I was really impressed with 'Intrusion'. The near-future setting was excellently drawn and extremely thought-provoking. On the one hand, I found the casual loss of civil liberties and oppressive state protectiveness towards women and children convincing. On the other hand, I had the horrible feeling that this was the best case scenario; it felt like a legacy of Blair and Brown, not of the Coalition's assault on the NHS. (Indeed the government in confirmed to be Labour-led.) Although 'Intrusion' reads like a dystopian narrative, it also evokes a stable UK with a social safety net and free healthcare. A worse scenario would retain the unrelenting government surveillance and perpetual war on terrorism, whilst public services are shredded by 'free' markets. Moreover, the world of 'Intrusion' has clearly got to grips with climate change, largely using GM organisms and carpeting the Sahara desert with solar panels. On these bases, it looks bad but a lot better than the future that the UK is actually heading for.

So this novel made me confront my own ambivalence; is the total sacrifice of civil liberties inevitable in order to address climate change? Have we left it so late to reduce emissions that the only remotely effective policies would have to be enforced by an oppressive state? Moreover, would you prefer to have your privacy invaded and liberty curtailed on the basis of state welfarism or market forces? And that old favourite: to what extent does material comfort compensate for loss of privacy and freedom? To what extent do we even notice the loss of something as ill-defined as freedom? The 21st century UK of CCTV and PRISM et al has shambled carelessly into a 1984-style surveillance society, but is it worth worrying about?

The wonderful thing about 'Intrusion' is that it has no easy answers whatsoever. At various points, characters discuss their angles on civil liberty, based on theory (nice name-checking of Foucault, for example) and experience (of police profiling especially), but never come to firm conclusions. This of course rings much truer than such discussions leading to absolute agreement on a clear answer - who has ever had that experience? I also found the feeling of individual helplessness in the face of monolithic institutions and their procedures viscerally convincing. 'Intrusion' reminded me the extent to which technology exacerbates this helplessness. A government algorithm finds some pattern in your movements and net use, automatically tagging you as suspect. How does one argue with that? Is it better or worse than human civil servants arbitrarily suspecting groups of people, for their behaviour or some other characteristic, such as ethnicity? Naturally, algorithms are ultimately written and controlled by humans, so have no inherent independence, let alone objectivity. Perhaps, though, they foster the development of that dangerous mindset of deferring individual judgement, "I was just doing my job", which has led to so many atrocities in the past.

Wow, I'm three paragraphs in without making any reference to what 'Intrusion' is actually about. Briefly, a family in near future London are expecting a second child. The mother, named Hope, doesn't wish to take 'the fix', a GM medicine that corrects various potential genetic defects in a foetus. She cannot articulate why she refuses this even to herself, incurring a mixture of suspicion, anger, and bafflement. The small act, of refusing to take a pill that isn't even technically compulsory, triggers a fascinating escalation of events. Whilst I was very invested in the fate of Hope and her family, the wider implications and bigger questions raised by the story made it exceptional. For instance, issues around the future of feminism, the intersection of women's rights and children's rights, and bodily autonomy.

There are many other issues I could mention (the role of science in politics! the nature of criticism!). Rather than rambling further, though, I'll conclude by noting that it is a timely, subtle, well-written, and intelligent novel. I highly recommend it, especially if you feel stifled by the slew of ephemeral news headlines and want to contemplate the implications of trends in 21st century society in more depth.

(Unrelated footnote: I would have lost this entire review by inadvertent clicking, were it not for the Lazarus extension for chrome. SO glad I installed that.) ( )

I have a hard time rating this book. I found the narrative generally slow and a bit boring. It didn't keep my interest for more than a page or two at a time.

That said, the ideas that the book deals with are well illustrated and engaging. I don't know if the slow, often boring plot was a necessary side effect of the in-depth analysis and rich world building that help paint a very scary, and extremely plausible view of the future. The dystopian utopia that the characters live in and how it is contrasted with the other side of their "Warm War" shows a lot of things that are on the way to very wrong in our society.

This is, of course, the goal of great sci-fi: paint a picture of a world gone wrong to throw our current world in stark relief and highlight the things that are wrong or going wrong today.

Intrusion does that very well. It's just not that engaging to read (until the last 50 pages).

If you have the time, read it for the ideas, themes and analysis, but don't expect much from the plot. ( )

This novel follows a couple who are expecting their second child through a dystopian, "day after tomorrow" Britain where genetic engineering is commonplace, but an intrusive state takes it upon itself to draw the worst conclusions from legitimate dissent. There is a type of person - at least, here in the UK - who moans about "the nanny state" and its interventions, real or imagined, in people's everyday lives. But these are also the sort of people who, following any instance of child abuse or neglect, will loudly moan "Why didn't the authorities DO anything???" The world of "Intrusion" shows the logical end point where the state takes the Precautionary Principle to its logical ends.

In a departure from previous books, MacLeod focusses in on the domestic life of Hope and Hugh, and their son Nick. This focus on the personal is something different for MacLeod, but it is the only way this story could have been told. Hope is expecting their second child, and comes under pressure to take "the fix": a one-time bioengineered pill that will fix any genetic defect in her unborn child, But she resents not being able to take that decision for herself. Exemptions for those with faith-based objections exist; but none for "mere" conscience. Parents of "Natural Kids" can complain about the possibility of an unfixed child mixing with their unfixed children, but no-one can complain about their faith-based exemptions posing the same risk, because their faith provides a cast-iron defence again criticism. Presumably, their faith provides an adequate shield for their own kids, whilst the idea that their kids might pose a threat to other Natural Kids from atheistic parents is unthinkable, because that would be religious discrimination.

Through a series of chance encounters, Hope becomes a focus for a range of dissidents. Her attempts to invoke the law amount to nothing; the political process equally offers her no relief. Matters are complicated when her husband and son are shown to possibly have a rare genetic trait connected to the range and depth of their perception, which the fix would remove from their unborn child.

All this is played out against a society where mothers are "protected" against health risks, such as passive smoking, alcohol or caffeine consumption by a state which is prepared to sanction interventions against the slightest infringements. This becomes positively Orwellian when these concerns interact with the ongoing war on terrorism; a shadowy group known as Naxal, emerging from South Asia, appears to be opposed to the very concept of "civilization", and the state is accordingly exercised to root out not only support for Naxal, but any suggestion or questioning that the state itself may be wrong in its attitude towards dissent.

The result is a dystopia that is all too recognisable. MacLeod may have departed from his usual subject and focussed intimately on one family, but his themes and political questioning are what we have come to expect. And ten chapters in, we find that this dystopia is presided over by a Labour government that has wholly embraced the trappings of a traditional socialist party, but underneath it all has a completely statist attitude to power. "Left" and "Right" are by now merely road signs.

The climax of the novel sees Hugh, the husband, fleeing London with the family for the shelter of his ancestral home, the Scottish Isle of Lewis. Here we see just how his genetic inheritance plays out and how it fares when confronted by the secret state and its organs of repression. How this conflict is resolved has some surprises.

I burnt through this novel in a few days; its world is so familiar, so close to our own but only separated from it by a half turn, that I was anxious to see what happened next. It isn't an easy book in terms of its message - too much security can be a bad thing, and MacLeod accurately captures the unthinking hypocrisy of the public and the absurd yet inevitable results that the law can lead inevitably to. Not a comforting read, but probably MacLeod's most important novel to date. ( )

Disturbing look at how the nanny state could take over all aspects of life in the future.

Concerns a mother who is having second thoughts about taking 'the fix' which is a genetic cure all pill for an unborn child. Set a few years hence, Macleod covers the possibilities of surveillance in the home, monitoring of individuals and so on.

Slightly scary as I think we are part of the way there with the successive governments that we have had. ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2018/10/review-of-intrusion-by-ken-macleod.html ( )

Hope Morrison is pregnant with her 2nd child. She does not want to take 'The Fix', a safe and effective cure for genetic abnormalities in the growing fetus. Is Hope abusing her child? There are exemptions for those with religious exemptions, but Hope just wants her choice respected. In Ken MacLeod's latest near-future dystopia, Hope and her family are in for a world of hurt....

I don't respect the philosophical question here. There is no danger in 'the Fix'. This does not seem like a battle worth fighting. An insight perhaps into the mindset of anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers and creationists. I can't agree that these irrational preferences deserve the sympathetic treatment that Macleod provides. ( )

In an if-this-goes-on UK, a pregnant woman doesn’t want to take the Fix, which will correct almost all known genetic flaws. While religious objectors are excused from the requirement, her objections aren’t religious; she just doesn’t want to do it. Also, while abortion is legal during a substantial part of pregnancy, fertile women have to wear rings that monitor their exposure to alcohol, drugs, cigarettes (even secondhand), etc. and deviations or even removing the ring can lead to social services intervention. And pending legislation requiring “safe workplaces” for fertile women will make it even harder for them to work (but working from home will be exempted, of course). Torture is a normal feature of routine interrogations, but it’s all very sanitary and no one talks about it in public. Oh, and the woman’s husband and young son may have the Sight, and her unborn child may also inherit it if she doesn’t take the Fix. (Yeah, that came out of left field.) While the characters provided a recognizable if dreary portrait of people making their way under a tyrannical, well-intentioned system, I never really engaged with them as characters rather than as McLeod showing how awful and corrosive an unlimited government is even when it purports to bind itself with the rule of law. The thing I found most striking was the portrayal of serious religious belief—including Christian belief—as something considered weird by the majority of citizens; this novel could not have been written by an American and a similar American dystopia would definitely have included more official Godliness. ( )

Where is the line between public interest and personal rights? ( )

I only know Ken MacLeod through his space-opera so I wasn't quite sure what to expect here, but this was a solid story with the MacLeod trappings of technological progress and political rebellion I'd expect from him. I'd dare say he's improving with each book. ( )

"20 mins into the future" dystopia. It was OK but rather depressing - ubiquitous surveillance and monitoring of ordinary people, police "stop-and-search" powers including routine torture, paranoia and harrassment. Plus the ending was a bit too pat. ( )

The title of this novel refers to the 'Fix', a genetic 'cleanser' that does away with any abnormalities in unborn babies. Hope Morrison is an ordinary working Mum who has a young boy, and is pregnant again but she does not want to take the the Fix. If she had a 'faith' objection there would be no problem in her missing it, but since she does not, the state intrudes with the excuse of supporting the 'rights' of the unborn child. And then things start to escalate...

Along the way there are many genuinely funny elements to this book. The caricatures of a Labour MP who stands for nothing beyond his own self interest and a Marxist academic who writes about rebellion but who sold out years ago are delightful. But this novel has a heart of darkness, just like '1984'. There is no escape from the petty rules and regulations that smother freedom, and no hiding place from the ever present surveillance. Despite pretending to live in a free society, everyone knows about the 'grey' gulags and the police do what they want to suspects who are offered free trauma counseling afterwards.

Ironically, there is something different about Hope's child, which is suspected by her husband and his family in Skye, which is where Hope flees in a fruitless bid to escape. The most dystopian element in this book is the lack of an obvious fix for this moribund society, as the only ways forward seem to be either through an 'exit' that only exists in the perception of a few with the right genes or burning everything down and starting again. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2077029.html

A near-future Britain, where the state's control of ordinary citizen's lives, extrapolated from the surveillance state and the war on terror of today, has become appallingly intrusive, with the police perpetrating acts of torture on arbitrarily chosen citizens; and the Morrison family, mulling only minor disobedience over a matter of health care, find that they must flee to Scotland where the hereditary propensity to second sight seems to take on a more robust significance.

As ever with Ken MacLeod, it's intense and passionate, and given the society he has set up, the Morrisons' dilemmas feel very realistic. (Though I'm enough of an idealist to feel that the UK is in fact unlikely to slip too far towards vindictively nasty totalitarianism in the way depicted here.) My biggest problem with the book is that the two most interesting things in it happen off stage at the end - the revelation of the plan of the mysterious Naxals, who are a background presence throughout the book and don't make a direct appearance, and the epic years-long mission of Hugh Morrison's father, about which all we discover is that it happened and succeeded. So it's a little disappointing - a good read in general, but tantalising us with mind-blowing stuff happening elsewhere and elsewhen. ( )

Gripping account of a plausible near-future of a benign and terrifying nanny state in modern Britain, where gene therapy is obligatory and women are trapped in their homes because the world is too full of fetus-harming contaminants. Reads like a more grounded Bruce Sterling. There is a second strand of completely-unbelievable (but very evocative) nonsense about a mutation that lets one see tachyons and thus (?) the future woven into this, which grows to dominate the book, and then it all grinds to a halt at the conclusion with an arbitrary wrap-up tacked on the end. Compulsively readable, but structurally disappointing. ( )

It’s not giving anything away to mention this book is about the social, political and security consequences that follow Hope Morrison’s decision not to take the “Fix”, a wonder drug that if taken during pregnancy “fixes” the genes of the baby in the womb with the result that the child is born immune to a range of childhood illnesses.

I was rather disappointed with the start of this novel as it fell into the trap of any novel written with a message. The first few chapters made it feel like a book written to give a message. These chapters dealt with introducing the characters, giving some background indications of the state of technology and the global political situation, and edging the reader into the space where issues of freedom, choice and liberty could come to the fore. I won’t spoil the book by giving away specifics, but I felt the roles played by the characters were a bit stereotypical and everything was focused on setting the story up for the message and nothing included for window dressing or decoration. Sub plots do not play a significant part in this book.

Once Hope meets her local Member of Parliament at a rally for the Labour Party the book does step up a gear and the action flows much faster from there on in.

Ken wrote this book while he was Writer in Residence at the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum at Edinburgh University. As is obvious from his blog and other publications, Ken loved his work with the Genomic Forum and it was only natural that he should write a book on the subject and that he should weave in his excellent understanding of social issues and politics.

The message I took from the book was that a country that is implementing policies and laws based on good intentions in relation to childcare, health, etc… could display all the hallmarks of a totalitarian state, especially if the global socio-political environment gives rise to strong security agencies. I got a hint of Ken complaining abut the “Nanny State” and venting some irritation against the smoking ban in the UK. If I were a psychologist I’m sure I could interpret this entire novel as a lash at the UK government for banning smoking in workplaces.

I was disappointed however, to see Ken regularly using singular verbs with plural subjects in his reported speech. It doesn’t help the standard of English usage if a well regarded author reinforces sloppy grammar.

Ken was good at portraying the feeling of living in a state where the population is constantly under surveillance. While the level of technology was different his writing did remind me of when I lived in Northern Ireland during the 1970s with constant surveillance by the army and police. The interactions with the members of the security forces were particularly realistic.

I enjoyed Ken’s descriptions of Lewis. Given that the author grew up on Lewis it is obvious where he got his material and he demonstrated an intimate knowledge of the terrain and the difficulties of traversing it on foot.

Another attractive element was seeing the similarities between Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic. All the Gaelic words Ken used are pronounced the same way in Irish Gaelic, but the spellings are quite different. Also, the legend of Tir Nan Og (in Irish, “Tír na nÓg”) is obviously the same on both sides of the North Channel. If you are not familiar with the tales of Tir Nan Og you should look them up. Knowledge of these would give a better understanding of what happens at the end of the book.

The book is a good read once one gets past the initial introductions and scene setting. Despite some silly, and somewhat extraordinary decisions by the characters, the book is enjoyable. ( )

In a close future, every expecting mother is expected to take the Fix. It’s a single dose pill, free from any known side-effects, which eradicates almost all genetic defects in the baby. Positions of faith or other philosophical systems give the possibility of exception. Hope didn’t take the Fix the last time, and is now the mother of a four-year old with ADHD. But things have progressed since, and her decision not to take the pill the second time around either is raising suspicions within government and community. Especially since she won’t even claim a reason! She just doesn’t want the Fix. So, is she a mother standing up for her right to choose, or is she neglecting her unborn child?

MacLeod paints a close future dystopia where protecting mothers and children, and the scare of terrorism (embodied by the scary Naxals, modern day city burners with no agenda save to bring the world as we know it down), has created severe limitations on the rights of the individual. It’s a western world where “democracy” and “the freedom of the market” are still in place. But where a woman can’t work in a place where someone has ever smoked, where a monitor ring is keeping track of your coffee consumption, and where police can stop you to torture you in the street – as long as they inform you of your rights to counseling afterwards and make sure they sterilize the needle properly before pushing it under your fingernail. MacLeod pays great attention to detail, carefully pointing out the differences between this world and ours, keeping things on an everyday scale. It all feels very plausible.

At the core of this book is the complex moral discussion of it’s theme of course, looked at from many different angles by a diverse and interesting cast. Hope, stubborn in her refusal but inwardly on the verge of giving up. Her husband Hugh, who supports her despite not really believing in her standpoint himself. Fiona the nurse, calm voice of the official standpoint. Geena the social anthropologist who makes this a personal matter of revenge on the government. And Maya the activist, eager to make a symbol of Hope. But there are also interesting bits of bio-chemistry in here, and metaphysics and even a bit of parapsychology as things take an unexpected turn in the last third.

Well written food for thought with a tight little plot focusing on the individual case. My first encounter with MacLeod was a very positive one, and I’ll look for more of his work in the future. ( )

This is a book about possibilities and restrictions. It takes some time to get going but its vision of the near future is compelling and the intelligence of its subtext is powerful. The tragedy of it is that it is not really about a dystopia, more about a well-meaning society going badly wrong. It is the kind of work that sinks in slowly and leaves a lasting impression. It is also very Scottish, in the best kind of way. ( )