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Memestalk
Nadia Oliphant has the case of her life ahead of her, dragged from her semi-retirement by a desperate EarthGov and conscripted to investigate and solve the Memestalk Plague. Nadia would much rather sit and watch the sunsets from her Namaqualand home, amidst all of the catastrophic climate change disrupting the Earth's political and economic systems. Nadia consents when the Memestalk gets personal. She is dragged back into the flailing mid 21st Century civilization when her grandson begins to show early symptoms and the race against time begins.
71 pages, Paperback
Published January 19, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 26, 2021
I really liked it.
July 24, 2019
I have been asked 'Why write Memestalk in the first place?' As always my answer has been because I wanted to, because, I think I had to. Memestalk has a strong POC female lead, a host of diverse characters and a pressing sense of topical issues that I needed to discuss. It's about how these characters unite around a common goal, how they align to accomplish anything. Certainly, there are selfish reasons for everyone to do so... but how could people work through diverse situations without tripping over Political Correctness at every turn? This is a spoiler-free editorial review.
Memestalk is not a prophetic piece, I must make it clear. But the conditions that triggered the first draft of the book in 1989 remain as valid today as about twenty years ago. The premise is a mysterious malady that is killing ordinary people with no idea of how or why. A global plague, just one among many but all the more deadly because it is not understood. A team is assembled, centered around an abrasive, aggressive character that is most suited to solve the case, ex-Police Commissioner Nadia Oliphant.
The first of the perceptual twists happen, because Nadia is over a century old and instead of being a gentle, kindly grandmother type, she is anything but that.
An old-style medical root-cause investigation follows, and the story meanders through the investigation and conclusions the team compile and identify, through ever more difficult conditions, their results. They are under as much threat as is their efforts to solve the mystery.
The world in 2060 is decidedly Cyberpunk, but the sort of half-assed Cyberpunk that a third-world country would represent; bit and pieces of high-tech not fully assembled into a fully-functioning world, a place where almost everyone uses only what they have to have, with no extra resource beyond their means... where everyone might have a cellphone, but very few would have access to a Cray computer. The world is falling to pieces economically and socially, and state functions no longer serve the people or are democratic in any way shape or form.
Another central premise is that people are using technology, wireless and radio and are networking almost exclusively with a large set of Mega-Corp vehicles that are referred to as 'Pay-Gates', a sort of futuristic universal internet/data services/mobile phone monopoly that almost every person in the world needs to have access to. This raises the first of the 'big things' I wanted to introduce... that humans are changing in response to the presence of ubiquitous computing, but HOW are they changing?
The second big premise is the pace of change is probably only apparent to someone who is older than the technology itself, literally like your grandmother trying to configure a macbook for e-mail... but what if, say, your children and your grandmother could do it better than you could because they understood different things better than you did? Memestalk plays on those perceptions somewhat.
The last big premise is that people get what is coming to them, that all actions, even those based on 'no choice' scenarios have a hidden cost. This is reflected throughout Memestalk on various levels, some obvious and some hidden in obscure little places scattered around the prose like easter eggs. It is a somewhat gloomy work, the prime objective of technology and humanities aspirations brought side-by-side and failings in both highlighted and exposed.
Through the Novella, Nadia remains central to the human condition, determined, hopeful (but not too hopeful) battered and disappointed about the treatment she has received through her long life... enraged at other people's treatment of her comrades, aloof and yet familiar, angry and yet resigned... a cauldron of seething anger at the way of the world, and yet she is able to rise above it for short periods. For all her flaws, Nadia is set to remind humans what makes them human.
Memestalk challenges the reader and is not an easy read, the threads of how 2060AD came to be extend like spider-silk from every paragraph, how humanity plucks only the most immediate use from a complex web of technology so hastily, that they may miss a lot of other things... how the cost of everything is upfront in the T&C's, but yet how few people bother to read them.
My only hope with Memestalk is that any reader can take something away with them, that it can move them somehow. It was moving to write, and I'm hoping it will be moving to read.
Memestalk is not a prophetic piece, I must make it clear. But the conditions that triggered the first draft of the book in 1989 remain as valid today as about twenty years ago. The premise is a mysterious malady that is killing ordinary people with no idea of how or why. A global plague, just one among many but all the more deadly because it is not understood. A team is assembled, centered around an abrasive, aggressive character that is most suited to solve the case, ex-Police Commissioner Nadia Oliphant.
The first of the perceptual twists happen, because Nadia is over a century old and instead of being a gentle, kindly grandmother type, she is anything but that.
An old-style medical root-cause investigation follows, and the story meanders through the investigation and conclusions the team compile and identify, through ever more difficult conditions, their results. They are under as much threat as is their efforts to solve the mystery.
The world in 2060 is decidedly Cyberpunk, but the sort of half-assed Cyberpunk that a third-world country would represent; bit and pieces of high-tech not fully assembled into a fully-functioning world, a place where almost everyone uses only what they have to have, with no extra resource beyond their means... where everyone might have a cellphone, but very few would have access to a Cray computer. The world is falling to pieces economically and socially, and state functions no longer serve the people or are democratic in any way shape or form.
Another central premise is that people are using technology, wireless and radio and are networking almost exclusively with a large set of Mega-Corp vehicles that are referred to as 'Pay-Gates', a sort of futuristic universal internet/data services/mobile phone monopoly that almost every person in the world needs to have access to. This raises the first of the 'big things' I wanted to introduce... that humans are changing in response to the presence of ubiquitous computing, but HOW are they changing?
The second big premise is the pace of change is probably only apparent to someone who is older than the technology itself, literally like your grandmother trying to configure a macbook for e-mail... but what if, say, your children and your grandmother could do it better than you could because they understood different things better than you did? Memestalk plays on those perceptions somewhat.
The last big premise is that people get what is coming to them, that all actions, even those based on 'no choice' scenarios have a hidden cost. This is reflected throughout Memestalk on various levels, some obvious and some hidden in obscure little places scattered around the prose like easter eggs. It is a somewhat gloomy work, the prime objective of technology and humanities aspirations brought side-by-side and failings in both highlighted and exposed.
Through the Novella, Nadia remains central to the human condition, determined, hopeful (but not too hopeful) battered and disappointed about the treatment she has received through her long life... enraged at other people's treatment of her comrades, aloof and yet familiar, angry and yet resigned... a cauldron of seething anger at the way of the world, and yet she is able to rise above it for short periods. For all her flaws, Nadia is set to remind humans what makes them human.
Memestalk challenges the reader and is not an easy read, the threads of how 2060AD came to be extend like spider-silk from every paragraph, how humanity plucks only the most immediate use from a complex web of technology so hastily, that they may miss a lot of other things... how the cost of everything is upfront in the T&C's, but yet how few people bother to read them.
My only hope with Memestalk is that any reader can take something away with them, that it can move them somehow. It was moving to write, and I'm hoping it will be moving to read.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews