Situation Normal
Posted by Sunday on Nov 12, 2008 at 2:39 pm in Daily Space, LiteratureI was writing a review of Samuel R. Delany’s Nova for Avi over at Scifi at Dark Roasted Blend when my brain got a little out from under me, if you know what I mean. I’ve had some sad news this week (something that happened to a friend) that put me into a kind of anti-human funk – yes, more than usual – which has in turn started forming one of those emotional toruses I get, where everything I do is tainted by too much thinking. Whatever, it doesn’t matter: I was thinking about how much of the novel is about class differences (or mega-gulfs, rather) and part of it is the segregation of those who have refused to be “cyborged.” Called “Gypsies,” those that don’t want any mechanical upgrades are considered throw-backs, retards, and are systematically exterminated.
What occurred to me is that I am unsure if Delaney wanted the Gypsies to be sympathetic or not.
A few years ago I reread Brave New World for maybe the third or fourth time, and the first time since I had been a teenager. It was a revelation totally unlike my first reading, because I found myself questioning what was so wrong with being genetically matched to a labor caste. Everyone is chemically altered to be happy doing whatever it is they were meant to do, be it chef or coal miner or movie star. As a teen I was focused on the the dissolution of free will, of eugenics and mass indoctrination. As an adult I wished desperately there were some pill that made me happy to go to work every day, to make scads of money for someone else while I remained trapped in an economic morass, unable to labor on subjects that actually pleased me.
And then yesterday, rereading parts of Nova, a similar realization: the Gypsies are people I would despise. This increasingly congested world is creating the opposite of a social environment: rather than being surrounded by potential friends, I find I am surrounded by people I have nothing in common with. It’s a mathematical eventuality. I turn to my computer, for example, so that I may easily identify and contact the kind of person I would like to be social with. I’ve transferred a good deal of my creativity over to the ethereal “net,” where I share photographs with friends and strangers, where I can find artistic mentors I’d never be able to find in meatspace. I imagine, then, a Gypsie who disapproves of what I do. And I think, “What an ignorant douchebag.”
It always comes back to me calling someone a douchebag, doesn’t it?
November 12th, 2008 | Daily Space, Literature
Next you’ll be yelling at kids to get off your lawn.
BTW, now I have a few more books to put on my “read” list. Thanks.
BTW, I’d like that pill too and I’d be baffled by anyone that would look at the net and all it has to offer (besides porn or all the viagra offers I get in my inbox) as something bad.
Oh if I had a lawn I’d want those damn kids off it, believe you me. I don’t even want my neighbors walking around our building.
I do have stuff for a read list, as a matter of fact. Sit tight.