Val Verde: A Fake Reality in a Tale of Fake Reality

Cover, image posted by Amazon.

In a way, Hank Green’s second book, “A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor,” is a bit like the making of the Matrix, years before the Matrix.

If you read “An Absolutely Remarkable Thing” then you’ve met our cast: April May, who apparently may have died in a fire, although there is a strong hint at the end of the first book that she did not. Her Scooby gang, Andy, Miranda, Maya—and the alien who sometimes appears as a robot, Carl.

I really enjoyed Hank’s first book, which I thought was an interesting rumination on life in the internet age, in particular, how internet fame changes people. I’m a fan of the second book, too, although to be honest, I probably enjoyed the first one a bit more.

Cover of Hank Green's first book.

For one thing, the second book is told from multiple points of view, which is OK, but sometimes got in the way, for me. I found myself in particular resenting Carl a bit, who, while benevolent in intentions, was still busy manipulating people whose future he could predict.

But I did like the rumination on what it would mean if artificial reality became so compelling people were willing to give up reality for it. And that internet social media companies, even if run by good people, will find themselves doing whatever makes them money (a truth of most companies in general, I suppose, which is why we do need regulations on our economy).

So the “Dream” being coopted by an evil company called Altus, headed by our old nemesis, Peter Petrawicki. By the way, there is a software company called Altus, and I wonder what they think of this name? Peter doesn’t even run the company, which is really a tool of Carl 2.0, Carl’s more powerful sibling who secretly was sent to Earth in case Carl 1.0 failed. I did wonder a bit about the advanced alien intelligence that supposedly sent these two: Couldn’t there backup AI overlord have a few more lines of ethical coding along the lines of Carl 1.0?

Anyway, everything about Altus is a lie. It’s not even in Puerto Rico, but in Val Verde—a name I did not recognize and looked up, only to find it’s a fictional country. I liked that bit of trickery—the fake internet company that seems to be setting up the Matrix fake reality to keep humans safe in a weird alien zoo is located in a fake location.

So there was a lot to like about this second book. But beyond the switching narrators, I struggled with a few aspects. The resolution, involving a hostile leveraged buyout and the raising of billions of dollars, was clever on some level, but didn’t completely click for me. I also wish that Peter, the evil leader, was a bit more troubled by, and maybe manipulated by, the shenanigans that Carl 2.0 put him up to.

Still, I do recommend the book. Read the first before the second—I don’t know if the second would make much sense without having read the first. The second is a bit slow to start, but once April uses her robo arm to punch through a back door, the action never stops.

And maybe that’s what mostly bothers me. The pace of the book was a bit slow at first, and then became almost an endless chase scene, and I wanted to the characters to slow down and react a bit more. True, some of them spent some time holed up in a luxury apartment (plot point that bothered me—I would think Carl 2.0 could have figured that out, given that they were in contact with the old crowd), but the action was wham! wham! wham! and I wanted a little less grungy people on computers and a bit more, well, life.

Still, I think that was part of the point. Social media can take us away from life, and what does that do to us? Despite seeing some flaws in Hank Green’s second book, I rate it fairly high. It is imaginative and creative. The “Book of Good Times” was an interesting twist. I kind of liked Carl as a monkey, although a talking cat would have worked for me, too. Maybe he needed thumbs. Carl the raccoon? The idea that Andy would be seduced by the neo-Matrix and have trouble giving it up felt right, too.

In summary, get the book, read it, especially if you, like me, enjoyed the first one.

I also enjoyed Hank’s reading of his first chapter some month ago, and note that he edited the final line. I like the edited version better, and it’s interesting to see how a “done” book can still evolve as it nears completion. There’s some lesson there about editing in the real world.