Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
dark
funny
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Absolutely brilliant and prescient in almost every single way. 5/5
reflective
challenging
dark
inspiring
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is definitely an impressive achievement for it's time. A truly prescient tale. If my ratings were more objective it would be 4 stars or higher. However, I did not enjoy reading this. It felt a bit too much like reading a religious text (which was on point for the themes, but not what I was looking for). If you like literary fiction this is definitely for you, but it's not my cup of tea.
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
sad
fast-paced
Yo, so this is basically our reality. Except (for now) we carry the machine (i.e. laptop) around a little bit. But there really is no point to this carrying around and I presume we'll stop doing that soon and just sit. But for now:
- I carry my laptop to work, where I then sit (or stand) and stare and peck at it for 9 hours.
- I carry it home, where I lounge and stare at it.
- I order my food from it.
- I get my jobs from it.
- I learn lots of things from it.
- I talk to my family and friends through it.
- I reminisce with it.
- I plan my life in it.
- I'm sitting and staring and pecking at it right now, for the ten gazillion millionth hour I seem to have done this in my waking life.
If there isn't something totally unnatural and unholy with this way of living - yeesh.
Anyway, this is a short story written before sci-fi Officially Began; but it's basically the ancestor to so many other stories which confront the anxiety of becoming big fleshy extensions to our screens. (The best of which, in my mind, is still M.T. Anderson's Feed.) People live underground, in pleasantly lit rooms surrounded by pleasant screens and buttons which feed them, inform them, and cater to their animal and spiritual needs. People are mostly preoccupied with "ideas" - making new ones, interpreting old ones - and one is immediately reminded of the great tides of roiling indignitude on Twitter in the Neverending Social Justice War, or the endless thinkpieces on Slate and Vox and AV Club about what last night's episode of fictional entertainment Means, in some faux philosophical sense. These underdwellers are also made incredibly anxious by "direct experience", find the natural world ugly and boring, and have become hyper-specialized in their technological understanding: no one quite knows how the whole Machine works.
Hmmm.
So this is basically us, right now. The story follows an elderly lady whose son (the usual hero protagonist type) is a drone trying to break free of his dystopian shackles. She is horrified - as anyone with an older mom can imagine. He is a back-to-nature type who manages to visit the surface by clambering through a bunch of tunnels. He describes a moment (and I paraphrase) when all of his 1000 friends/followers and all his Internet memes are rendered small by his communion with nature: his gazing at some boring, ugly English hills. I was reminded of a similar feeling I had on a camping trip once: suddenly my computer - great source of joy and comfort and fascinating that it is - great holder of great minds like Turing and von Neumann - seemed small and stupid in comparison to, say, the food chain, or natural selection. Which means... I guess... we should all be biologists? And just marvel at the abundance of life on this planet, rather than having screens interpret them for us and being "passive subjects that contemplate the reified spectacle" (as Guy Debord would say)? I realize the irony of pecking all this into my screen! I realize, with horror, the rarity that "direct experience" has indeed become! Gaaaarghhhh.
- I carry my laptop to work, where I then sit (or stand) and stare and peck at it for 9 hours.
- I carry it home, where I lounge and stare at it.
- I order my food from it.
- I get my jobs from it.
- I learn lots of things from it.
- I talk to my family and friends through it.
- I reminisce with it.
- I plan my life in it.
- I'm sitting and staring and pecking at it right now, for the ten gazillion millionth hour I seem to have done this in my waking life.
If there isn't something totally unnatural and unholy with this way of living - yeesh.
Anyway, this is a short story written before sci-fi Officially Began; but it's basically the ancestor to so many other stories which confront the anxiety of becoming big fleshy extensions to our screens. (The best of which, in my mind, is still M.T. Anderson's Feed.) People live underground, in pleasantly lit rooms surrounded by pleasant screens and buttons which feed them, inform them, and cater to their animal and spiritual needs. People are mostly preoccupied with "ideas" - making new ones, interpreting old ones - and one is immediately reminded of the great tides of roiling indignitude on Twitter in the Neverending Social Justice War, or the endless thinkpieces on Slate and Vox and AV Club about what last night's episode of fictional entertainment Means, in some faux philosophical sense. These underdwellers are also made incredibly anxious by "direct experience", find the natural world ugly and boring, and have become hyper-specialized in their technological understanding: no one quite knows how the whole Machine works.
Hmmm.
So this is basically us, right now. The story follows an elderly lady whose son (the usual hero protagonist type) is a drone trying to break free of his dystopian shackles. She is horrified - as anyone with an older mom can imagine. He is a back-to-nature type who manages to visit the surface by clambering through a bunch of tunnels. He describes a moment (and I paraphrase) when all of his 1000 friends/followers and all his Internet memes are rendered small by his communion with nature: his gazing at some boring, ugly English hills. I was reminded of a similar feeling I had on a camping trip once: suddenly my computer - great source of joy and comfort and fascinating that it is - great holder of great minds like Turing and von Neumann - seemed small and stupid in comparison to, say, the food chain, or natural selection. Which means... I guess... we should all be biologists? And just marvel at the abundance of life on this planet, rather than having screens interpret them for us and being "passive subjects that contemplate the reified spectacle" (as Guy Debord would say)? I realize the irony of pecking all this into my screen! I realize, with horror, the rarity that "direct experience" has indeed become! Gaaaarghhhh.
This story is a better than average SciFi story written in 1909 by E.M. Forster. But what makes it notable aside from the author is the story is eerily reminiscent of modern day. People's overreliance on technology combined with people shutting themselves off from the world and other people seems especially relevant in 2018. Did I mention it's really spooky Forster predicted the Internet almost a century beforehand?
#EMForster
#EMForster
dark
reflective
medium-paced