Techno-Thrillers discussion
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What’s a techno-thriller?
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Here's what I came up with after about a year of thinking about it, and bear in mind this is only my definition:Thriller + Present Day + Realistic + Hard Science Fiction = Techno-Thriller.
Breaking those down:
- Thriller = Fast Pace, High Stakes, Twists
- Present Day = Set in the here and now, not in a future reality
- Realistic = Could actually happen - no plot armor or deus ex machinas
- Hard Science Fiction = All technology is plausible even if we haven't figured it out yet.
This takes it back to the root of Hunt for the Red October and why I think people gravitated to that novel when it was released. Playing into Cold War tensions and fears around "the most technically advanced country will win" certainly didn't hurt.
The way I think about it is genres in entertainment help in targeting a particular fanbase, and it's my belief that if you want to target fans of the genre called "Techno-Thriller," you have to capture the essence of the most famous novel that started it all.
Mod
https://crimereads.com/technothriller...
https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/tec...
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/...
https://s-usih.org/2015/09/techno-thr...
https://sfdictionary.com/view/1636/te...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
https://www.revistahelice.com/revista...
https://www.novelsuspects.com/book-li...
https://www.jackwulfen.com/techno-thr...
https://www.moriareviews.com/techno-t...
I mostly agree with you guys, with a couple quibbles. First, I think biotech thrillers like The Andromeda Strain definitely belong in the genre. Biotechnology is tech as much as electronic tech, computer tech, rocket tech, etc.I also think techno-thrillers can occur either present day OR near-ish future. The Martian is a good fit, for example. Murderbot probably stretches it too far though?
Genres are squishy by nature with wide gray areas, and a lot of books include multiple genres.
Oh, I also still vacillate on whether to include the hyphen, ha!
Mod
I agree that Andromeda Strain is a techno-thriller. I didn’t mean to imply that it wasn’t, but I can see how you took my words that way. I’ll have to go back and clarify better. Good feedback.
You’ll note that I nominated Andromeda for BOTM just two months ago. My original point was that the term techno-thriller didn’t naturally spring to mind with Crichton’s science-thriller books, so I consider the name techno-thriller to have been popularized by Red October. The term had been used before (first in 1977) … along with techno-horror and a couple other awkward hyphenations, but it didn’t catch on and take off until the year Red October was released. So, no disagreement there. I’ll have to rework my words above to clarify.
There is even an interview with Tom Clancy where he says if a techno-thriller genre really exists, then he himself isn’t the father of it. He said he read Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain, years before when he was in school.
Andromeda Strain was 1969, and doesn’t scream “technology” so much as “science” or “biology”. Science-Thriller is arguably equally valid to many of these books, but let’s be honest and say that at least in America some people take science as a profanity, and others as nerdy, and even though science-fiction is acceptable, … science is not the most broadly effective marketing term. So, then Crichton writes Terminal Man in 1972, still a dozen years before Red October. That is definitely technology. But, to be honest, that is about the only Crichton book I didn’t like. So, it was summarily ignored. A bad book doesn’t beget a new genre.
I also agree techno-thrillers can be near-future. I didn’t say that above, though it’s in my summary on the main page. I should add that in above too. Good feedback. I struggle with where/when/how to draw the line. How far in the future can it be? I talked about that in the Space challenge. Seems kind of a gray area.
I suppose a main distinction I go for above is that a techno-thriller isn’t anything Clancy writes. It isn’t any spy thriller. There doesn’t have to be a spy. I also have it in the main page summary, but not in the thread above, that it doesn’t have to include extreme (Clancy-esque) over-sharing of technical detail (yeah, remember Sum of Fears). I feel like Blake Crouch almost completely glosses over the explanation of how any new technology came about, and gets on with the implications. He just whips out a non-sensical buzz-word-salad and does a literary Jedi mind trick wave as if to say … and voilà! I feel that is his weak point, but still call his books techno-thrillers. I think the sweet spot is "enough detail to satisfy our curious inner geek".
One aspect of the genre I don't like is the excessive stakes. Honestly, it tends to lose me every time they elevate unnecessarily to the fate of all humanity, ... which is all too frequent. In Clancy's books, ... yes ... the global balance of power was at stake ... and potentially a nuclear war. But, we don't have to overshare to Clancy excess, nor have global stakes every time. In a book like The Martian, ... it wasn't global stakes. The whole world did care if "the Martian" lived or died ... yes, ... but it was one astronaut's life ... and at most lower risk one crew's life, but it's not like humanity would go extinct if things didn't go a certain way. I ... personally ... lose all respect (dock 1 star) ... when someone elevated to global stakes when it isn't warranted. That said, in Hail Mary Project ... it was very much that fate of all humanity at stake. But, ... find the balance. In Contact, all humanity had a "stake" as in "an interest" ... but their lives were never in the balance. It gets 5 stars. I liked Eaters of the Dead where the lives of people in the local area were in jeopardy, but not the world. I did not like Eruption where they had to claim that all humanity was at risk from a single volcano. I ... will use strong language and say ... I HATE when techno-thrillers unnecessarily escalate the stakes. It makes it positively embarrassing to recommend most techno-thrillers (some of my favorite books) to people who are not out-of-the-closet techno-thriller fans. The other thing I don't like it when they overreach on the technology. For example, in Andromeda Strain ... dealing with a biological threat is enough. He didn't also have to throw in computers capable of artificial intelligence that ChatGPT still could not achieve 50 years later. That was totally unnecessary. Don't geek it up too much, or we can't talk about these books at work or with friends, ... unless we live or work in a total geek bubble. If you could care less about my opinion, ... fine. But over-geek it ... and you are losing free word-of-mouth advertising. Feel free to shoot yourself in the foot ... with a laser gun with crystals that are ... yada, yada, yada ... normal people have rolled their eyes and walked away already.
I've mulled over this question, while moderating this group, trying to nominate appropriate books for our monthly read. What is it?
We'll get to it ... but as an aside that we might as well get out the way first ... how do you even write it? Is it hyphenated or just one unhyphenated word? Arguably it's proper to hyphenate it ... for those of you inclined to posh English. Though as the world has gone digital, many hyphenated words now appear more frequently without the hyphen. And, if you choose to hyphenate, ... then you have that added burden of figuring out whether to capitalize both words, or just the first. (Capitalize both in a formal title, but just the first word in a sentence.) Arguably, it doesn't matter at all. I've changed my mind a few times, effectively playing all sides. But, you will get different search results depending on the hyphen. So, I generally search both ways when looking for techno-thrillers. Now, ... let's return to the definition.
I concede that I've strayed a bit over time, initially adopting an overly inclusive big tent interpretation. Basically, I nominated whatever I saw fit, and we ended up with options like the Murderbot Diaries, which most of us enjoyed reading, but these books are set in outer space with no mention of Earth. This is not a proper techno-thriller. Please forgive my excursions. I want to reform towards the Goldilock's tent interpretation that is true to the techno-thriller genre. I was comfortable with the I know it when I see it interpretation when I wasn't in the role of curating a selection of good techno-thriller reads. I've since read a number of techno-thriller definitions online, which might sound like I did my homework. But, as with most things online, that amounts to just perusing a wide smattering of sites all parroting essentially the same thing, often verbatim, which in the current case seems to be a definition derived from Wikipedia. I wasn't enamored with that definition the first time I read it, and with each encounter anew on various book review sites, the certainty that it's off the mark is reinforced. So, I'll take my own stab at the definition of a techno-thriller.
Might take a couple months to nail it down, but hey, ... you get what you pay for. Who cares what I think? Maybe 2 or 3 people who hit these pages more than weekly. But riddle me this: who else on web anywhere pays as much attention to techno-thrillers as we do? It may not be a high bar here, but it might be the highest. There are a few individual articles posted ... years old. We'll reference them, but they aren't coming back daily to keep a finger on the pulse like we are. There are automated, generated rankings, and a site here or there where users might randomly rank books, but they might never visit that site again, given the quality of the rankings. If you have a good/better site, ... please share.
The Techno-Thriller Genre
The notion of a techno-thriller book was popularized by The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy (1984). The word techno-thriller had appeared in print as far back as 1977, but was still an obscure term. Other books that we now call techno-thrillers had been written earlier, such as The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton (1969). But it wasn't until The Hunt for Red October that the term was popularized. We all read Red October and took Clancy's deep dive down the submarine technology rabbit hole. When Red October was labeled a techno-thriller, the name fit. More books followed, and eventually it was a genre.
The Andromeda Strain was primarily about bacteria or a virus. It was biological, ... not techno-logical. But the stealth submarine propulsion system in Red October was tech-nology for sure. And, Tom Clancy is nothing if not an absolute technology freak. So the term absolutely fits him as an author, and his books. It helps to read some letters he wrote back around the time Red October was published.
Tom Clancy letters: https://piedtype.com/2013/10/02/tom-c...
The first letter is before the book is published. He just overshares on geeky stuff. Then the second letter, printed from his brand new Mac leaves no question. He is bouncing off the walls happy about this computer, and goes on and on about specifications, and what it can do, and he uses several fonts, bold and so on because ... he can. He is cited in multiple papers admitting he is a "technology freak". He's not a retired CIA analyst. He just reads every technology trade magazine he can get his hands on, and is a kid in a candy store. These letters make it clear that his books are kind of actually holding back on his full fanaticism.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) takes pride in finding the earliest occurrence of words, and cites the London Observer using the word techno-thriller in 1977. It was hyphenated in its first appearance, in a book advertisement--a shameless self-promotion of the third person variety. A new techno-thriller by the author they're calling the new le Carré. We'll give that author credit for coining the genre, but his book had 2 ratings on Goodreads, 50 years later. Was he the next le Carré? At this point, Mark Twain would draw the curtain of charity.
Wikipedia defines a techno-thriller as a hybrid genre ... blah, blah, ... typically a spy thriller. No. Let's not conflate all of Tom Clancy's books with techno-thriller, as has been done. No, not every James Bond book is a techno-thriller. I like James Bond. Don't get me wrong. But, if James Bond has a watch that shoots a dart ... well that's nice and all, but that does not make it a techno-thriller. The Hunt for Red October was fixated with new submarine technology and how that could upset that balance of the Cold War. Books like Patriot Games or Without Remorse really have no technology per se, and would not fall within a small tent (minimalist) definition of techno-thriller.