Vertically Challenged

Forthcoming in the March 2022 issue of Locus Magazine.

Science fiction has a longstanding love-hate relationship with the tech tycoon. The literature is full of billionaire inventors, sometimes painted as system-bucking heroes, at other times as megalomanical supervillains.

From time to time, we even manage to portray one of these people in a way that hews most closely to reality: ordinary mediocrities, no better than you or I, whose success is down to a combination of luck and a willingness to set aside consideration of the needs of others. It’s easy to find such people atop our increasingly steep economic pyramid, but it’s very hard to find any who’ll admit it. There is nothing a successful person hates more than being reminded that “meritocracy” is a self-serving myth, a circular logic that says, “The system puts the best people in charge and I am in charge therefore I am the best.”

But while the powerful remain blissfully insulated from the bursting of the meritocratic delusion, public sentiment is increasingly turning against the ultra-wealthy, and in the most interesting way possible. Today, the commercial tyrant isn’t merely seen as a villain, but also as a fool — someone whose greatness is due to an accident of history and a vacancy of morals, not the result of a powerful genius gone awry.