This review contains Spoilers. Sod off and read the book first if you can’t stand any.
I enjoyed reading this book quite a bit. I have been a fan of the author’s work for some time now, mostly because I followed his blog religiously for an year or so. I’ve had the good fortune of meeting him too, several times, albeit very briefly, but I digress.
I was in a bit of a tussle coming to terms with the ending of the book. I was expecting a a Big Finish (with a capital B, suggesting a mind-boggling and intense climax, not to be confused with a large Scandinavian gentleman), an imaginative twist, perhaps. Heck, I don’t know what I was expecting, but I do remember feeling a little underwhelmed at first.
But then I thought things through for a bit (I should do that more often,) and I realized it didn’t need anything of that sort.
Here we have Patrick Udo, the protagonist, simply passing on a story. He is trying to recall things exactly as they happened. He is trying to document things realistically without giving in to bursts of hyperbole. Patrick Udo is not writing a novel, so it’s only fair that Yudhanjaya isn’t trying to, either. I am in no way suggesting that the author is not making an effort. He is simply Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to Julius Common’s Jesus.
Common himself is a man larger than life. Eccentric and a little mysterious in his ways, he is, and his reality distortion field is alluded to more than once. I can think of a few Silicon Valley billionaires who might have inspired this character. He is scarred, and holds a few secrets of his own. He is a man with a vision, and for him, the ends justify the means.
His creation, the Number, is a for him the foundation of a utopia. Simply put, it’s a system that assigns a value to each human being based on a host of criteria such as their contributions to society, their social connections, their influence etc. Things that are grounds for discrimination in the world today — such as race, religion, wealth — are immaterial in Common’s world. A Gay Black artist could command the same level of influence as a White American WallStreeter, for instance.
On the surface, it’s easy to see this as an ideal society. People are rewarded for making the right connections, and doing good deeds. They’re incentivized to lead better lives, in every way.
But, as they say, one man’s Utopia is another’s dystopia. For all its promise, what the Number simply does is strip away a whole lot of dysfunctional societal hierarchies, and install one all-encompassing hierarchy in their place. And like all such structures, the Number enables the emergence of haves, have-nots, and a whole lot of others in between. It is a sobering reminder that there will always be one yardstick or another which dictates the value of a human life, and however accurate it may be, that it always brings out the worst in us. The North-South divide is very much prevalent in a world dominated by Common’s number, the only difference is that the yardstick is no longer economic.
Patrick has a front raw seat as all this unravels, and he is very much a willing participant in this journey, although he has to assure himself ever so often that they (ie, NumberCorp) are the “good guys.” He is unsure at times, of course, mostly in hindsight, which is when such gems like the following sentence materialize in his text: “It’s remarkable what you can get used to doing for a living when you know the alternative is to starve.”
Here’s one thing that threw me off. The book doesn’t paint a clear picture of where technology stands in this world. Of course, we know from passing references that Facebook, Instagram, Google Maps and Android phones still exist. We also know that designer babies are a thing and mechanical body parts are common. But the overall infrastructure is still in a bit of a haze. I can surely consider the possibility of the author deciding that extensive world building would have been a futile exercise, but I for one would have enjoyed a bit more detail.
But then again, it helped to see the world through Patrick’s eyes. He is not telling this story to someone from the past, like you and I, but to a reader in the future. There’s no reason for him to break down in substantial detail what the tech landscape looked like when these events took place. His audience would already know.
I loved the occasional Sri-Lankanisms being thrown in, like godayata magic, (which I didn’t see coming at all. Well done, Yudhanjaya!) and the references to various places and events in Sri Lanka. It was a little disheartening to see that our politicians a decade-and-a-half away would still be as corrupt as they are now, but that’s a minor concern.
I did have a bit of a chuckle when I happened upon the phrase, “hardened cybercriminals.”
Numbercaste reads like a cautious look at a world that does not seem to be too far away from actually manifesting itself. Even today, we let algorithms choose our news for us. And contrary to that old adage, we don’t choose our friends anymore. It’s doesn’t seem too distant that we’d let algorithms define everything imaginable, including our own worth or the lack of it, for us, for better or for worse.
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