Attack Surface

May 1, 2020

Hoisting aloft his many Locus, Campbell, and Prometheus awards, Doctorow returns with the story of brilliant Masha Maximow, who works for a transnational cybersecurity firm, creating the means for repressive regimes to spy on its dissidents. Sometimes (for fun) she helps the dissidents, too, but the damage she does has suddenly come close to home, and she's got choices. With a 125,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2020
Doctorow returns to the dystopian, all-too-near future of Little Brother for this gripping cyberthriller. Doctorow’s potty-mouthed protagonist, Masha Maximow, a technological wunderkind fans will recognize from the earlier novels, is morally conflicted: at her high-powered, high-paying job with Xoth Intelligence, a gigantic cybersecurity firm, she uses her hacking skills to help malignant regimes spy on dissidents, while in her free time she helps the same dissenters escape the regimes’ repressive wrath. The narrative alternates between flashbacks to her various adventures with Xoth and its rival Zyz, and her present-day involvement with a group of San Francisco radicals, as Masha gradually learns the price for all the luxury that spying on people has provided her. In Doctorow’s chilling world, technological marvels turn on their users on a dime: the indispensable cellphone annihilates privacy, the self-driving car goes berserk and kills, and the internet is the world’s most powerful surveillance tool. Doctorow lays the tech-talk on a bit thick, which may overwhelm a casual reader, but the high stakes and believable world keep the pages turning. Doctorow’s fans will be pleased.

Starred review from August 1, 2020
This adult follow-up to Doctorow's YA Little Brother novels (starting with Little Brother, 2008) shifts perspective from the idealist Marcus Yallow to his sometime antagonist, sometime friend Masha Maximow. Masha has spent her life compartmentalizing, keeping her work as a surveillance contractor to repressive regimes separate from her friendship with?and clandestine support for?people attempting to hide from said regimes. When a protest in the Eastern Bloc country Masha works in goes awry due to her interventions, she is let go from her job, and her carefully crafted internal compartments begin breaking down. The narrative leaps back and forth between Masha's present, as she returns to Oakland and attempts to help a friend evade police surveillance, and her past as a teen wunderkind for the DHS and contractor under the chilly and possibly psychotic Carrie Johnstone. Doctorow explores his earlier novels' idealism and anti-authoritarian politics from the deeply conflicted point of view of someone on the inside. He remains a strong and passionate storyteller, capturing all of Masha's internal and external conflicts while also debating the real-world concerns of surveillance, counter-surveillance, and the limits of both. Highly recommended for those interested in near-future sf with a politically aware bent.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)