About book Blue Sky Dream: A Memoir Of America's Fall From Grace (1997)
In his writings, H.P. Lovecraft drew on a long tradition of men meddling in arcane knowledge, struggling through ancient tomes so alien that the very reading of them drives one mad. In the years that it has taken me to read this book, I have quite often felt sympathy with those hapless souls, as I struggled with a book so alien, so incomprehensible, that my brow would bead with sweat and my vision swam if I, in my hubris, tried to read more than a few pages at one sitting.It's not that I can't relate to the events in the book - the book was loaned to me by some friends who were amazed to find that I actually, really grew up in Silicon Valley, just like the author. In fact, our upbringings are largely similar, though I am about ten years Beers' junior. So a book about growing up in Silicon Valley like this one contains a lot that I recognize. What is so ineffably Other about this book is the mindset that the author has, so foreign that it's like trying to understand the motivations of neolithic Maori found in cave art, or snack wrappers discarded by time-traveling Venusians. This book is, from my point of view, Out There. Since the attitudes are so alien, it's actually more alarming that the setting is so familiar - I wouldn't have found this book nearly such a disturbing offense to my every sense had not those senses insisted on trying to make sense of the familiar. "Oh," my mind would say, "Now he's talking about the Diablo foothills; that's something I can understand!" only to be repelled by the horrible dismal spin Beers would put on that, too. It's like stepping into an alternate universe where everything is subtly changed, up to and including the colors: what you see as blue is black to the inhabitants, and you can't tell whether it's just the name that's different, or whether they are actually seeing a different color than what you think of as blue or black.The conceit is that Silicon Valley was built after World War II to be an aerospace engineering worker utopia, and that the entire culture of the nation was predicated that aerospace engineering was the key to a brighter and happier future. Beers calls that the "Blue Sky" myth: this belief in the inevitable triumph of virtuous aerospace. I can easily see that this was a message portrayed by government and the industry itself, but what I find so difficult to grasp is Beers' attitude toward this. As you might guess from the title, he presents his Blue Sky Dream as not only a way of framing one industry, but as the definitive vision of the post-war United States. This is a necessary prerequisite for his main point: the sense of bitter betrayal he feels that society failed to realize that dream. His resentment at this is caustic and complete; it suffuses every paragraph of every page of this book, proceeding methodically through every significant relationship he's had in his life and breaking down how he was betrayed in that relationship by the failure of the Blue Sky Dream. His father, his mother, the federal government, the aerospace industry, the American people, the Catholic church, Lockheed Missiles and Space Corporation...on and on, nothing but snide vitriol unceasing. It's horrifying.What's particularly bizarre about the book is that it's written from his point of view, and he's not and never has been an aerospace engineer, nor has he ever had any job related to the industry. So his outrage is second-hand, felt on behalf of others who actually were a part of the dream rather than merely feeling the effects of that dream, and yet clearly very personal nonetheless. It's primarily a memoir about him, and his experiences.But while it is very difficult to stomach a lot of the book, it's still an interesting read, which is why I haven't given the book a lower rating. Thinking about it, I think a lot of the incomprehensibility of his bewildering perspective comes from the differences in our background. My dad is a veteran who worked in aerospace, and even for Lockheed, yes (he designed the guidance system for the Polaris missile), but he was an early casualty of downsizing, getting laid off the year I was born. He then, like the people Beers interview later in the book, spent more than a year without a job, and eventually found himself creating new careers, most of them relating to the computer industry. So that would make our family simultaneously part of the Blue Sky Tribe and the Woz Tribe, to use Beers' terms. That probably is why it's so hard for me to relate to the idea of them as different tribes. My dad remained friends with other veterans who remained at Lockheed until retirement, but most of his friends were involved less with "macro engineering" (building vehicles, satellites, missiles) than "micro engineering" (processors, modems, other computer components and peripherals). So I grew up without this idea of a lifelong career at one job, but no one I know has or had that idea, and none of us feel betrayed that we don't have that idea. It is actually an aphorism of mine from my twenties that most of my friends have heard more often that they'd care to recount, one of "Harold's Rules": "There's no such thing as a career, only a job you've been at for too long." My peers who went to work in aerospace attest that Lockheed's practice hasn't changed from what Beers reports of others' experiences: engineers are still hired and then paid to do nothing for months on end while their security clearances are resolved. I've been interviewed by the government about various friends and their trustworthiness for their country. But everyone I know who worked at Lockheed or other aerospace firms as "AAs" (in this context, slang for Aeronautics/Astronautics engineers), have all left that work for jobs in programming (which they euphemistically call software engineering now). They've left not because they were fired, because there's no work in aerospace, or because they've been betrayed by a failed promise to realize the future, but simply because programming pays so much better. Many of them still work in aerospace, though not all, designing the software that operates the machines that AAs design, or manipulates the data that the machines capture. Those that do work in aerospace still because their security clearances give them an edge on their resumes with employers who take government contracts, but it's treated like any other skill or education that might result in a better-paying job. Some of them have found more profitable work elsewhere, and they're not abandoning a dream by doing so.The last third of the book is a bit easier to take, as Beers talks less about himself and how he was betrayed, and more about his parents and how they dealt with the betrayal. As he gets to facts about these people, the resentment simmers down to a more tolerable level, and some of the history he relates actually becomes interesting. My dad was a member of the Homebrew computer club where Wozniak debuted the Apple I (my dad had one of them, along with a collection of other antique computers that predated it, until our house burned down in 1988), and though I feel comfortable both with aerospace and computer types, it is interesting to see how one could have a different view. Though it was difficult to read, there was some reward, much like reading those Venusian candy wrappers would be rewarding for an anthropologist.
As a very insightful story about the suburbanization of America, this memoir was more than a mere reflection of personal experience. Rather, Beers approaches his own life through a journalist's lens, and as such, the book is an expansive, ambitious attempt to grapple with issues of American Manifest Destiny, the lie of corporate beneficence, and within that context, a family drama of blunted paternal ambition.His book chronicles the rise of the aerospace industry in what was then known as Santa Clara Valley. I read the book as someone who grew up in the same valley, which had then become "Silicon Valley."So my connection to the material was very personal. But I believe that his notions about suburban sprawl and his very clever prose would appeal to a much broader audience than only the "children of technology."It was a very good read -- important, surprising and engaging.
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This book was just ok for me. I was looking for something pretty specific and didn't really find it. Parts of it were good, and I have a feeling that one day I will want to reread this more closely because parts of it were just a bit more technical than I'd wanted. I wanted to know more about growing up in a family headed by an aerospace engineer. This book is more about the aerospace engineer himself, and again, much of that world I just don't understand. Still, some interesting observations were made. It really might fare better upon reread for me, but I won't do that just yet.
—Diana Higgins
