Picks and Shovels is the third in Cory Doctorow’s series of books centred around forensic accountant Martin Hench. While the first book in the series Red Team Blues was set in the near future and the second book The Bezzle was set in the 1990s, Picks and Shovels goes back to the late 1970s and 1980s to give readers the Martin Hench origin story. And in doing so, Doctorow unsurprisingly reveals that the capitalist grifts that he exposed in the previous novels is nothing remotely new.
Much like The Bezzle, Picks and Shovels starts with a lengthy prologue which rehearses some of the themes of the book and sets up the main action. In it, a young Martin Hench travels to MIT to study engineering but quickly finds that he is “a prototypical MIT fuckup”. Hench finds himself besotted with emerging computer technology and drops out of his studies to become a proto-coder. Hench meets Art Hellman and the two find themselves on the bleeding edge of this new technology through which Hench develops a love for spreadsheets and moves from there into accounting. After finding themselves being used, the two head for California where they get into deeper trouble, ending up in a war between a corrupt computer company and its former employees.
Picks and Shovels is another deep critique of American capitalism: a system that encourages grifting and rorting and promotes the value of the company over any humanity. In this case, Doctorow doubles down as the computer firm he imagines is run by the representatives of three major religions who operate under the cover of piety. Against them, he pits a group of plucky underdogs, helped by Hench, in a David and Goliath battle that rages across the streets of San Francisco.
Hench continues to be a great central character – observant, incisive but also not beyond self criticism. This book is an origin story in many ways – not only how Hench becomes an accountant in the first place but also why he moved into forensic accounting and developed his code of ethics. Hench is surrounded by a vivid group of side characters including his friend Art who is able to express himself in the hedonistic San Francisco of the 1980s, the three tough women who Hench helps and his punk coder girlfriend. In doing so Doctorow also brings to life the subcultures of 1980s San Francisco that were the breeding grounds for the Silicon Valley domination of technology.
Underlying this is the very contemporary idea of computer firms using their power to lock consumers into their products. Anyone who has try to move between Apple and Android will know that this type of consumer capture is still alive and well and that attempts by those big tech firms to buy up or squash cheaper competition are also still with us.
In Picks and Shovels, Doctorow once again manages to take real world ideas, concerns and philosophies and weave them into an engaging tale focussing on those trying to fight the system. And unfortunately there are plenty of Ponzi schemes, grifts and market manipulations for Doctorow to point Martin Hench at. But this gives him the platform for a long running series that can continue to entertain while illuminating the darker corners of the world we live in a little more brightly.
Picks and Shovels by Core Dcotorow
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