TITLE: Docile
AUTHOR: K.M. Szpara
490 pages, Tor.com, ISBN 9781250216151 (hardcover)
DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): There is no consent under Capitalism. To be a Docile is to be kept, body and soul, for the uses of the owner during your contract. To be a Docile is to forget, to disappear, to hide inside your body from the horrors of your service. To be a Docile is to sell yourself to pay your parents’ debts and buy your children’s future.
MY RATING: Five out of five stars
MY THOUGHTS: Note: I received an Advance Review Copy from the good folks at Tor.com, but that did not influence my opinion of the book.
K. M. Szpara’s Docile is one of the most harrowing pieces of near-future science fiction I have ever read, taking its deserving place alongside Sabrina Vourvoulias’ Ink in showing us a soon-to-come world that is just one bit of legislation, one tweak of technology, away from where we stand right now. Where Vourvoulias took on immigration and demonizing the Other, Szpara digs in deep on the wealth gap, debt slavery, and sexual consent. It is far from an easy read from every point of view – emotional manipulation and sexual assault abound – but it is a vital read in light of what’s going on in our society right now.
Elisha Wilder’s family is plagued by out-of-control debt in a world where the laws have been changed so that spouses and children inherit their partners/parents debt and are expected to pay it off. Jobs are scarce, food and healthcare are exorbitantly priced, and people are regularly sent to prison because they can’t make regular payments on the money they owe. The city and county of Baltimore have a solution, though, thanks to Bishop Pharmaceutical’s invention of Dociline: people can agree to become Docile servants for the city’s trillionaires to pay off their family’s debt. Dociline erases emotion and free will, enabling debtors to survive the debt-slavery experience without developing mental illness … or remorse, since the drug also comes with an inherent memory-wipe of anything that happened while under the influence. The drug is guaranteed to flush out of a person’s system within a few weeks of the last dose without lasting harmful effects. Except that Elisha’s mother Abigail came home after ten years on Dociline and has never been the same. Still, someone has to alleviate the family’s crushing debt, so Elisha submits himself to the Office of Debt Resolution, where he ends up being purchased for life (his family’s debt erased and a stipend offered to help them survive) by none other than Alexander Bishop the Third, scion and soon-to-be CEO of the pharmaceutical empire that erased Elisha’s mother’s personality.
Dociles have seven unalienable rights according to the law: to vote in public elections; to adequate care, including food, water, shelter, and medical care; to anonymity of surname; to keep one personal item with them; to personal physical safety; to sexual health and protection from pregnancy; and to refuse or demand Dociline, and change your mind at any time. Elisha plans, long before knowing who his Patron will be, to refuse Dociline so that he doesn’t turn into his mother.
Alex is looking for the ideal Docile on which to test the newest iteration of the drug. He’s recently broken off a lucrative engagement (trillionaires don’t marry for love in this future) and his future CEO position is in jeopardy unless he marries or proves he can handle Dociles under his control. He’s attracted to Elisha and becomes Patron before learning, very publicly, that Elisha refuses to take Dociline.
From there it’s a battle of wills: Elisha trying to retain his free will while Alex tries to prove he can gain control over a person even without Dociline in their system. Not surprising and not really spoilery, Elisha spends most of the book losing that battle. It is painful to watch, especially as the book is narrated in first person by both main characters. You can see Elisha’s personality change and diminish; his internal justifications for letting himself be bent to Alex’s will, to be the perfect companion, becoming more desperate and less convincing (to the reader) as the novel progresses. The expression of this total change in Elisha, from head-strong family-oriented individualist to a man unable to make simple decisions about clothing without being directed, shows what a masterful writer Szpara is. The changes are incremental: slight alterations in how Elisha tells his story, for example which sensory and physical details he chooses to include or omit, are the growing indication that he is losing himself. At the same time, in the chapters narrated by Alex we see a cocky young rich kid start to understand not only the power he wields but the ways in which it can be abused. Alex comes to see his own complicity in the way the rich take advantage of the poor and questions what he’s done to Elisha in the name of staying comfortable and in power; Alex’s justifications for his actions ring just as desperate and hollow as Elisha’s.
The numerous explicit sex scenes between Alex and Elisha are another spotlight on the dark side of this supposedly harmless method of removing debt. Elisha justifies his first sexual experience (not just with Alex, but ever) as somewhat consensual within the “master/submissive” relationship the Docile program fosters. He thinks the Docile’s right to sexual health should give him the right to say “no,” even though he chooses not to exercise it. It quickly becomes apparent to the reader, and eventually to Elisha, that Dociles don’t really have a choice once they sign a contract with a Patron and that those on the drug can’t say “no” because Dociline removes their decision-making capabilities and free will. Thanks to Alex’s brainwashing efforts, Elisha also eventually loses the ability to say “no” even sans Dociline. There’s one scene in particular, early on, between Elisha, a patron named Dutch, and another Docile named Onyx, that is slightly less explicit in sexual detail but far more brutal emotionally, and it drives the point home that the Rich don’t really care about the well-being of the Poor under their control unless or until it renders the Dociles unusable. The fact that Alex falls in love with his slave doesn’t mitigate the horrible things he does in the name of research and science and appeasement of his family and Board of Directors; it’s still painful to watch him realize he’s virtually destroyed the man he’s come to love.
The supporting cast is filled out by the main characters’ biological and extended families. Elisha’s father, sister, and sort-of step-mother and step-sister see the changes in him long before he’s able to see them himself and they don’t like what they see, concerned for his mental and physical health. Alex’s family likewise see and don’t like the changes wrought by his connection to Elisha, but their concerns are about how it will affect his future as the face of the company and ultimately stock shares and societal cache. It’s almost a stereotype, that the Rich are heartless while the Poor are paragons, but Szpara subverts the cliché at every turn: people in Alex’s circle are not who or what he thinks, Elisha’s father’s anger threatens to destroy any possible relationship with his son. This adds even more depth to the novel as Alex and Elisha’s interactions with their own and each other’s families gives Szpara the opportunity to showcase the clear wealth gap and the ways loved ones are affected by an individual’s decisions.
Ultimately, as hard to handle as the emotional and sexual abuse are, Docile is a story of hope: that the actions of one person might inspire a societal shift away from abuse and towards compassion, away from selfishness and towards community. It’s also an exploration of identity: of how who we are is informed not only by our own actions but by the past actions of those we love, and how we can lose ourselves without realizing it’s happening. Docile is a must-read. And probably a must-re-read.