If you remember A Song For A New Day by Sarah Pinsker, a dystopia about a pandemic (written pre-pandemic) about its effect on the music industry, We Are Satellites is another relevant book about our times. This one looks at the implications of a brain implant that is supposed to enhance humans ability to multi-task and, as a result, get even better at doing their work. Offering a familial side to such a widespread adoption, We Are Satellites is an insightful and thought provoking book.
In We Are Satellites, Pinsker offers an insight at what life would look like if a brain implant to make us highly functioning, multi-tasking humans, became available to the general public. The centre stage is taken by a family composed of two mothers, their teenage son who is the only person in his class to not have an implant, and their 10-year old daughter who is epileptic and cannot get an implant. What follows is a story about David’s struggles with his Pilot and young Sophie’s involvement in the anti-Pilot movement while their mom, Julie embraces the new technology to give herself a new edge at work and their school teacher mom, Val, decides to not engage.
On Effects on the Society
I loved Val and how understanding she was with her kids and wife. She has an opinion about the Pilots, but she is able to keep a distance from it, interacting only through her family’s experiences and her professional situations. Through her, We Are Satellites portrays what schools would become if students had Pilots to enhance their studying capabilities. Of course, Pilots are not magic so they won’t take a D student to A+ but they surely help them along towards a better grade.
In North America, high school subjects are often divided into Advance Placements, General and Remedial sections, with varying names in different school systems and countries. With Pilots, there is a more concrete divide between the kids who have Pilots and excel in school more easily and those who won’t or can’t get a Pilot due to medical reasons. While David is able to get a Pilot, his sister, Sophie will never be able to get one and there exist opportunities for bullying, enhanced further by this device. In India, we do not have such categories in classes—there is only one Math class for everyone and when I was teaching here in Canada, I found it interesting to watch the perceptions of the kids in advanced or tougher classes compared to others.
Through Julie we see the pressures on the workplace and how the ties between companies helps with the widespread adoption of Pilots. David had an interesting observation about the Pilots. Since he had one already, he knew what it would mean for his mom to get one too. With hyper awareness of surroundings, it is like nothing ever goes unnoticed.
Since the story spans a decade of the lives of the family, as the reader, I was able to see how this technology took hold in the population and its effects that no one had imagined. Pinkser put a lot of time and effort into researching biomedical devices and their regulations, and the book comes with a reading list of books that helped her with this one. I hope to read some of them and share about them in the coming months.
On the Pilot
It was heartbreaking to learn about David’s struggles with his Pilot but at the same time, without his POV, this story would not have had the same impact. What does it mean to have a brain implant? What does it feel like? Is it different for everyone? Can we even put into words how we feel while using it? The brain is a complex organ and movies like Lucy (2014) have given us a glimpse of what 100% brain power would look like. But to imagine what it would feel like, especially a malfunctioning version of it, is a whole other thing.
If you have ever done something because everyone else was doing it and then not enjoyed it as much, you know the confusion and misery it can cause. But when the stakes are much higher and there is no easy way to go back to how it used to be, what can one really do? – Quote from We Are Satellites
The Pilot in We Are Satellites reminds me a lot of our cell phones and social media. We started using them, not knowing what it would look like or maybe some of us did have some ideas of what we wanted it to look like. But it doesn’t always work that way. The anxiety, feelings of being left out, feeling guilty of the things we haven’t done yet (or books we haven’t read—see You Don’t Need To Feel Guilty About Books You Haven’t Read Yet), constant comparisons with other people, there is so much that comes with social media. And how many of these problems did we really envision encountering when we started? It means so much to me to have an honest conversation with my friends about what I experience online. But if there had been no way to express that and if no one would believe me because their experience was different, I would find it very hard to make sense of myself. Support systems and people are important no matter how much technology becomes part of our lives, and that is a message that We Are Satellites brings home.
A Note on the Cover
I love the cover for We Are Satellites and after finishing the book, I want to take a moment to reflect on it. It doesn’t depict an exact scene from the book, though for me, it reminds me of the conversation that Val had with Sophie when David gets his Pilot—that the two of them will not get them, Sophie because of her medical condition, and Val because of her distrust of the technology and in solidarity with her youngest child. The cover gives a dystopian, lonely vibe in this beautiful world. The older woman figure leading the little child represents the mother-child relationships portrayed in the book—a dependency that eventually goes away as kids get older. Night time is the best time to spot satellites and also the best time to spot the blue LED lights of the Pilot.
If you love realistic science fiction, a world with events that have set in motion we cannot come back from, read this book. It will make you think twice about new technologies, the unethical things companies can do to sell their products, and the information that we get when we sign up for things doesn’t have to be the complete picture. Peer pressure and government subsidies go a long way, and sometimes, it is only in the long run, that the problems and consequences start to surface.
This book has a lot to offer and I think about all the things I haven’t mentioned— Sophie’s involvement with the anti-Pilot movement, Julie’s adoption of the Pilot as an adult, the betrayal that one feels when you expect others to guide you better—there is so much packed into these pages and I know I will come back to them!
We Are Satellites is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
Will you be picking up We Are Satellites? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
Everybody’s getting one.
Val and Julie just want what’s best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant to help with school, they reluctantly agree. This is the future, after all.
Soon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with her colleagues, leaving Val and Sophie part of the shrinking minority of people without the device.
Before long, the implications are clear, for the family and society: get a Pilot or get left behind. With government subsidies and no downside, why would anyone refuse? And how do you stop a technology once it’s everywhere? Those are the questions Sophie and her anti-Pilot movement rise up to answer, even if it puts them up against the Pilot’s powerful manufacturer and pits Sophie against the people she loves most.
Content Notes include depiction of addition, substance abuse, epileptic seizure, medical implant, accident.
