A defining feature of 21st-century life is that everyone can see what you’re looking at. Perception is increasingly defined as a social activity, from public likes to streaming platforms that broadcast what you’re listening to and how many hours you’ve gamed. Horny swipes on dating apps have become a potential advantage in geopolitical strategy; in May, United States authorities forced Grindr’s Chinese owners to sell the gay dating app, citing reasons of national security. Even as ordinary people lose control over how they are seen, institutional gatekeepers expand their sway over public opinion. Electronic books and digital records vanish with shifts in political power or copyright regimes. Yet few novelists have probed the inner consequences of life in a world so intimately mediated by surveillance.