Former tech reporter explores the promises and perils of the internet era in the novel ‘What Kind of Paradise'
'I went into the basement of the engineering building where you could get on the internet, and I downloaded a Beastie Boys video,' the bestselling author told the Chronicle by phone from her home in Los Angeles. 'It took 45 minutes, but it was amazing. I could hardly believe it was possible. The world was definitely changing.'
More Information
What Kind of Paradise
By Janelle Brown
(Random House; 368 pages; $30)
'What Kind of Paradise' — An Evening with Author Janelle Brown: 6:30 p.m. Friday, June 6. Free. A Great Good Place for Books, 6120 La Salle Ave., Oakland. www.ggpbooks.com
Meet Janelle Brown: 3 p.m. Saturday, June 7. Atherton Library, 2 Dinkelspiel Station Lane, Atherton. Free. Registration required at www.smcl.bibliocommons.com.
Inspired in part by her post-college years as a tech reporter at Wired and Salon, Brown's sixth novel, 'What Kind of Paradise,' is set in 1996 San Francisco and rural Montana. Released on Tuesday, June 3, the book deftly captures both the giddy enthusiasm of that period when the internet's possibilities felt boundless, as well as the unforeseen dangers and downsides that were ushered in with the digital revolution.
'It was a heady time when a bunch of kids in San Francisco saw everything through this optimistic, utopian prism, and, on the other hand, the Unabomber was dominating the news,' reflected Brown, referring to Ted Kaczynski, an anti-technology domestic terrorist who shunned modern life and murdered three people and injured 23 with homemade letter bombs from 1978 until his capture by the FBI in April 1996.
'What Kind of Paradise' imagines if a Kaczynski-esque figure were also a father, raising a child to fear and abhor technological change. The book features a teenager named Jane whose iconoclast dad has steeped her in his radically anti-technology views.
After discovering a photo that sheds light on their mysterious past, Jane escapes from their cabin in the Montana woods to San Francisco where the dot-com era is ushering in transformational cultural change.
Brown, who grew up in Atherton, discussed writing a coming-of-age story that explores tech's promises and perils, and 'how we ever escape the belief systems we were born into.'
Q: This question runs through your novel about whether technology is a positive force for good, or one that is bound to doom us. Have you been wrestling with these issues for a while?
A: Yes, it's a subject that has been increasingly weighing on me. When I worked at Salon and Wired in San Francisco in the 1990s, I was a total booster. I drank the Kool-Aid. I believed so strongly, as we all did back then, that technology was going to make our world better.
As the decades have progressed, and I've seen technology's ugly underbelly, I've been grappling with my own sense of culpability. What if, at the beginning, we had been more open-eyed about the potential downsides? Could we have steered the world in a better direction where we had more accountability and oversight, instead of having a reflexive stance that any government oversight of technology is bad?
Q: Sounds like hindsight has helped you see your techno utopianism differently.
A: Definitely. I spent time going through the Wired archives (to research the novel), and it kind of broke my heart. When I look back on our rah-rah boosterism, I see we were wrong about so much — especially now that I see the world through my kids' eyes, who are 15 and 13.
I've been incredibly concerned about the downsides of AI, the depersonalization of living on screens and how technology has enabled extremism. Algorithms amplify the most radical and outrageous points of view, and fringe ideas become part of the mainstream in an alarming way no one anticipated.
Q: What inspired you to explore these ideas through a father-daughter relationship in which the dad is a lot like the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski?
A: I had been wanting to write about technology from the point of view of someone coming into San Francisco in the '90s with naivete to this whole new world opening up. Then, about four years ago, I listened to an interesting podcast on the Kaczynski story. I vividly remember living through it and being at Wired when he was captured. Everyone's reaction was, 'Yes, they caught him!'
As I listened to his story, I thought how prescient he was in some ways, in terms of how he saw the future and tried to warn us. Of course, his writings were also incredibly disturbing, sexist, anti-liberal. I realized these are two sides of the same coin, two very different views of the same future.
Q: You've written great descriptions of mid-'90s San Francisco, with its juice bars and 20-somethings out in South Park. What did you most want to convey about that period?
A: It was such an exciting time. San Francisco was the birthplace of the whole modern internet era, and it was all done by young people. We were barely out of college, hardly qualified to do what we were doing, but we got to define this whole new era.
People forget, because the tech world isn't like this anymore, but it was funky, artsy. There were a lot of weirdos who were in bands and making weird art, and everyone was a bit of a misfit. It wasn't until IPOs and tech bros blew in and everyone realized that they could make a lot of money that it really changed. And San Francisco changed. It felt less vibrant to me.
Q: Did you enjoy developing Jane's character? She's self-reliant and incredibly well-read after a childhood spent studying philosophy in the woods with her dad, but she's also in some ways a normal teenager.
A: Yeah, I love teenagers. I'm fascinated with coming-of-age stories and that moment in time when you're still unformed clay and life's forces are starting to press you into shape. As much as I had ideas about technology to explore, at the heart of every book I write is a relationship story. I love writing about thorny family relationships, legacy and what we take from the people who raise us and how we break free of them. In this case, her father isn't mentally well, but he's convincing, charismatic and smart — and he's her whole world.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
3 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Mark Hamill says he almost left U.S. after Trump win. Then his wife pulled a Jedi mind trick
' Star Wars ' actor Mark Hamill says he was planning to move to Europe after Donald Trump was elected to a second term as president — until his wife made him reconsider. The Oakland native, who shot to fame as Luke Skywalker, has been an outspoken liberal for decades, and told the Times of London that after Trump defeated incumbent Joe Biden in November 2024, he gave his wife Marilou York the choice of moving with him to Ireland or London. 'She's very clever,' Hamill said in the interview posted Saturday, Aug. 16. 'She didn't respond right away but a week later she said, 'I'm surprised you would allow him to force you out of your own country.'' Hamill suddenly realized his wife of 47 years was right. ''That son of a bitch,' I thought,' Hamill said of Trump. ''I'm not leaving.'' Other celebrities, such as Rosie O'Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres, have left America after Trump's victory. But Hamill is staying despite his deep disdain for the president. 'The bullying, the incompetence, the people in place,' Hamill said of Trump. 'The only way I can deal with it without going crazy and wanting to open my veins in a warm tub is to look at it like a thick, sprawling political novel. It's entertaining in a way because this could actually be the end. 'Our status in the world has been crippled and that will reverberate for decades. Making Canada a 51st state? Do you know how offensive that is? And then taking over Greenland and renaming the Gulf of Mexico. The distractions are hilarious.' The Hamills would seem to have had an extra incentive to leave the U.S. after the Malibu neighborhood that contains their longtime home was ravaged by the Los Angeles County wildfires in January. Hamill told the Chronicle in June that while their home survived, it is uninhabitable because of the condition of the neighborhood. They are renting a house until they are able to return to their home. Hamill told the Chronicle he considers the Bay Area his spiritual home. His father was a U.S. Navy captain stationed in the Bay Area when he was born, and still has family here, including his older brother William, a psychiatrist. The Hamills' second son, Griffin, was born in San Francisco in 1983 when Mark Hamill was performing onstage in Peter Shaffer's 'Amadeus.'
San Francisco Chronicle
4 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Aubrey Plaza shares grief over husband's death with Amy Poehler
Actress Aubrey Plaza told her 'Parks and Recreation' co-star Amy Poehler that she likens grief to a horror movie as she tries to process the suicide of her husband. Plaza, the Marin County resident who is co-starring in Joel Coen's new neo-noir 'Honey Don't! ,' appeared on Poehler's 'Good Hang' podcast, which posted Tuesday, Aug. 19. The host immediately addressed the death of Plaza's husband, Jeff Baena. 'I think I would, on behalf of all the people who feel like they know you and the people who do know you: How are you feeling today,' Poehler asked. Plaza thought for a moment before responding. 'I mean, right in this very, very present moment, I feel happy to be with you,' Plaza said. 'I feel overall, I'm here and I'm functioning, and I feel, you know, like I feel really grateful to be moving through the world. I think I'm OK, but, you know, it's like a daily struggle.' The body of Baena, a screenwriter and director, was found at his Los Angeles home on Jan. 3. The medical examiner's report cited the cause of death as suicide. He was 47. Plaza and Baena first met in 2011 and quietly wed in 2021. The actress starred in Baena's 2014 directorial debut, the zombie comedy 'Life After Beth.' She also appeared in his medieval comedy 'The Little Hours' (2017), which Chronicle movie critic Mick LaSalle called one of the year's funniest films, and 'Spin Me Round' (2022). At the time of Baena's death, the couple had been separated for several months. On the podcast, Plaza compared her grief to the plot of 'The Gorge,' an Apple TV+ science fiction horror movie starring Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy released in February. 'In the movie, there's a cliff on one side and then there's a cliff on the other side and then there is a gorge in between and it's filled with all these monster people that are trying to get them and I swear when I watched it I was like, 'That feels like what my grief is like,' where it's like a giant ocean of just awfulness that's right there and I can see it and sometimes I just want to dive into it and be in it. And then sometimes I just look at it. And then, sometimes, I try to get away from it, but it's always there. It's just always there, and the monster people are trying to get me like Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy.' Days after Baena's death, Plaza and Baena's family released a statement asking for privacy. 'This is an unimaginable tragedy. We are deeply grateful to everyone who has offered support,' Plaza and the Baena and Stern families said in a statement on Jan. 6, shortly after his death was ruled a suicide. 'Please respect our privacy during this time.' Beyond that, Plaza has largely remained out of the public eye. She paid tribute to Baena during a brief appearance on NBC's ' SNL50: The Anniversary Special ' in February by wearing a tie-dyed shirt (a hobby of Baena's), and appeared on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival in May at the world premiere of 'Honey Don't!'
San Francisco Chronicle
5 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
In ‘Where Are You Really From,' Elaine Hsieh Chou stretches herself outside of satire
Elaine Hsieh Chou loves to write messy, imperfect characters. That's clear to anyone who read her 2022 debut novel, 'Disorientation,' a biting satire about academia, Asian fetishism and the many missteps people take when presenting themselves to the world. For her second book, an edgy story collection called 'Where Are You Really From,' Chou goes one step further in showing readers her range through complex characters in scenarios that cross the lines of genre. In one story that blends elements of science fiction and horror, a sex tourist visits the Hong Kong of the future and finds himself testing the bounds of virtual reality. In another, a mail-order bride is quite literally shipped to the United States, packing peanuts and all, to skirt an immigration ban. 'People just tend to think of you as a writer based on your debut novel, so I was just called a satirist' after the publication of 'Disorientation,' she told the Chronicle in a recent interview. 'But the whole time, I was writing all these other stories in different genres that feed into the same concerns and obsessions.' The result is a collection that surprises readers at every turn of the page. Chou, who grew up partly in the East Bay, draws readers into a diverse array of settings, from the normalcy of the California suburbs to an off-kilter version of Paris that offers a glimpse into an alternate reality. As a writer, Chou makes it clear that she was never solely a satirist. After working concurrently on both manuscripts during her graduate studies at New York University, she sold both books together to Penguin Press in 2020. 'It was a gift to be able to read 'Where Are You Really From' on the heels of 'Disorientation' for the first time,' Chou's editor, Casey Denis, told the Chronicle. 'In this collection, she pushes humor, surrealism, anger and confusion all the way to the edge.' While Denis acquired both books five years ago, 'Where Are You Really From' seems to meet the present in 2025 to an almost uncanny degree with its interest in futuristic themes and its handling of political subjects like immigration and xenophobia. 'The reason her fiction will always meet the moment in this way is because she stretches it just past what's comfortable,' Denis said. 'She's looking behind the walls, and she has an eye on what's coming. She isn't hiding or shrouding reality in any way, which makes it so brave.' Chou said that when putting her second book together, she knew her stories weren't centered around a particular theme or subject. 'I made a lot of cuts and wrote new stories while asking myself what would cohere and make sense for the collection,' she said. 'Ultimately, so much of these stories are about someone's version of the truth based on their own hangups, fears and desires butting up against someone else's perspective of what happened.' For example, well into the sex tourist story, 'Happy Endings,' Chou offers a critical perspective shift from the male client (who, laughably, considers himself morally upright) to the woman who is operating the VR technology in use: 'Some might call her actions a form of revenge, but Eden prefers the word consequence,' she writes. ''Revenge' is amateurish, melodramatic in its very conception, whereas her actions are no different from cleaning up a spill, ironing out a wrinkle, righting a book that's tipped over.' Examining differing perspectives and perceptions of others has been a preoccupation in Chou's work for decades, said one of the author's earliest creative writing instructors, Kim O'Neil. The author of 'Fever Dogs,' O'Neil first encountered Chou as one of her undergraduate students at UC Irvine. 'From the first story I read of hers through today, there's an astuteness and sensitivity she has to complications and how people self-present in the world,' O'Neil said. Now a senior lecturer at University of Illinois Chicago, O'Neil said that she's excited to teach Chou's collection to her students, who are interested in cross-over genres like feminist horror and speculative fiction that surface in 'Where Are You Really From.' Meanwhile, Chou is continuing to push the boundaries of her craft as a storyteller, expanding into the world of screenwriting, which she began teaching herself after turning in her first book. 'And when the writing is good, you're in a trance state. That's when the characters come alive on their own.'
