Ghost in the Machine

The big reveal of our second set of episodes, that the Sybil system determines Crime Coefficients by analyzing a scanned person's brain and comparing it to a vast catalogue of "deviant" brains collected over the years and which comprise the intelligence of Sybil itself, continues a running theme I've noticed in recent years. I think I could make an argument for having dystopia as a recognizable sub-genre.

The theme is this; a Dystopia either is the polar a bad utopia (in the sense that the writer intends for reader to not want to live there) or has a lie or a series of  lies which support the supposed Utopian society. We've seen a few examples of the latter this semester, namely Psycho Pass and Minority Report, but many others support this definition, including classics like Make Room (aka Soylent Green).

An Analysis of Pain

Olivia Butler’s very dark presention of the future is interesting to me for two reasons right off the start. One: it’s in the not too distant future. Butler published this book in 2000, and it is only set in in the year 2024 I believe. It’s always interesting to read “futuristic” novels, that somewhat seem, I don’t know, ‘within our grasp’ for lack of a better term. Second: the ultra violent and disturbing imagery is fed to through a vehicle of pain, that vehicle being our protagonist, through who’s point of view the story is told. Due to her mother’s drug use during her pregnancy, our character suffers from what she describes as hyperempathy, where she feels pain from other others through observation, so much so she has even bled from the sight of her brother bleeding (faking*). Thus, not only do I as a reader wince at vivid descriptions of mureder and rape, but I also feel through my protagonists feeling. As she describes her condition in conjunction with the pain she views daily, my horror is amplified by the knowledge that her suffering is worse then mine. I hear and I feel, but she she sees, and, quite literally ‘feels’ all of the torment around her. 

So far the beginning of this book has offered a truly difficult analysis of pain. I wonder how our main character remains sane. 

Under the same circumstances my mind would surely fracture.