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A review by 600bars
Alienation by Inés Estrada
3.0
Live in the Pod, eat the bug!!!
This book’s cover is just gorgeous. To be honest I picked it up because the drawing of the girl reminded me of myself. +I’m always thinking about alienation. I figured the book would be either a meditation on loneliness/separation or a pun about aliens, both of which I'm interested in.
The book is about a couple, Eliza and Carlos, who live in the future (the 2050s I believe). By this point, the megacorporations of today (apple, amazon, mcdonalds, walmart, etc) have completely taken over all aspects of life. Most people have GoogleGlands placed in their brains allowing them to enter an immersive VR space of the internet without needing any hardware. Every character lives somewhere in the arctic circle, the implication being it’s the only inhabitable place. They live in an apartment that is completely empty and they wear plain pajama/jumpsuit garb. You might think they are prisoners at first glance. But they aren’t (well they are— Prisoners of SOCIETY!) Eliza is a sex worker and gains income from a VR OnlyFans/Twitch streaming situation. Carlos works at an oil rig, but oil is in its death throes as an industry.
There was a sort of plot about an AI forcibly impregnating Eliza with the first human-AI hybrid that then escapes into the world in the end, but I didn’t care about the plot very much. My favorite part was the middle section which is a choose-your-own-adventure situation except you’re surfing the web.
Eliza is Iñupiat and Carlos is Mexican. I really liked seeing indigenous characters in a futuristic story. There was much discussion about the fact that indigenous people have been living in a post-apocalyptic future ever since colonization. Eliza views the internet & its baggage as a net positive, because her community can stay in touch. But her grandfather begs to differ. Carlos’s abuela feels similarly negative toward the new tech. She laments a beach she knew as a child, and how the simulation doesn’t hit the same. At one point Carlo’s abuela tries to educate her grandson by showing him some memes and he and his cousin laugh it off. It’s funny to think about us all in the 2050s trying to show educational memes to our grandchildren.
Carlos and Eliza are lucky that they have a tangible line to the past. They have access to living memories, through their grandparents, of life before the internet and GoogleGland and whatever else is happening in this world. After the granparent’s generation, which I suppose is my generation, people will no longer have true access to a time where life wasn’t like this. They can prob still access simulacra of course, but all tethers to the Real versions of these things will be totally gone. Ok I haven’t read Baudrillard so forgive me if I’m misusing terms, but things will go from simulation to complete simulacra with the original forgotten.
Does the birth of the fucked up AI singularity creature signify the next step in human evolution? Otherwise, with no one having physical sex and undoubtedly not wanting to endure the physicality of pregnancy and birth, humanity would start petering out. (Of course here you can point again to the convo between grandpa and Eliza and note that the apocalypse has already happened to indigenous people before and people have managed to survive through the generations, and will likely survive through this as well). Maybe at this point I should’ve paid more attention to the ending, but I already returned the book smh. You’d think I would care about the pregnancy & singularity & Immaculate Conception aspect more due to my Evangelion obsession, but I am currently preoccupied with thoughts of Embodiment due to that Emrata book. It’s crazy how what you read/watch/what’s going on in your life impacts how you read something bc if I had read this 4 years ago I’m sure I would be going on and on about “Cthonic Birth” or some shit. Anyway.
There were a bunch of similarities demographically to this one instagram influencer who is also Alaska Native and has a Mexican husband and her last name is the same as Eliza’s and I think she may also have an onlyfans? I also convinced myself Carlos had the same last name as her husband but I truly can’t remember and that’s probably not true. Anyway the author is also texan and so is the influencer lol I almost got possessed to message the influencer about the book then I was like ok parasocial relationship out of control I’m basically living in the pod already for even having this train of thought and knowing so much information about a stranger on the internet
There was one point where we see Eliza’s recent google searches, and one of them is “read Suehiro Maruo comics”. There’s a graphic horror scene in one of the online worlds that was an homage to that genre of work. I recently read “the strange tale of Panorama Island” by Suehiro Maruo, which itself is based on a short story that was made by a guy who was obsessed with Edgar Allen Poe. What a long train of connection. Anyway, the Panorama Island book was about a man who was completely obsessed with creating an island that was a simulacrum of paradise. None of it was real, he didn’t care about building an actual paradise, he wanted the illusion of it. He was also inhabiting an identity that was not his own. The original story was written 97 years ago, but here we see it almost exactly replicated in this book. Eliza and her peers live in a simulacrum of paradise that is ultimately empty. They can be people they are not while in the Metaverse.
But I live in a hologrammm with youuuuuuuuuuuuuu
I am convinced that Metaverse will be a flop, but I am also of the generation that still remembers Ye Olde Ways, like the grandparents in this book. Eliza’s life is utterly devoid of sensual experience. She and Carlos never have physical sex, they never taste physical food, (They drink Soylent from the tap, I’m a Soylent Drinker myself, it's one of my worst traits, we have a long history) they never go dancing. Eliza does all of this in the Metaverse— she engages in sex while being in a furry/animal simulator and at one point they fuck as intertwined snails! she eats a smorgasbord of virtual food, she goes to a rave that is set in the 90S. I guess she can see and hear in the Metaverse, but she can’t smell, feel, taste, or touch. I am ALWAYS thinking about physicality and the absence of sensory stimulation. The loss of physical experience as we get sucked further into our screens worries me. We almost always favor the mind over the body but at what cost!
Eliza is so alienated from her own body . She has to pay McDonalds to find out her McBody stats. Eliza is frustrated about this, exclaiming “Sucks having to pay for my body stats, it’s my body, I should have access to that for free!” (131). I guess in some ways we are also a paywall away from information about our own bodies too. Eliza can’t feel sexual pleasure for herself, this is getting into a tricky convo about the ethics of sex work virtual and otherwise, and I don’t really want to do that, but she is still unable to directly access physical sexual pleasure even though she lives with her partner. They haven’t had physical sex in over a year. When the internet goes out, they can barely talk to each other and are immediately bored. Eliza’s ultimate lack of control over her own body happens when she has the AI demon pregnancy and is not able to abort it. I am trying to write a review for My Body by Emily Ratajkowski which I finished last week, but every other thing I read like this graphic novel makes me think of more things I need to add to it. Eliza and Emily both struggle with dissociation from their body even though they both use their body (more importantly, the IMAGE of their body) as their primary source of income.
Eliza has a friend, Kaarina, who appears to have extreme health issues in the physical world. In the Metaverse she can thrive. I guess that posits a question about what it is like to not have to exist outside of a physical body for those who experience suffering and constant pain in their physical body. iDK I went through a long phase where I felt it would be easier to simply not have a body, I can understand that line of thinking especially if your body gives you troubles more than joy.
Eliza talks about how people used to stare at campfires and now they stare at screens so you don’t have to bother imagining anything. I myself can’t be bored for a single moment, I am never ever not listening to a podcast or audiobook or reading or scrolling or watching something if I’m not doing a specific activity. Sometimes when I am doing a solitary task at work like shelving I am like wow this is truly my only block of time all day to wander around in my own head. Idk if my imagination has suffered tho I’m convinced I still got enough of that as a kid. Sometimes I feel resentful that my time and mind have been taken from me by big tech and the internet, which feels like something I didn’t consent to and wouldn’t choose if I were given the option, but it’s like that Tyler The Creator quote about cyberbullying, I am here and I won’t log out even tho it’s in my power to do so! (Kinda, they are making themselves more and more indispensable every year that goes by)
It’s also telling that the virtual places they can go for entertainment are either outlandish fantasy or nostalgic for bygone eras, like partying in the 70s at a music festival or the 90s at a virtual rave. There is a fragment of an article in the choose-your-own-adventure section talking about the rise of sequels instead of new movies coming out. Nostalgia and the inability to create anything new. Stagnant culture no imagination :(.
As usual I’m getting away from the book. oK. This book was written in 2016, so before we had the MetaVerse (though obviously analogues like second life and Club Penguin have been around for forever) but still before the live in the pod eat the bug lifestyle was as clear. Though you can count the metrics by which we were already deeply alienated from ourselves and each other. I absolutely enjoyed reading this, but it was kinda *too* on the nose throughout. And I was never very invested in the overall plot. I mostly enjoyed the portions where they are just surfing the web and talking to each other.
This book’s cover is just gorgeous. To be honest I picked it up because the drawing of the girl reminded me of myself. +I’m always thinking about alienation. I figured the book would be either a meditation on loneliness/separation or a pun about aliens, both of which I'm interested in.
The book is about a couple, Eliza and Carlos, who live in the future (the 2050s I believe). By this point, the megacorporations of today (apple, amazon, mcdonalds, walmart, etc) have completely taken over all aspects of life. Most people have GoogleGlands placed in their brains allowing them to enter an immersive VR space of the internet without needing any hardware. Every character lives somewhere in the arctic circle, the implication being it’s the only inhabitable place. They live in an apartment that is completely empty and they wear plain pajama/jumpsuit garb. You might think they are prisoners at first glance. But they aren’t (well they are— Prisoners of SOCIETY!) Eliza is a sex worker and gains income from a VR OnlyFans/Twitch streaming situation. Carlos works at an oil rig, but oil is in its death throes as an industry.
There was a sort of plot about an AI forcibly impregnating Eliza with the first human-AI hybrid that then escapes into the world in the end, but I didn’t care about the plot very much. My favorite part was the middle section which is a choose-your-own-adventure situation except you’re surfing the web.
Eliza is Iñupiat and Carlos is Mexican. I really liked seeing indigenous characters in a futuristic story. There was much discussion about the fact that indigenous people have been living in a post-apocalyptic future ever since colonization. Eliza views the internet & its baggage as a net positive, because her community can stay in touch. But her grandfather begs to differ. Carlos’s abuela feels similarly negative toward the new tech. She laments a beach she knew as a child, and how the simulation doesn’t hit the same. At one point Carlo’s abuela tries to educate her grandson by showing him some memes and he and his cousin laugh it off. It’s funny to think about us all in the 2050s trying to show educational memes to our grandchildren.
Carlos and Eliza are lucky that they have a tangible line to the past. They have access to living memories, through their grandparents, of life before the internet and GoogleGland and whatever else is happening in this world. After the granparent’s generation, which I suppose is my generation, people will no longer have true access to a time where life wasn’t like this. They can prob still access simulacra of course, but all tethers to the Real versions of these things will be totally gone. Ok I haven’t read Baudrillard so forgive me if I’m misusing terms, but things will go from simulation to complete simulacra with the original forgotten.
Does the birth of the fucked up AI singularity creature signify the next step in human evolution? Otherwise, with no one having physical sex and undoubtedly not wanting to endure the physicality of pregnancy and birth, humanity would start petering out. (Of course here you can point again to the convo between grandpa and Eliza and note that the apocalypse has already happened to indigenous people before and people have managed to survive through the generations, and will likely survive through this as well). Maybe at this point I should’ve paid more attention to the ending, but I already returned the book smh. You’d think I would care about the pregnancy & singularity & Immaculate Conception aspect more due to my Evangelion obsession, but I am currently preoccupied with thoughts of Embodiment due to that Emrata book. It’s crazy how what you read/watch/what’s going on in your life impacts how you read something bc if I had read this 4 years ago I’m sure I would be going on and on about “Cthonic Birth” or some shit. Anyway.
There were a bunch of similarities demographically to this one instagram influencer who is also Alaska Native and has a Mexican husband and her last name is the same as Eliza’s and I think she may also have an onlyfans? I also convinced myself Carlos had the same last name as her husband but I truly can’t remember and that’s probably not true. Anyway the author is also texan and so is the influencer lol I almost got possessed to message the influencer about the book then I was like ok parasocial relationship out of control I’m basically living in the pod already for even having this train of thought and knowing so much information about a stranger on the internet
There was one point where we see Eliza’s recent google searches, and one of them is “read Suehiro Maruo comics”. There’s a graphic horror scene in one of the online worlds that was an homage to that genre of work. I recently read “the strange tale of Panorama Island” by Suehiro Maruo, which itself is based on a short story that was made by a guy who was obsessed with Edgar Allen Poe. What a long train of connection. Anyway, the Panorama Island book was about a man who was completely obsessed with creating an island that was a simulacrum of paradise. None of it was real, he didn’t care about building an actual paradise, he wanted the illusion of it. He was also inhabiting an identity that was not his own. The original story was written 97 years ago, but here we see it almost exactly replicated in this book. Eliza and her peers live in a simulacrum of paradise that is ultimately empty. They can be people they are not while in the Metaverse.
But I live in a hologrammm with youuuuuuuuuuuuuu
I am convinced that Metaverse will be a flop, but I am also of the generation that still remembers Ye Olde Ways, like the grandparents in this book. Eliza’s life is utterly devoid of sensual experience. She and Carlos never have physical sex, they never taste physical food, (They drink Soylent from the tap, I’m a Soylent Drinker myself, it's one of my worst traits, we have a long history) they never go dancing. Eliza does all of this in the Metaverse— she engages in sex while being in a furry/animal simulator and at one point they fuck as intertwined snails! she eats a smorgasbord of virtual food, she goes to a rave that is set in the 90S. I guess she can see and hear in the Metaverse, but she can’t smell, feel, taste, or touch. I am ALWAYS thinking about physicality and the absence of sensory stimulation. The loss of physical experience as we get sucked further into our screens worries me. We almost always favor the mind over the body but at what cost!
Eliza is so alienated from her own body . She has to pay McDonalds to find out her McBody stats. Eliza is frustrated about this, exclaiming “Sucks having to pay for my body stats, it’s my body, I should have access to that for free!” (131). I guess in some ways we are also a paywall away from information about our own bodies too. Eliza can’t feel sexual pleasure for herself, this is getting into a tricky convo about the ethics of sex work virtual and otherwise, and I don’t really want to do that, but she is still unable to directly access physical sexual pleasure even though she lives with her partner. They haven’t had physical sex in over a year. When the internet goes out, they can barely talk to each other and are immediately bored. Eliza’s ultimate lack of control over her own body happens when she has the AI demon pregnancy and is not able to abort it. I am trying to write a review for My Body by Emily Ratajkowski which I finished last week, but every other thing I read like this graphic novel makes me think of more things I need to add to it. Eliza and Emily both struggle with dissociation from their body even though they both use their body (more importantly, the IMAGE of their body) as their primary source of income.
Eliza has a friend, Kaarina, who appears to have extreme health issues in the physical world. In the Metaverse she can thrive. I guess that posits a question about what it is like to not have to exist outside of a physical body for those who experience suffering and constant pain in their physical body. iDK I went through a long phase where I felt it would be easier to simply not have a body, I can understand that line of thinking especially if your body gives you troubles more than joy.
Eliza talks about how people used to stare at campfires and now they stare at screens so you don’t have to bother imagining anything. I myself can’t be bored for a single moment, I am never ever not listening to a podcast or audiobook or reading or scrolling or watching something if I’m not doing a specific activity. Sometimes when I am doing a solitary task at work like shelving I am like wow this is truly my only block of time all day to wander around in my own head. Idk if my imagination has suffered tho I’m convinced I still got enough of that as a kid. Sometimes I feel resentful that my time and mind have been taken from me by big tech and the internet, which feels like something I didn’t consent to and wouldn’t choose if I were given the option, but it’s like that Tyler The Creator quote about cyberbullying, I am here and I won’t log out even tho it’s in my power to do so! (Kinda, they are making themselves more and more indispensable every year that goes by)
It’s also telling that the virtual places they can go for entertainment are either outlandish fantasy or nostalgic for bygone eras, like partying in the 70s at a music festival or the 90s at a virtual rave. There is a fragment of an article in the choose-your-own-adventure section talking about the rise of sequels instead of new movies coming out. Nostalgia and the inability to create anything new. Stagnant culture no imagination :(.
As usual I’m getting away from the book. oK. This book was written in 2016, so before we had the MetaVerse (though obviously analogues like second life and Club Penguin have been around for forever) but still before the live in the pod eat the bug lifestyle was as clear. Though you can count the metrics by which we were already deeply alienated from ourselves and each other. I absolutely enjoyed reading this, but it was kinda *too* on the nose throughout. And I was never very invested in the overall plot. I mostly enjoyed the portions where they are just surfing the web and talking to each other.