Last night was the first Bad Idea Butcher's Shop since my last report - so as you can imagine, we were very excited at the prospect of a gin-filled intellectual firecracker of an evening!
Tom and I both, on a whim, decided to have a creative night last week and both write short stories (and I mean short, 350 words!) for the night in the vain, laughable possibility they might get picked to be "under the knife" as it were. The theme for this Butcher's Shop was "transhumanism", which is basically a cultural and intellectual movement which supports the use of science and technology to improve the human mental and physical condition and capacity. With the panel for the night featuring some respected thinkers and writers of science fiction, we'd have to sound like we knew what we were talking about!
Which I didn't! I don't do science fiction really - I'm a Jane Austen girl myself. Has anyone seen Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?! I've not read it, but that's my kind of science fiction!!
Anyway, we wrote our stories, read them to each other, had a laugh and emailed them off. heard nothing, so we just headed to the Old Operating Theatre Museum in London Bridge on Thursday night, expecting nothing more than to be entertained, enlightened, perhaps challenged, and get reacquainted with our old friend, Hendricks.
We were a bit late, as I had to walk slowly due to my knee being on strike (!) and only managed two gins (only, she says!) before being called into the theatre. We got our seats and gazed admiringly at the programmes before opening them. I let out an audible gasp when I saw the first page.
It was my story!!!
Needless to say, I was wishing I hadn't had two gins! Fortunately, I wasn't publicly identified by the "butchers" and didn't have to say anything! Phew! I just sat there smiling as my piece was read aloud, to futuristic music, and then critiqued by the editor of Bad Idea. On an overhead projector, my words were magnified and focused in on, circled and moved around, as they tried to make sense of my tale of a man who, after his third angioplasty, decides he's had enough and has his failing heart replaced with a digital one. I called it "The Angina Monologues".
The commentary and critique was kind and very useful - I must say, they made me sound far more in the know about the genre than I am!! A lot of conclusions were drawn that hadn't even occured to me, and I came away with far more insight and a sense of further potential with the piece that I didn't have before.
One thing I really did get out of the critique was how important it is for a writer to draw a clear and logical narrative between an event and it's consequences, and also to make the character's motivations clear. I know I often fall down in this respect with my work - for fear of telling rather than showing I sometimes leave out things that are obvious to me, but I forget that my readers won't be in the character's head, like I am. So it was a real "sink in" moment for me.
I enjoyed the second story too - it was about a master winemaker who gets the nerves from a dog's nose put into his own in order to gain a superhuman sense of smell to have the edge over his competition!
It was such an honour to be chosen for the critique - it really made my night!! Apparently my story hammered home a theme they wanted to emphasise during the evening - "dystopia is always a human decision"! Interesting - and true, I think. Do you agree?
Tom and I had an amazing conversation on the walk home - we talked about lots of things that had been raised in the panel discussion in the second half of the evening. We talked about the fallibility of humanity, this vertiable arms race between nature and capitalism, and how no one can ever really predict how life will be in the future. We wholeheartedly agreed with Ian Watson, one of the panel, who said "we're living in Utopia now. Enjoy it. Be happy."
What are your thoughts? Let's have our own panel discussion! Are we in a Utopia or Dystopia? Will human life truly be enhanced by the advances in technology, or is it only prolonging the inevitable?
~~~
More information about Bad Idea and The Butcher's Shop events can be found here. Maybe I'll see you at the next one!
What a great surprise to have your story featured in the program! Sounds like an interesting topic...one that I know nothing about, and thus can't comment on intelligently. But hats off to you!
ReplyDeleteHow exciting for you!
ReplyDeleteIt's not much of a discussion I'm afraid as I totally agree with you re Utopia = now.
Btw, I posted the Favicon info :0)
Well done on getting picked. Sounds like a fascinating evening.
ReplyDeleteAs for 'we're living in Utopia'...I guess it depends who 'we' is. Some people may be...some people most definitely are not (even in the UK).
x
I have to agree with Rachel on this, it really depends on who the "we" is that we're talking about. You and I, or humanity in general? For those of us lucky enough to have money in the bank, money in the wallet and change in a spare dish on the side, things are pretty rosy -- but the picture is far less utopian for the poor souls sleeping rough in the capital, for children growing up in war zones, you get the idea.
ReplyDeleteIn some ways, sure, I guess this is Utopia in that we've never had it so good, and this is largely due to advances in technology. But then again, what do we consider enhanced? Longer lifespans? Is the ability to keep a person's body alive almost indefinitely after the brain has died and the body's organs have failed enhancing their life?
On the other hand, technology enables us to create better artificial limbs, to regrow body parts, and almost undoubtedly will take us further still in these and related fields. There can be little debate that this is largely "a good thing".
I think technology will allow us more creative and inventive ways to kill each other on vast scales, and widen the gap between the world's richest and poorest.
For many, advances in technology will enhance their lives -- in terms of entertainment (people will laugh heartily in 50 years at the primitive technology we consider so cutting edge today), in terms of making life "easier", but I don't think it will necessarily enhance our lives by making us any happier. I don't think technology will make us any more humane.
Jay -
ReplyDeleteYou make some good points. I think that it's difficult to be happy without basic needs being met, and that after they are met, happiness is more of a choice than anything else - and that doesn't depend on technology.
Phil-
How incredibly exciting to have your work picked!! I would have been thrilled and terrified. It sounds like it was a wonderful critique experience -
when the student is reaady, the teacher will appear!
Marie
Wow!! What an exciting and surprising evening! I'm so glad your work was picked and that you got such constructive feedback.
ReplyDeleteSaskia x
congrats!! that must have been so exciting! And does sound like a lovely debate on the way home. Think I'd have to have some contemplation time, and maybe a gin of my own, before I came up with an answer of my own-- but as always, love the discussion in the comments!
ReplyDeleteHow exciting for you, congratulations. It's great that you got a good experience out of the process.
ReplyDeleteIt is a fascinating time that we're living in at the moment.
I did some research for a science documentary a few years ago, which was very interesting.
There are incredibly intelligent people who offer persuasive argument on both sides - both Dystopian and Utopian.
One of the most fascinating people I came across was the inventor and futurist Raymond Kurzweil, he believes that one day we will have the technology to live forever - a concept which really boggles the mind - I mean, where will we all live for one thing?!
I do agree with you that the best thing to do is to enjoy what we have now, and to do our best to make a positive, constructive contribution to our world.
How exciting for you! Congratulations! It must have been really useful, hearing other's opinions!
ReplyDeleteI think we're living in Utopia now, but sometimes I fear this will take us to Dystopia, to a time where our bodies live for ever and so our hearts and brains stop worrying about death. If there is no limit to how much we live, where is the incentive in trying to make our time here worthwhile?
Firstly, congratulations on having your story publicly dissected - I'm not at all surprised that they chose yours.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of dystopia or utopia: I look at what we've got right now (and by we, I mean anyone who's reading this blog) and can hardly believe the level of luxury we've achieved. We live a lifestyle that the royalty of not so long ago couldn't have dreamed of. But it's going to come crashing down, and probably sooner rather than later.
Every single one of us is addicted to oil (a finite and ever-diminishing resource). Many of us don't even know we're addicted. Many people haven't even heard of Peak Oil.
Our economy is built on the concepts of debt and perpetual growth. Perpetual growth defies the laws of physics - the growth must stop sooner or later, and when it does, the global economy will not survive.
For our own gratification (read: rampant consumerism) we are destroying species and entire ecosystems like there's no tomorrow.
In short, we're sprinting towards a meeting with Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", and the vast majority of us do not, cannot, will not, see it coming.
And most days I feel like the Cassandra of Greek mythology.