12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
What would happen if we set a lifespan of 65 to cut cost of old folk?
People can buy and sell time to each other, and TimeTrad's less scrupulous employees are not above tricking them out of it either. With executives on one side rich enough to live past 100, and junkies on the other with only hours left, James Calgary, 34, has traded away most of his allotted years in the belief that he would be left decades of life in a bequest, only to be bitterly disappointed.
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Trading time crops up again in the title story, with two old death artists, Drennan and Pilgrew – men who have turned suicide into spectacle by killing themselves repeatedly before huge crowds – meeting after years of estrangement. Drennan considers himself an artist, and feels personally slighted that Pilgrew has come to regard their vocation as nothing more than a fairground attraction.
Some of Mackenzie's imaginary futures feel disturbingly close to home, like 'Buy or Be Bought', depicting a land of turbo-consumerism where people are forced to buy unwanted and unnecessary goods, able to stem the tide of pointless purchases only by buying Decline privileges, which can cost more than the junk that's continually being foisted on them.
(Image: PA)
Or 'Eden Rich', set in the offices of Victor Pelling, who has devised a way of implanting information directly into the brain. A novella-length sci-fi political thriller, it addresses the increasing political power of tech bros – though the fact that neither press nor politicians figure out Pelling's means of acquiring it feels like a bit of an oversight. At a time when students are already getting ChatGPT to do their work for them, it also hints at abolishing education by programming knowledge into children.
'Certain Things About McFarlane' marks a departure from fantastical, if worryingly familiar, futures towards a more abstract science fantasy, introducing Richard McFarlane, a professor of Polypragmatics, who is scheduled to be the opening speaker at a conference.
As he goes to his room to prepare, however, he becomes dislocated in time and space. McFarlane's ordeal isn't meant to be taken as a dream, but nevertheless it's rare to read a piece of writing that so convincingly replicates the logic of how dreams progress, a feeling heightened by the character's panic as the time for his speech approaches and he's still no nearer his destination.
This story also marked the point I realised how eager I was to turn the page and see what Mackenzie's imagination had brought forth for the next one. There's more to speculative fiction than anticipating worst-case scenarios for present-day anxieties, and Mackenzie's flights of imagination are as intriguing and compelling as they are relevant, questioning where we're going as a society and what we're prepared to sacrifice to get there.
