Jeff Vandermeer on the delicious satire of 'Sourdough' by Robin Sloan

In this day and age, under our current political conditions, you'd be forgiven for mistaking lightness for triteness, escape for escapism. There's a sense that our fictions should be of Earth-shattering import in the obvious ways, and this perhaps desensitizes us to other examples of subversion and narrative. It may also make us miss out on some great fiction about odd bread, an imaginary country and the processes behind making robot arms. All of which is to say that Robin Sloan's delightful new novel, "Sourdough," the follow-up to his runaway success "Mr. It is that rare thing: a satire that has a love of what it satirizes while also functioning as a modern fairy tale about, of all things, the magic of certain carbohydrates. For this to be a chemical rather than physical reaction, Sloan must display a sure and natural knowledge of high-tech culture and of bread culture (in both senses). His keen insight into both automatons and organic foods stems from his immersion in the San ...