A book that feeds my computer sci-fi obsession

It's from 2004 so it fits into my time frame, sure, why not

I have been on the treadmill of starting a new job and on the traveling-distances-mill of going on vacation. Here’s a little update with my thoughts on someone else’s writing that I can use to talk about myself.

Reading The Bug

While I was hunting for science fiction about computers I compiled a list of books that seemed promising. Among them, The Bug by Ellen Ullman was the strongest candidate for actually being about computers (by my definition). Now that I have read it, I can confirm that it satisfies this little craving of mine, though still I hunger for more. The Bug is not a science fiction novel. I am tempted to say it’s historical fiction because the pre-dot-com era of corporate software feels like such a foundational period of history: that’s when the decisions were being made that would haunt our machines for eternity. And so, for a software engineer in 2023, The Bug is a psychological horror novel, approaching House of Leaves through more procedural steps.

There is an element which makes The Bug feel sci-fi adjacent to me: its precise technical language. Though it is impossible for me to read the book through the eyes of a novice, the explanations are coherent and the jargon is justified. The scenario the characters encounter is speculative only in how the technology exploits the weakness of the characters (and the corporation). The computer does not take agency for itself—which requires magic, even sci-fi plots—nor is its malice the result of chaos. This accuracy creates a framework for understanding the technology which mirrors the framework we need to understand the characters. The constructed metaphor may not be the deepest in all of science (or literary) fiction, but it is worth a read for its elegance.

Usually when I read a book with these themes I come away wishing for much more or much less: either the technology should be fully realized or just settle for magic. Either way the writer has to make the technology serve the character story. This is a balance I have found difficult in my own writing. I have an ongoing urge to write futuristic cosmic horror, as in “Regarding the Orbital Terminal Incident” [HW], though I am self-conscious of the possibility I might resort to a supernatural entity because I am unable to refine the narrative any further. On the other end of the spectrum, “Mileage” [HW] does away with character perspective entirely, presenting only a sequence of events. The limitations of that approach are self-evident.

I have come away from The Bug inspired to pursue the balance it found. Fittingly, it has fed my obsession to debug my writing.