PotsandPlots

Details

Review Copy sent to me by publisher, Head of Zeus.

Out Now!  £20.00 Hardback (Affiliate Link on Bookshop.org)

Rating 🌻🌻 – Vibrant Annual (Out of 3 – check here for rating description)

What is All That We See or Seem?

My first review on PotsandPlots is for Ken Liu’s All That We See or Seem, a science fiction story set in the near future. It’s a hacker-heist(ish) caper reminiscent of the works of Cory Doctorow.

Julia Z is a notorious hacker. As a teenager, she broke the law and served her time. Now she is living quietly, hoping to avoid attention, helping out with community projects and doing legitimate work to pay the bills.

Her uneasy peace is shattered when Piers turns up at her apartment, desperate for her help. His wife, Elli, a celebrity dream crafter, has gone missing. The mere act of Piers turning up on her doorstep drags Julia into a shadowy world of surveillance and espionage. If she and Piers are going to find out what happened to Elli, they’re going to have to stay ahead of their pursuers. Pursuers who will stop at nothing to get what they want.

Why Read All That We See or Seem?

This book is not the easiest to read. It is quite technical in places, and because a lot of the surveillance and tracking involves future AI tech, many of the technical aspects feel quite arm-wavy. Nevertheless, I allowed myself to be swept up in Liu’s tale, much of which is truly terrifying.

The central theme of All That We See or Seem is the power of information and how we, as users of technology, are freely surrendering our data. Not only to the big tech companies, but to all sorts of other people who buy or scrape our online presence and use it for just about any purpose they can think of. Good or ill.

In 2025, I have become increasingly disillusioned with my own relationship with tech and its effects on the wider population. It feels to me that we’re on the verge of a critical collapse, before hopefully, there is some sort of reset. As AI fakes and misinformation multiply at an alarming rate, the ability of many to think critically is nosediving in the opposite direction. Julia feels like an antidote to this. A deluge of AI slop is coming our way, and Julia is ready for it.

Julia shows us how to look beyond the veneer; helps us see how not to take things at face value. Above all, she helps us understand why data is king. While we might not have shadowy organisations trying to kill us for what we know, there are endless numbers of entities who will use every bit of data they can find to manipulate us into buying/doing what they want. They do not have our best interests at heart.

Yet, the novel goes much deeper than that. AI is just the tip of the shitberg. The story behind the story in All That We See or Seem is even more compelling than Julia and Piers’ initial investigation. I can say no more than that, except that this is a novel about power, manipulation and an industry that is rotten to the core.

The advent of social media was supposed to usher in a new age of enlightenment. Most people reading this will know the recently coined word “enshittification.” 2025 has shown us that it’s elephant shit all the way down and Ken Liu and Julia paint an ever bleaker picture of what’s on its way.

Despite showing me that my children are growing up into a dystopian nightmare, I mostly enjoyed All That We See or Seem. I had to just accept sometimes that the AI/tech maguffins worked like Liu said they did. This suspension of belief broke the urgency of the story at times, but the book is well worth reading. It’s a chilling examination of our relationship with tech, and will make you view your phone and all your subscription accounts in a whole new way.