wearing grandfather whose views are stuck in the past while Brooks wants to move forward. Doctorow's future is both utopian and dystopian and compulsively readable.

I can't really decide if I liked this. I was into it the first quarter or so, but by the halfway mark, I started to get anxious for it to just be over. Brooks seemed pretty intelligent most of the time, but rolled over anytime a pretty girl spoke to him. I'm all for changing your views once new information or outlooks are presented, but he seemed very eager to drop his current stance. This was also a strangely straight, cisgender book. If there were any queer relationship here, they passed me by without a notice. It also seemed a very black and white book. The bad guys were evil and the good guys were practically saints. 🤷‍♀️

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I receives this book as a goodreads giveaway. The premise is a future where climate change is impacting every day life and world is even more polarized. The book processes to speak about truth and reconciliation in our polarized future.

Regretfully the reconciliation aspect is not promising and it depicts more of a polarized world divided on environmental and political beliefs with a backdrop of an off shore utopia flotilla. The book is well written, but somewhat confusing and not that enjoyable

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a fair review. This is an emotional review. Sometimes you have to tell and sometimes you have to show. Getting ourselves out of the climate hole we've dug and jumped into is going to take everything. And more. And this book is a part of that. In a large part I took this book as an optimistic take. Okay until pretty close to the end. A lot of the right things get done. This was a quick read and pitched young. It is not fair. It is not even handed. But lots of things have to be done to set the agenda. And maybe getting people to read books like this one is one of them.

[Modesto · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was like reading arguments on Twitter between the left and far right. Not the most pleasant way to pass time. The characters were either hypersensitive or complete assholes, so no one was likable. Every other page seemed to have a conversation that delivered some sort of a trigger warning mid sentence. Someone literally spelt out the word "gun" at one point as to avoid saying it out loud and brining it into existence or something lol. It all felt a bit too satirical to take serious.

[Hazel Thayer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes it feels good to be pandered to. Sometimes you're the exact precise target audience for a book, and that's OK. Sometimes* your favorite author dedicates his book to* your other favorite author. Sometimes you read said book while drinking a Mexican hot chocolate in a park on a crisp spring day in Brooklyn. Sometimes a book tells you everything's gonna be alright, and sometimes you believe it.

*(one of, let's not go crazy here)

[Jacob Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty solid near-future read, with plausible sci-fi, and optimistic but ultimately realistic views of what politics may come to be.

There's smart humour and loveable characters I saw myself and my friends reflected in, and I really enjoyed my time in future Burbank!