Red Plenty

Unlike anything I've read. The strong writing kept me moving, for instance the chapter describing how a cancer came to be was excellent even though the contribution to the overall plot was minimal. Same with Galina in labor.

On its surface, a collection of short stories. Too late I realized that some characters recurred. And underneath, the story of the attempt at a planned, fully computerized economy and its demise.

I imagine long textbooks have explored that subject. Spufford illustrates it with just a few brush strokes.

This is a story of how a dream is born and how it dies.

The book is written as a novel, but it is definitely nonfiction, or maybe better, it is a dramatization. Yes, this is a dramatization of a usually dry and academic subject of planed economy and creating true Communism in the 50s and 60s. It starts with glorious optimism that came with the death of Stalin and the Khrushchev takeover (this is quite relative) and launch of Sputnik. With the demonstration of Sputnik, Khrushchev puts all of his hopes into matching and surpassing the Americans with the use of science and technology. The Universities flourish (if you are an engineer), information sciences are of the ground and cyberneticians are brave enough to question party s economic dogma and solve the problem of making true utopia. With this our main characters, some real people, some emagined embark to make this dream come true. The story follows them from their graduation to the end of their careers in the 80s.

Unfortunately the reality was not cooperating, and by this the party apparatchiks were dragging their feet and obsessed with their own self interest and advancement in the party. The Author manged to present the realities of life in the Soviet union in a novel way, that appeals to way more people than any academic paper can. Of course he could not write a strictly linear story and he had to take a number of detours to explain some larger events and harsh truths and would come back to his characters to hammer the point in.

This was an interesting read, that had me thinking for a long while I was reading a historic, or alternate history novel. I was confused on this point for good first 100+ pages. Anyway, if by any chance you are interested into taking a nosedive into this weird topic I recommend "From Newspeak to Cyberspeak" and "How Not to Network a Nation", but these are a bit dry.

This book is pretty unique, both in style and topic, and almost certainly not for everyone. But if you're in that weird niche of people seriously fascinated by the intersection of technology and high politics, it is a unique read you'll remember for a long time.

You can follow up afterwards by reading the Red Plenty Seminar from Crooked Timber, featuring the best serious analysis of "the optimization problem" that I've ever seen, as well as lots of other interesting material.