The Lost Cause is a (mildly) dystopian story set 30 years in the future. Climate change has begun radically altering human habitation: entire cities have been moved inland in response to rising waters. Clean energy projects are everywhere, and disaster relief has become the occupation of millions of people. These so-called Green New Deal projects were begun in earnest in the United States under a progressive president, but now a reactionary is in charge, and he wants to reverse everything.

He has the support of a mostly older minority still wearing MAGA hats, a rather on-the-nose portrayal of the continuing political polarization we are seeing now. Brooks Palazzo is a high school student in Burbank living with his reactionary grandfather. Brooks is a typical Doctorow protagonist: young, enthusiastic, and almost stereotypically progressive. When he speaks it feels like the author is giving a speech about one of his many passionate interests, often accompanied by equally passionate discussions (or arguments) with the other characters.

But it's hard to dislike the kid because his heart is in the right place. When his grandfather dies, he inherits the house, which becomes the focus of a series of events. First, he gets housemates, then he offers shelter to refugees and becomes involved in their struggles. This sets off an increasingly catastrophic spiral, complete with a series of fires with eventually threaten not only his neighborhood but the whole of Burbank. After all of the political talk, Doctorow demonstrates real skill in ratcheting up the action.

Two new dystopian near-future science-fiction novels by well-loved North American authors could hardly be more different.

Ultimately one of the most depressing books of 2023. Imagine if the Democrats are able to implement a progressive agenda and defend it for more than a decade, working to mitigate climate change and fight for workers rights. Then imagine that plenty of people are still unhappy, and watch how the money and anger break down even the smallest of improvements with horrific speed. Doctorow doesn't see much hope in our future, and wants to be sure his readers understand why. Didactic and thin on plot, this is still a good read for those who like their political analysis with characters and love stories.

I…really can’t think of anything smart to say about this one. It’s an excellent, compulsive read, like pretty much everything Doctorow writes; it paints a very believable picture of the future, not just in terms of climate disaster but in the kind of tech and institutions likely to come into being in the next few decades (a fair bit of it is clearly based or inspired by things that exist now). It took a long time for me to finish it – I read it very slowly, because it tackles a lot of heavy, depressing, hard-to-deal-with topics head-on, and there were a lot of days I couldn’t deal with that, or didn’t want to.

Which makes me part of the problem, I guess: a significant part of Lost Cause is a desperate plea for people to start acting, to stop sticking their heads in the sand and face what’s coming. But this is Doctorow, which means it’s less moralising and a lot more practical, giving examples via fiction of what humanity is going to have to deal with and exploring how to deal with those things. I can see some readers being miffed that this is, in a lot of ways, kind of a case study rather than a novel – but personally I think it does great as a novel. This is a compulsive, fast-paced story that just happens to also be something of an instruction manual for surviving the future, particularly for middle-class white people who haven’t been seriously affected by climate change yet, who can go days or weeks without thinking about it at all. It’s a wake-up call to the reality of the situation, and an incisive manifesto on how not only is giving up not an option, there’s no reason to be hopeless; there’s so much that can be done, if we just get moving and do it.

I do think the blurb/tagline are misleading though: this really isn’t a novel of ‘reconciliation’ between the MAGA types and the rest of us. If anything, the conclusion Lost Cause comes to is that we just have to go on despite, around, and if necessary through them.

Despite all the Big Scary Topics, I’d call this a good read – I enjoyed it, it gave me plenty to think about (which I like), and it made me hopeful; besides which, it’s Doctorow, so the writing is super readable and the characters are all so real they feel like they’re about to walk off the page. I’d definitely recommend it for people scared of how big and unstoppable climate change feels – it was a relief to see someone say ‘this is how we get through it’ in a practical and approachable, easy-to-understand way. And I imagine a lot of others will feel the same!

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing an advance copy in exchange for honest feedback.

"The Lost Cause" by Cory Doctorow is a fast-paced, action-packed novel set in a near-future United States grappling with climate change's devastating effects. The story follows a group of scrappy, resourceful characters trying to navigate a world where political divisions, environmental disasters, and economic collapse are tearing apart. The writing is sharp, the characters are engaging, and the plot twists will keep you guessing until the very end. It's a thrilling, thought-provoking read that will leave you thinking about the future of our planet and the power of the human spirit to overcome adversity. Highly recommended for fans of speculative fiction and anyone who wants to explore the big questions of our time!

In many ways this book is Doctorow meets Kim Stanley Robinson. The Lost Cause shows a post Climate Crisis world where an aggressive Green New Deal has passed and people are banding together to save as many lives and as much of the planet as possible. People are, but not all people. Some folks persist in believing that all of the problems they see around them are just another in a long line of liberal myths. Some other folks know what is happening but use their vast wealth and violence to try and maintain the great privileges they have been accustomed to.

As in so much of Doctorow's work, there is cause to be hopeful. A group of mainly young, tech-savvy, diverse folks band together to fight the oligarchs and elderly refuseniks who oppose progress. More importantly, they band together to fight for each other. This is a very hopeful novel and one that I truly hope is read by as many people as possible.

My thanks to NetGalley for making an eARC of this book available to me.

Disturbing and not a little bit depressing, this book looks at our future a couple of decades out and how recent events have continued to reshape our world and culture. Told from the point of view of a young adult who is trying to do his best to make the world more livable (and welcoming to all), and how his beliefs clash with those of his grandfather's generation. While it does end on a somewhat more positive point, it still has to leave us wondering how we will ever come to something closer to peace and harmony.

At the beginning I was really loving this - the writing and the way that the world had developed in this near-future US were interesting. The main character was a little annoying at times, but honestly age appropriate. But in terms of the plot and pacing, it left a little to be desired for me. Some parts dragged a little or seemed superfluous; the climax was.. anticlimactic. I would probably read more from this author in the future, but not going to prioritize.

I recently started requesting galleys at Net Galley. It's a site where you can download and read books before they are published in return for giving an honest review. It helps publishers to build reviews for books before they come out. I am a big fan of Cory Doctorow and requested to read The Lost Cause, due to be published on November 14. I finished it today, so here is my brief review.

The story takes place about thirty years in our future. Climate change has continued to wreak havoc on the world. A new generation has grown up knowing nothing of a time before climate change. There has been a two-term president who signed into law a Green New Deal that has started to address the issues of climate change for real. This is followed by a less effective president of the same party and then a new president after who starts to turn things back. This is where the story begins

The protagonist is a young man named Brooks just graduating high school whose idealist parents died in pandemic when he was eight. He shares their ideals. His grandfather does not. He belongs to a Maga Club whose members are opposed to all the changes and love the new president. When internally displaced migrants from another city come to Brooks' hometown of Burbank, Brooks and his friends clash with the Maga Club folks.

I really enjoyed this book. It had some cheesy romance, a little bit of political polemics, a whole lot of liberal ideals, and even some food descriptions that made my mouth water. It shows a view of how we might overcome climate change in the near future despite people who deny it happening and clinging to old ways. Both fun and political. One of the author's better books.

My rating: 4/5

Cory Doctorow’s latest science fiction novel, THE LOST CAUSE, is a book about both the politics and the technics of responding to climate change. The novel is set in the near future, perhaps thirty years from now, in Burbank, California. Brooks, the narrator and protagonist, is a 19-year-old young white man, a high school graduate, who inherits a private house when his grandfather passes away. The grandfather, who raised Brooks after his parents died when he was 8, was a MAGA climate change denier; the two always argued. Now Brooks is entirely on his own.

The political background to the novel is important. In the time between our actual moment and the present of the novel, global warming has only become much worse than it is now. A progressive US President has passed comprehensive Green New Deal legislation, guaranteeing jobs and a reasonable income for all. The jobs guarantee mostly takes the form of temporary employment involving all sorts of environmental remediation. Brooks and his friends do not worry about long-term careers; they take these short-term jobs one after another, working hard but knowing not only that they are they economically secure, but also that their work offers our only hope for averting worldwide catastrophe.

Things are already really bad, with areas of the United States and other countries rendered uninhabitable due to heat, drought, and chemical pollution, and loads of people forced out of their homes and neighborhoods due to unviable conditions. The only hope these refugees have is to rely upon the goodwill of strangers: people in other regions who agree to take them in. In places like Southern California that are still functional for the time being, a lot of construction work is necessary, both to house these refugees, and to remediate and replace environmentally unviable practices and structures.

Brooks invites refugees into his home (which is the kind of 20th-century private residence that is way too big to house just a single person or small family), and eventually tears his house down in order to build a multiple-residence structure instead (a four-story building with two apartments big enough for a family on each floor). This can be done quickly and cheaply, thanks to advances in building technology: modular, prefabricated parts that are resilient and inexpensive, and easy enough to assemble together that the entire four-story building can be constructed by a crew of 15 people or so in less than a week. Doctorow, as is his wont, goes through all the technical details at almost excruciating length. Such is not my favorite sort of writing; but I think that it is justified here, because Doctorow needs to make the point (and succeeds in making it) that this is not fantasy, but something that will soon (if not quite yet) be realistic on a technological level. He convinces the reader that, in our society today, we have the expertise and the resources (without straining the environment yet further) to do things like this.

Even at best, Doctorow tells us, this is not a quick solution to climate change, nor even a quick fix for immediate emergency problems. It is rather an ongoing process, that Brooks and his friends can expect to continue for their entire lives. We are not given anything like utopia, but Doctorow’s vision is nonetheless hopeful rather than grim. The extensive Green New Deal provisions in the near-future of the novel are what make this sort of vision viable (in a way that “market-based solutions” are not). To avert climate catastrophe will require a lot of hard work, but in a way that involves feelings of satisfaction and solidarity. The alternative (deepening disruption of the climate) is too horrible to consider.

The point of Doctorow’s novel is that there are no technological obstacles to such relative improvement (alleviation and remediation, if not complete reversal of global warming and widespread pollution). Rather, the obstacles are political. Brooks and his cohort in general seem both eager and idealistic. They know that the danger of climate change is undeniable, but that responses are available that are not futile. The problem is that there are way too many people who are trying to stop them.

The plutes (plutocrats) and their allies seek to block the necessary changes, because they don’t want to give up their privileges, their wealth, and their power. They think that they can wait out the climate disasters, with their power and money intact, regardless of what happens to everyone else. We meet them in the novel in the form of the Flotilla, a seasteading enterprise of the sort advocated by extreme libertarians; people live on ships they own, sized from small vessels to aircraft carriers, that remain more than 12 miles from shore in order to escape the juristiction of the US or any other government. This has its attractive side, if you are one of the owners — but not if you are one of the workers keeping those ships running, or one of the multitude who cannot find a place upon them. China Mieville has written at length about these false paradises; Doctorow only gives them a subordinate focus, but shows well enough how they can only be the solution for a small privileged class.

The more immediate danger faced by Brooks and his friends is that of the MAGAs — mostly older white men, middle class and well-to-do. who are embittered about the changes that they see around them, and which threaten their sense of superiority. Brooks’ grandfather dies early in the book; but all his cronies are still around, and they have automobiles (one of the luxuries they refuse to give up), not to mention weapons (AK-15s and the like) to enforce their anger. They obstruct change in any way they can. from swarming political meetings in order to outshout their opponents, to seizing public spaces in order to enforce what they consider to be their property rights, to bombing government buildings, to making “citizens’ arrests” of Brooks and his friends in order to stop them from building a place to house refugees. They are aided behind the scenes by the plutes, who employ lawyers invoking spurious grounds to crack down on new housing construction and other climate alleviation procedures.

The novel has something of a repetitive structure. Each time Brooks and his friends are in the process of doing something useful, the MAGAs show up to stop them. This happens again and again, in nearly every chapter. It is frustrating and perhaps a bit repetitious, but Doctorow is right to compose the novel in this way, because it reinforces his double points: first, that even at the best, climate remediation and rights for climate refugees will involve extensive difficulties; and second, that political divisions in the US are so severe and extreme at this point, that any good faith attempt to actually alleviate climate conditions can easily lead us to the brink of civil war.

Doctorow offers no good solutions for countering the MAGAs; they are almost certainly a minority, but they have money and guns, and backers among the rich and within the media. No matter what we do, they will not go away. Doctorow even bends over backwards to get us to understand that these people are not just somehow intrinsically evil. They have their own desires and demands, which make sense to them; they have their own vision of the good life which they used to have, and which they are not wrong to see as slipping away. (If your sense of a fulfilling life includes an enormous mansion and a gas-guzzling vehicle that allows you to go anywhere and everywhere without obstruction, then you may well find the new environmental constraints to be a limit upon your freedom; and you will probably blame young people and foreigners and people of color for your torment). Brooks, to his credit, tries to understand where they are coming from; and Doctorow pushes the point that, if we simply demonize these people, we run the risk of becoming as vicious and intolerant as they are.

I could probably go on at considerably more length detailing the ins and outs of all these situations, and tracing how thoughtful the novel is in facing them frankly, rather than pushing them under the carpet or simply arguing them away. But I think I have done enough to explain what is at stake. The novel is at once remarkably optimistic, since it shows us ways that we might really be able to alleviate the oncoming disaster of global warming and its accompanying dangers. But at the same time, it also leaves me (or leaves a side of me) in despair, because it refuses to diminish the dangers and near-impossibilities that we face. I will not spoil the novel’s conclusion here, but only say that it powerfully balances the triumph of Brooks and his friends with an ecological disaster that they could never have imagined.

AuthorSteven Shaviro
Posted on November 6, 2023
CategoriesBooks, Politics

The full-frontal assault of climate change is being felt in the United States in the 2050s. Even though formidable damage mitigation plans are in place, the wrath of nature is felt throughout the country and displacing populace in the thousands. Nineteen-year-old Brooks Palazzo is intent on doing his best bit to make both Burbank, his hometown, and America that bit a better place. Inheriting a house from his grumpy and obnoxiously mannered grandfather (who also happens to be an incorrigible right wing “maga” advocate), Brooks, plans to convert his house into a refugee camp for displaced people streaming into Burbank. However, the friends of his “Gramp,” are determined to stop the influx of ‘parasitical’ refugees who may tarnish the image and reputation of Burbank.

Cory Doctorow’s “The Lost Cause,” a climate change Dystopia, even though thought provoking is also cliched. Doctorow takes potshots at the likes of Peter Thiel and the entrepreneur’s belief in the singularly novel and controversial concept of ‘sea-steading’, (there is a huge flotilla made up of remodeled carriers and fighter jets that offer accommodation and entertainment in abundance), when not deriding geriatrics in red caps spewing incendiary xenophobic stuff and having as their bible a violent, graphic and gory fiction titled Those Who Tread The Kine. Written by Theodore Sutton, the tome with a line-art drawing of the thrusting prow of a huge ship on its cover,

Praised by the likes of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Vinod Khosla, and Richard Ellison (amongst others), Those Who Tread The Kine, takes an unabashed potshot against all those who are opposed to space colonisation, gated community advocates, and seasteaders. Undeterred by such opposition, Brooks and his exuberant group of friends do everything possible to put paid to the hopes of AR-15 wielding old men and their generously paid lawyers of closing Burbank to the newcomers.

Fast, breezy, funny in places and hard hitting, The Lost Cause is more a manifesto of, for and by the Left than a simple work of fiction. In fact, the reader gets the impression that the views of Brooks Palazzo are nothing but the superimposed opinion of the author on his protagonist. And this is where the cliched bit comes into play. At times, the concentration is more on bashing the Right and asserting the rabid nature of its extreme opinions, than on the core premise of the book, which is combating the perils of global warming.

The Lost Cause – An ambivalent read.

The Lost Cause is published by the Tor Publishing Group and will be available on sale beginning 14 November 2024.

Thank You Net Galley for the Advance Review Copy!

I'm not exactly sure how to respond to this novel. Cory Doctorow is one of the best YA SF authors out there and I love his world-building and characters, but I just felt exhausted reading The Lost Cause. Not in a bad way, necessarily, but in a way that left me just having a feeling of sadness and weariness. I get what he is trying to do with this book. It sort of reminds me of some of the younger teachers in the classroom who want to hit the kids over the head with truth bombs that are very important, but the impact isn't always what the teacher wants, because it's either not there at all, or it wasn't as impactful as initially supposed.

Brooks is a strong character who went through a lot, but at times I just found myself wanting to get to the next part to see what would happen. I am 100% certain that there is a strong audience for this book, but I just think my reading head was in a different space. It's all good. It will do well and kids will love it.

An earnest, albeit depressing, look at climate change, thirty years down the road, and the political upheaval at play in a world no more divided than what what we have in place today.

As tensions rise to the critical point, measures put in place by a ‘Green New Deal’- favoring president set the tone for the ‘first generation in a century that did not grow up fearing for the future.’ This group of idealistic young people, (some of them, including our main protagonist, not yet out of their teens), are not afraid to take action - from rolling up their sleeves and participating in the rebuild of lost coastal cities on higher ground inland, to civil resistance of the ideologies of a fiercely-belligerent red-cap Maga party (whose proponents may or may not be preparing for a violent civil war).

Brooks Palazzo is our squeaky-voiced self-proclaimed bi-sexual nineteen-year-old anti-hero. Armed with the resources of a recent inheritance, Brook’s battle to do the right thing, for the environment and the new world, is complicated, thoughtful, conscientious - and peppered with the romantic firings of youth. Firings which are strange, perhaps, as, despite Brook’s orientation, they are restricted to commandeering militant-type spiky females, all of whom appear quite taken with our unlikely hero.

An interesting read, bogged down in places, but nonetheless extremely well-considered and almost too believable, this is a good read for those who worry about the path we’re on, and an eye-opener for those (if there are any who fit this mold out there), who still sleep well at night.

A great big thank you to #Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley, Tor Books, and Cory Doctorow for this eARC of The Lost Cause.

As a longtime fan of Cory Doctorow, one of my constant refrains is to both bless and curse his name at how incredibly frightening his views of a possible future are and how incredibly plausible. From the benign humorous asides between characters, to the future of stand up comedy's distribution, to possibly civilization-ending greed and fear, so many of his imaginings land squarely in the 'yes, this could absolutely happen/is happening' realm.

Once again, Mr. Doctorow his a winner with The Lost Cause. Some of his character development fell a little flat, but as someone who works with students the same age as our protagonist daily, this also rang true - not that older teens & young adults are flat, 2-D persons, but that so much of how they perform their identities can come off as such as they wrestle with who and how they are in this world. Well done Mr. Doctorow.

Between the ongoing influence of Trumpism in national, state and local politics, plus the noticeable uptick in extreme weather events in just the last year alone, Doctorow's "The Lost Cause" ended up packing a lot more punch than I anticipated. His America is one where extreme weather of all sorts has not only become the norm, but acceptance of and adjustment to this reality has become an accepted fact of life. A fact of life, that is, save for a segment of the country that is not only overwhelmingly older and whiter but who view much of their reality is a mere hoax, and treats all aforementioned mitigation efforts as a dangerous path that the country needs to be steered off of by all means possible. It feels like a pretty real possibility for what may be in store in the future, to a point where I found myself wrestling with a little bit of reading-induced anxiety at points.

The book admittedly lagged in spots. Mainly, the dialogue tended to get a bit stilted in places, or a character would speak for a while, and it would suddenly turn from a monologue into a run-on lecture. But neither one was an excessive issue - and it could also be that I'm just not as used to young adult-level writing. And overall, both were saved by the strength of the aforementioned world building, plus an overall tone that was hopeful, but also realistic about certain work that needs to be done.

Overall, I enjoyed my first Doctorow. And with its themes that feel as immediately relevant as can possibly be, "The Lost Cause" seems like it would make an immediate rock-solid addition to any library's young adult collection.

There have been a number of books over the last few years engaging with the question of what a post-climate-emergency world will look like; I think of The Ministry for the Future, A Half-Built Garden, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047, and Doctorow's own Walkaway. Compared to those, this feels like it's aimed at a fundamentally different audience, specifically at the same younger audience that Little Brother was. Maybe it's because I read Little Brother when I was a teenager and I'm rather older now, and maybe it's because I've read more political philosophy now, but I found the reading experience of this book deeply frustrating, which was a shame because I think there's a lot of really great worldbuilding in here and another editing pass might have been all it needed.

First, the good. While the above books tended to look more at technological, financial, and process aspects of societal change, The Lost Causes really dives deep into cultural aspects, and I think it's all the stronger for that. I totally believe Doctorow's imaginings of what a Maga cultural movement (now reduced to a proper noun, not an acronym, and stripped of any present-day political figures) might look like and how people who are today protesting against basic science with things like pandemic management might be behaving when the planet is on fire. I liked the depiction of the psychology of these movements, the refusal to either play up their cool factor or downplay the very real damage they do. These days, this is a group of people that statistically died at a higher rate in COVID due to rejection of masks and vaccines; of course they're going to be doing themselves harm from climate reasons in the future.

Additionally, I have a particular interest in the way that technology terminology does or does not date a book; by referring to all electronics as just "screens," Doctorow does a good job of making them timeless, acknowledging that they're increasingly become interchangeable. By avoiding reference to specific messaging platforms or social media feeds (and constructing a world in which social media seems to be federated), this feels like it isn't going to be immediately out of date.

But then we get to my complaints, which are largely about characterisation and dialogue. Our protagonist is Brooks, an 18/19 year old who is just graduating high school at the start of the book. He refers to himself as queer/pansexual, but then proceeds to effectively exclusively get horny for the attractive young women in his life (to the point where every time a new one of them is introduced, there's an evaluation of whether or not they are a romantic prospect); this isn't inherently a problem, except that the way his desire to be around those women for romantic purposes interacts with his desire to be around them for activism purposes (and the fact that there's a runner about him mixing up Ethiopians and Eritreans) makes the activism feel weirdly performative. Brooks is impulsive, which again is fine in theory, but it feels more like Doctorow is applying characteristics to him to demonstrate immaturity rather than having a proper understanding of his mind. My comparison here is Marcus Yallow, the protagonist of Little Brother, who I remember reading and loving when I was about the age that he was in the story. In comparison, Brooks feels a little more thinly and inconsistently characterised, his traumatic history not always perfectly integrated with the rest of his character. The result of this was that he just annoyed me, and I didn't like him enough for that to be a motivation to continue reading.

Brooks's 2-3 attractive female friends are given various degrees of Manic Pixie Dreamgirl (I don't think I can come up with a proper description of the personality of the one that eventually becomes his partner, apart from "flawless, always correct badass") and seem to serve the role of conversation partner for didactic dialogue in which Doctorow can hammer out ideas and have Brooks either explain or be explained to. I'm certainly not opposed to a didactic dialogue in a fiction novel (hell, Anathem is one of my favourite novels), but I found that the integration of this with romantic interactions served to weaken both. The conversation ended up feeling stilted, artificial, and entirely unlike a 19-year-old, and so weakened both the romantic connections and the ability to convey the ideas.

I've not mentioned the plot much here, and that's because there wasn't a huge amount. I'm also not sure that there needed to be: there was just enough to hang the ideas on, and plenty of danger to keep up a sense of tension at the requisite moments. This book seems like it wants to do for climate change what Little Brother did for cybersecurity, and I think it might, though as I am no longer of the age I was when I read that book, I can't really know for sure. If I were recommending a climate crisis book to a teenager, I very well might recommend this one. However, if I was recommending one to an adult, I think I would be more likely to recommend Doctorow's other similar work, Walkaway. This was a shame; I nearly DNF'ed the book at 45% of the way through out of frustration at the dialogue, but kept going because I wanted to like it so much. This book has some great ideas in places that we as a society need to have great ideas, and so I pushed through.

Hello, this book is what every inhabitant of this planet needs to read right now. It isn’t too much over the top with the planet dying, but holy cow CD did it again. This books was phenomenal.

I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.