Easthampton, Massachusetts: Small Beer Press, 2011; $16.00 tpb; 200 pages
This is a collection of stories—nine in all, 6 reprinted and 3 original—that share a common theme, the effects of the apocalypse from the small end of the telescope. Or they demonstrate how large causes can have small, if very important, effects. Or they are comedies (and tragedies) of manners for the end of the world, as if Jane Austen really had written about zombies or pandemics or dirty bombs or economic collapse. And just like a Jane Austen heroine (or like Gloria Gaynor), people will survive. I read one of the stories in the volume, “Useless Things,” three years ago, and it has stayed with me. Many of the rest of these stories will stay with me, too. Strong characterization, vivid description, emphasis on the mundane courage of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances: these things make all the stories in the volume ring true.
Forty-five years ago, when I was young and in love with science fiction, and Gregory Mellor was a toddler, the great sf fantasist Theodore Sturgeon faced a tough task, introducing the first collected stories of a then-new writer. Here’s how he began:
There has been nothing like Zelazny in the science fiction field since—
The word venerable has two meanings: in the original sense it denotes the ability to inspire a feeling somewhere between admiration and worship, but it is also used to mean old, as if mere age brought worthiness. This process of automatic veneration is now overtaking the allegedly trashy amusements of my youth. In music, it had already happened; in fact, the sounds I grew up with and still love are several decades before the oxymoronic Classic Rock. Television and comics have likewise gained venerability, and the Buck Rogers stuff is joining them.
written by August Schulenburg, directed by Heather Cohn
produced by Flux Theatre Ensemble, featuring, Rachael Hip-Flores, David Ian Lee, Isaiah Tanenbaum, Nitya Vidyasagar, and Ken Glickfeld. The Secret Theatre, Long Island City.
DANIEL: If anyone needs more of the research presented, then—
MAC: I don’t, I’m in.
DANIEL: Oh, good.
MAC: When the singularity knocks, you open the door, know what I’m saying?
—Deinde, August Schulenburg
A few years ago, I attended the Singularity Summit in New York City hosted by the Singularity Institute. It would be an understatement to say it was an odd experience for me. Out of a room of perhaps twenty individuals in the post-conference planning session for the next conference, I was the only humanities person in the room. Sitting there sandwiched between an astrophysicist and a neuroscientist (two of only four women in the room), I felt slightly alien. The questions being raised weren’t beyond my understanding—I have read Rucker and Sawyer for heaven’s sake. Upload a consciousness? Sure. Why not? Create an A.I. and make sure that any ethics and morals coded in can change over time if necessary (kudos on accounting for change so that we don’t have some kind of Terminator or Matrix situation). What concerned me, however, were the questions hovering just beneath these ideas. Exactly who gets uploaded? How is that determined? What kind of rights will they have? Whose morals and ethics will be chosen? Will we still be human?
written by Mac Rogers, directed by Jordana Williams
produced by Gideon Productions & the BFG Collective Residency, featuring Becky Byers, Jason Howard, and David Rosenblatt at The Secret Theatre, Long Island City
I.
The fourth page of the program for Mac Rogers's Blast Radius intrigued me. A matrix barcode bore the caption "Scan below for a personal message from Bill Cooke . . . It's all gonna be alright." Huh? Luckily, I possessed the equipment to scan it and was treated to an innovative use of technology to further narrative and flesh out the world of the play. In the first video Bill Cooke (Sean Williams) and his wife Amelia (Kristen Vaughn) speak from what looks like basement shelter. He wants to address us before "the wireless towers come down and the power runs out." Cooke tells us not to fight or hide from the aliens. "They will kill you if you fight, and you will run out of food if you hide." He instructs people listening to go outside and wait if they heard the aliens coming; they would lead everyone to where they were supposed to go. Cooke or a team member would come by for orientation. Cooke closes by assuring us that everything will be okay.
Reading science fiction like it matters since 1989.
