Alexander C. Irvine, Buyout (Ballantine Books, 2009)

Alexander C. Irvine has provided a string of brilliantly inventive novels and stories, works that push boundaries both formally and in subject matter. In my experience, a basic element of Irvine's work has been a sense of dislocation, a feeling that the universe we are witnessing seems pretty much normal, but is really stranger than our own. It goes without saying that it was with high anticipation that I dove into Buyout.

Irvine has built on a logical extension of trends evident in the here and now. Set in the near future (ca. 2040) in Los Angles (and what better setting for the kind of surreality that infuses Irvine's work?), he posits a world that has become, in fact, the surveillance state carried a couple of degrees farther than we might have imagined. Everyone is under constant surveillance, the results of which are available to any who wish to look -- the police, the federal government, marketing departments, the neighbors. "Security" means having the ability to keep others from hacking into your personal systems.

Privatization, that practice so beloved of those who think government can't do anything right, is the core issue here, or a big part of it, and the vehicle for the story. Martin Kindred works for Antelope Valley Casualty, writing policies and generating reports. The company is bought out by a new entity, a holding company for a private corrections organization. The owners of that entity, Scott and Jocelyn Krakauer, have come up with a way to keep private corrections solvent and profitable: they will offer convicts sentenced to life without parole for capital crimes a lump sum -- about $5 million, on average -- to be disbursed as the inmates wish, in return for immediate "finalization," carried out in the most humane manner possible. This will save the company on the average $30 million per convict. Martin is to be their first "buyout specialist."

With Martin as the point man, the first year of the program is a success, with public opinion swinging in favor of the concept -- it's amazing how many schools, playgrounds, orphanages, clinics, and retirement homes can be helped with a few hundred thousand dollars each, and the Krakauers make sure there is ample publicity. Although the practice itself is controversial, Martin is convinced of the rightness of what he is doing. He sees it as a way for murderers, rapists, and the like to atone for what they have done and to give society a payback. His wife is only one of those who seesit has morally degenerate.

And then someone murders Martin's brother, a Los Angeles cop.

This is a fairly grim story -- aside from the overall milieu and the morally questionable basis for the story, Martin's life is coming apart. He and his wife, Theresa, are still married, somehow -- the marriage died a while back, and neither is prepared to make the break. Martin's new job -- which Theresa doesn't like on any point, not even the money (Martin works on commission) -- doesn't help matters. Martin's best friend, Charlie Rhodes, is another who questions Martin's decision, but works his way into the arrangement doing background checks on potential clients: Charlie is a private eye whose specialty is information -- in an information-riddled world, Charlie's contacts can get him what no one else knows.

Irvine has built this one on character, as much the character of the milieu as of the players. Milieu is perhaps easier to describe: read your local paper and then think about all of this going on for thirty more years. Add in that you're on video, everything you buy is recorded, your phone calls, e-mails, and any other communications are tracked, and your house and office run on computers, which are tied into networks and the Internet, feeding into someone else's database. And it's not necessarily the government's. Locate this in Hollywood, a place built on movie stars and publicity departments, and a place where death has become something that affects only the physical body: Irvine begins each chapter with a monologue by Walt Dangerfield, who may or may not be alive and seems quite pleased that no one knows for sure. (His happens to be the one show that Martin follows.) This is the land of icons, eidolons, and avatars gone virtual -- and immortal.

The characters are not, when it comes right down to it, heroic. Martin is stubborn, and on the issue of buyouts convinced of his rightness. Theresa is simply bitter and tired. The Krakauers veer a little too close to stereotypes, not something I'd expected from Irvine: they are "entrepreneurs," hard-headed, charming, and ruthless. Charlie is the wild card -- he doesn't love what the world has become, and doesn't really see why he should just accept it, except that he can make a living exploiting the cracks in the walls. Quite a collection.

I was at a loss on how to place this book -- everything needs some kind of context -- but I eventually remembered one of the classics of science fiction's Golden Age, The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, two of the period's great satirists. Buyout is the same order of beast, bitter, Swiftian satire, loaded and pointed right at us. It's a straight science fiction novel, built on what's happening today and taking full account of humanity's propensity for carrying things too far: the whole idea of the buyout is a prime example of slavish devotion to the bottom line and how that erodes our ability even to see moral issues clearly: when the greatest moral good is a tidy profit, what other consideration can there be?

I won't say this was an easy book to read -- there are parts that are almost too painful, and Martin himself is not someone who is easy to admire. But it's a damned good book.

[Robert M. Tilendis]

Irvine's Web site is still being built, but you can visit his blog.