The first book in the series, Seventh Flag, opens during World War II and concludes around 9/11; the second book, Murmuration, takes in the war in Somalia and the rise of the Tea Party and Trumpism. This final book jumps 30 years into the future, before the fall of civilization.
Balman was a journalist most of his life. A war correspondent for United Press International, he covered conflicts across the globe and traveled overseas with U.S. presidents and secretaries of state. He is a Pulitzer-nominated national security correspondent and has reported on the wars in Iraq and Somalia, the genocide in Rwanda and many other conflicts. Now, he is a writer in residence at Sul Ross State University in Alpine.
Stepping into fiction with his reporting background simply made sense for Balman.
"All the journalists I know have a novel in their back pocket,” he says. “I was always gathering thread for this or that. Eventually, I decided to step off the bus, so to speak, and to actually do it.”
He recognizes the differences between journalism and fiction, but does not regard them as unbridgeable.
“With fiction, you can make up all the quotes and tweak the story,” he says. “ ... Fact is always the best common denominator for a story.”
From there, he may weave the facts together as he likes to tell a credible, compelling narrative for his fiction. Algorithms deals with topics Balman grew familiar with as a reporter — namely, the rise of extremism and radicalization. He attributes this rise to increased isolation.
“I think [it] has to do with social media and alienation and the prevalence of injustice and the lack of any sort of platonic love that you get from people, that you don’t get from computer screens,” he says. “If you dig down below, it is not ... that they are just being radicalized generally. It may be because [of] small indignities. Maybe because their football or soccer field is decrepit. It's these small, acute indignities that push people along the radicalization spectrum.”
The book plays on these various themes in a literal and allegorical sense, bringing a certain immediacy to the work.
While writing the book, Balman met Kleo Belay, a writer and wilderness guide who studied sustainable development and anthropology and would ultimately become the content editor for the book. When Belay first learned about Balman’s work, she felt an immediate connection.
“I feel like I’ve studied this my entire life,” she remembers thinking.
They balanced each other out well.
“I tend to gravitate towards the darker side in my reporting, and she tends to gravitate towards the lighter side,” Balman says. “We met in the middle for this book.”
Her biggest influence, they both say, was the role indigenous characters would play in the book, specifically the Lakota Sioux in South Dakota and the Rarámuri in Mexico.
“As I became a wilderness guide and I was going to remote places, I had the opportunity to interact with some indigenous people,” Belay says. “The ones that had the most profound effect on me were the Rarámuri in northern Mexico.”
"All the journalists I know have a novel in their back pocket. I was always gathering thread for this or that. Eventually, I decided to step off the bus, so to speak, and to actually do it.” – Sid Balman Jr.
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Belay was especially interested in how indigenous people had lived through their own versions of apocalypses throughout history and into the present, in part by living sustainably with the earth. From this connection with the earth, Balman and Belay created the “Terra-Algorithm,” which is central to Algorithms. It refers to the connection between the human and the natural world.
It is a convenient coincidence that artificial intelligence and its algorithm-clad baggage have only become more relevant since Balman began writing this book. These digital algorithms, the ones that tell you what shoes to buy or what podcast to listen to, are juxtaposed with the more-earthly “Terra-Algorithms” in his book.
Algorithms isn’t meant to leave readers in the doldrums of societal collapse, wracked with thoughts of complacent despair.
“There's a chapter and several places in the book where Sidney in a very detailed way describes the way that people live after the fall of civilization,” Belay says. “He beautifully paints a picture of how we can live in a sustainable way. … I think that that's a really important thing for us as a society to visualize right now.”
The references in the book are apt — so much so that his local bookstore decided not to host his signing.
“The owner is a good friend,” Balman says. “They were going to have a signing to launch it all off last night and she called me like a day-and-a-half ago to say that she was canceling. She didn’t want to discuss it. She felt that it was too provocative. That's all she would say.”
Thankfully, the rest of his Southwest tour is still on. Sid Balman Jr. and Kleo Belay will speak about Algorithms in Dallas at a panel moderated by journalist June Taylor. The book signing and author talk will take place at 6 p.m. on Aug. 10 at Interabang Books (5600 W. Lovers Lane).
Balman questions what good it does to cancel a book talk at the only bookstore in his town for 60 miles, just because the owner doesn’t agree with the book.
“It links very well into the themes of the book,” he says. “In my experience as a reporter, covering all kinds of countries teetering on the edge of refuge, the leading edge of bad shit is always censorship and lack of trust in your people. Trust in your people is the foundation of democracy. Let the people decide.”
