# book thoughts: Destroying Angel by Richard Paul Russo _published Fri Sep 5 04:41:23 AM UTC 2025_ My house has lots of books. I have organized them according to a scheme intelligible only to me. One of the special bookshelves is exclusively for _FICTIONAL CYBERMEDIA_, a category of book I define as a work of fiction whose plot would no longer function if computers were removed from the narrative. I've worked to develop this collection for many years, scouring the shelves of every used bookstore I came across. I refuse to call this category "cyberpunk," for I want it to contain books like TTYL[0] and The Powerbook[1]. I've dutifully worked through this collection of about 200 books and have read about half of them. The last few have been somewhat uninspiring (Mappa Mundi[2], Hotwire[3], Nightside City[4]) with one particularly bad one (Realtime Interupt[5]). Thus, I was motivated to post about my most recent read from my _FICTIONAL CYBERMEDIA_ collection: Destroying Angel[6]. It's rare that I have such a straightforwardly good time with a fiction book. At no point did it get sloggy or frustrating and I was excited to read it some every day. _Destroying Angel_ leans heavily on noir tropes, combining them with a deliciously grease drenched depiction of a future San Francisco even more dystopian than it is in 2025. Unlike books like _Noir_ by KW Jeter, however, _Destroying Angel_ subverts its noir tropes in pleasingly subtle ways that save it from contrivance. For example, though the protagonist is a haunted tough guy ex-cop, the book is filled with women characters who all feel real, grounded, distinctive, and important to the plot. There is no equivalent to the femme fatale trope nor the damsel in distress. It's entirely possible I would have enjoyed the book less had I not spent the last three years living in the bay area. I moved here because of its history and natural beauty; I hate it here because of a completely creatively bankrupt society based on the narrow ambitions and greed of trend chasing startup losers. Russo's San Francisco is not like mine; however, it's easy to see how the bay's present day culture can produce the pollution and poverty ridden crime hell Russo depicts. It made me feel like I was commiserating with someone else who _gets_ it here. A lot of the people I meet in the bay are too wrapped up in their job they hate and their infinite conveyor belt of gig economy deliveries and rides to look up and realize that our region is devoid of almost all art, culture, and small business. Meanwhile, the waymos breed. The book is admittedly light in terms of the kind of computer touching I love to see depicted; there are about two pages dedicated to a cool _run_ on an identity database and some vague references to souped up expert systems. The more pressing cyberissue is that of augmentation which I think is still valid for the cybermedia category. Anyway, check it out. If you like audiobooks, I recommend the version on Audible. The reader has just the perfect damn voice for the material and does the book emotional justice. It's, after all, an _incredibly_ sad book about _incredibly_ sad things. h[0]: TTYL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ttyl h[1]: The Powerbook https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/355407/the-powerbook-by-jeanette-winterson/9780099598299 h[2]: Mappa Mundi https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/837060.Mappa_Mundi h[3]: Hotwire https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2037662.Hotwire h[4]: Nightside City https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/390243.Nightside_City h[5]: Realtime Interupt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realtime_Interrupt h[6]: Destroying Angel https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37271.Destroying_Angel