C’est une histoire d’amour, et les conséquences dévastatrices de la réalisation de son objet d’amour ne sont pas aussi parfaites qu’on le pensait.
Le premier paragraphe se lit comme un manuel de mathématiques et le second se déroule dans un hôpital psychiatrique. Ne vous laissez pas décourager non plus.
J’ai épousé un homme avec un diplôme en mathématiques, et notre enfant est maintenant à l’université pour étudier la physique théorique, c’est-à-dire pratiquement les mathématiques, mais je suis avant tout une personne qui aime les mots. Cela m’a donné un merveilleux aperçu de la joie que l’on peut trouver dans les nombres et les motifs –
Comprendre, 4*
Amélioration de l’intelligence exponentielle.
(voir spoiler)
Leon recovers from near drowning and subsequent coma by being given the experimental Hormone K, which creates neural pathways to replace lost ones. More than he lost.
If Only
How many times have you wondered “If only I could do…”, but are hampered by lack of ability or knowledge, both of which are partly down to lack of time (cf Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hour Rule).
Leon’s superbrain learns phenomenally quickly and remembers faultlessly, so he can accomplish in hours what “normals” would struggle to achieve in weeks, months, or a lifetime. Everything is intuitive, without conscious learning, he’s never indecisive, and “No matter what I study, I see patterns”. It’s equivalent to time dilation.
When Leon realises his exceptional mind makes him of interest to others, he downplays his abilities in a test, just as gifted children often do. Selfish or self-preservation?
Mind, Body, Spirit
His powers are not purely intellectual – an aspect I hadn’t considered.
He doesn’t get physically stronger, but he is more co-ordinated and more aware and in control of his body – even heart rate, kidney function and nutrient absorption. His ability to read body language, tics, subtext, and pheromones seem telepathic. Observing strangers on the street, he notes, a young couple “the adoration of one bouncing off the tolerance of the other” and that “a woman wears a mantle of simulated sophistication, but it slips when it brushes past the genuine article”.
Leon’s quest is “enlightenment, not spiritual but rational”, and for understanding and self-awareness, he requires a new sort of language, written with ideograms. (It’s rather like semasiographic Heptapod B in The Story of Your Life aka Arrival, which I reviewed HERE.)
His emotions are more complex and multi-faceted and “I know precisely how I know, and my understanding is recursive”. The downside is no subconscious, so “I witness my own delusions” rather than having dreams. There is no downtime.
(Anti) Climax
The weakest part was how he survived on the run, how he tried to evade and trick those who sought him, and a final confrontation. Too clichéd. Up till then, it was… mind-enhancing.
Related Media
The starting point of this neuro-psychological thriller from 1991 is remarkably similar to that of the 2011 film, Limitless (which I saw a few years ago), which is based on a 2001 novel, The Dark Fields, by Alan Glyn (which I have not read).
Image source for superbrain:
http://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51….
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Division par zéro, 4*
Les conséquences dévastatrices de la réalisation de son objet d’amour sont fondamentalement imparfaites.
(voir spoiler)
The opening paragraph reads like a maths textbook and the second is set in a psychiatric hospital. Don’t let either put you off.
I married a man with a maths degree, and our child is now at university studying theoretical physics that is practically maths, but I am primarily a words person. This gave me a wonderful peek at the joy that can be found in numbers and patterns – theoretical, and also physical – as well as the psychological risks.
“As a child of seven… Renee had been spellbound at discovering the perfect squares in the smooth marble tiles of the floor. A single one, two rows of two, three rows of three… the tiles fit together in a square… No matter which side you looked at it from, ti came out the same. And more than that, each square was bigger than the last by an odd number of tiles. It was an epiphany. The conclusion was necessary; it had a rightness to it, confirmed by the smooth, cool feel of the tiles. And the way the tiles were fitted together… she had shivered at the precision.”
She devoted her life to maths, was happy and successful, until she made a discovery that was “like a theologian proving that there was no God”. How to find meaning life after that? (And don’t say 42!)
The mathematical ideas relevant to the story were explained clearly enough that I think I understood them sufficiently. If you want to delve deeper, Mark H recommended this, though I confess it went above my head:
https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~chaiti…
Image source:
http://www.shelovesmath.com/
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L’histoire de votre vie, alias Arrivée, 5*
Le langage Whorfs (déforme) votre esprit. 😉
Transformé en un très bon film. Revue complète de l’histoire ICI.
Soixante-douze lettres, 2*
Biotech steampunk stupide.
(voir spoiler)
Steampunk biotech, with a good dose of ethical dilemmas and resulting life and death feuds and chases, but this short story felt long, certainly far longer than my interest. It’s about what it is that makes us human, the mystical power of names, replication versus sterility, gender and the potential redundancy of men, plus a bit of eugenics and… bleugh. I think it would work better on screen than it did on the page.
Robert Stratton is a Victorian child with a passion for science. At university, he studies nomenclature, which is a sort of kabbalistic alchemy whereby inanimate things can be animated by the power of a very specific name (like golems). As an altruistic idealist, he founds a business to produce a variety of automata, with the aim of making them affordable for all, so easing the life of the working class. Dextrous automata are his target. Of course, some of those people fear automata will worsen their lives, by putting them out of work. And kabbalists don’t approve of the “secularization of a sacred ritual”.
Meanwhile, others are secretly growing mega-foetuses in jars (from sperm, without eggs), investigating the doctrine of preformation, which assumes all living things were created at the moment of creation and therefore contain the necessary essence for all future generations. But they make a shocking discovery about the fate of humanity.
“Men are no different from your automata; slip a bloke a piece of paper with the proper figures on it, and he’ll do your bidding.”
Image sources:
Steampunk gauntlet: http://thedarkpower.com/blog/wp-conte…
Things in jars: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BLNYdnwIOe0/hq…
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L’évolution de la science humaine, 3*
A quoi servent les humains quand il y a des métahumains ?
(voir spoiler)
Metahumans were made possible by ordinary humans, there’s pride in that, but what’s the purpose of humans in such a world?
In this future, one consequence is that human parents of metahuman babies have to decide whether to opt for embryonic gene therapy to enable digital neurological communication with other metahumans, but which means their child will become incomprehensible to them, or delay it, causing a possibly unbearable sensory deprivation to the child, who may never fully integrate with the metahuman community. What would you choose? What do you think most parents would choose, and what are the implications for humans and metahumans?
That dilemma has contemporary parallels with the debate about whether deaf children should be given cochlear implants as young as possible, so they learn to speak with the hearing world, or not have invasive surgery until they’re able to decide for themselves.
This is a short storyette (only three pages), originally published as Catching Crumbs from the Table.
oodreads.com/review/show/1822230952&q… – work in progress.
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L’enfer est l’absence de Dieu, 3*
Alpha Course étudie le travail dans un monde où les visites angéliques sont réelles. Comment aimer Dieu dans un monde injuste ?
(voir spoiler)
Calvin: “Do you believe in the Devil… dedicated to the temptation corruption, and destruction of man?”
Hobbes: “I’m not sure man needs the help.”
This short story is a rational exploration of supernatural belief. As an earnest teen, I remember being told that “Hell is the absence of God”. I think it was meant to be more unsettling than fire and brimstone. Perhaps it was, but only for as long as I strived to believe in God. Like many sincere would-be believers I couldn’t get past the issue of why a loving, omnipotent, and omniscient God allows suffering at all, particularly of the righteous (Theodicy).
Angels intermittently visit this version of earth, trailing miracles and accidental tragedy in their wake, and people are sometimes glimpsed ascending to Heaven or descending to Hell. Even the non-devout see and acknowledge this, and the authorities collects stats. People seek patterns and meaning in these apparently random events. After each one, “scores of people became devout worshippers… either out of gratitude or terror”. The occasional fallen angels always answer the inevitable questions about God with “Decide for yourselves”.
Neil Fisk is a rationalist who doesn’t blame God for his minor congenital leg deformity. He marries the devout (belief) but not especially religious (church) Sarah, and is utterly devastated when she dies in an angelic accident. He knows she has gone to Heaven, so wants more than anything to come to love God so that he will eventually be reunited with her.
He attends a support group for those blessed or bereaved by the visitation that killed Sarah. It’s like an Alpha Course studying The Book of Job.
William Blake’s illustration, Satan Smiting Job with Boils (Job 2:7).
Job was a devout, wealthy, healthy man, blessed with sons. He lost everything, and was ostracised by all, who assumed God was punishing him for sins unknown to them. (Really, it was just a test of faith, to settle an argument between God and the Devil!) He railed against his unjust suffering, but ultimately accepted God’s greater power, and was rewarded.
In contrast, Neil is a good man, but not devout. He doesn’t want to be angry at God; he just wants to love him. But how can he? It’s like a kidnapper demanding unconditional love as ransom.
The ending packs a punch. I’m not sure what the devout will feel about it.
Image sources
Satan Smiting Job with Boils: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William…
Calvin and Hobbes Discuss the Devil: http://theologyandchurch.com/wp-conte…
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Aimer ce que vous voyez : un documentaire, 5*
Éliminer le lookisme.
(voir spoiler)
“Reflections in this mirror may be distorted by socially constructed ideas of ‘beauty’.«
Lookism
This short story tackles lookism. People can have a reversible brain modification (calliagnosia, aka “calli”) so they can’t process the aesthetic qualities of faces, and therefore can’t act prejudicially or pridefully on that basis. They can still notice that eyes are blue, a nose is wonky, and tell Lisa and Amy apart, but they lack to the ability to rate qualities like symmetry and clear skin aesthetically.
The resulting consequences, complications, and controversies are played out at a university in the run-up to and aftermath of a vote on whether all its students should have to try calli. The university’s motive is social justice, rather than the antithesis to the beauty industry that motivates the National Calli Association (NCA).
There are short monologues from a variety of people (students, staff, parents, politicians, cosmetic corporations), each with vastly different experiences, opinions, and vested interests. Some are intransigent; others open to persuasion and experimentation. Is it better to take on a mild disability, or hope “maturity means seeing the differences, but realizing they don’t matter”?
At the centre is Tamera, raised in a calli community. “Being pretty is fundamentally a passive quality…I wanted Tamera to value herself in terms of what she could do.” But on turning 18, Tamera decides to have calli disabled, though she is unsure whether it’ll be a permanent or temporary switch. Her awakening to seeing and thinking about the world in a new way is challenging, but somehow charming as well.
And “charm” is a key word: Tamera is startled to learn that many of the words associated with attractiveness are etymologically related to magic, including « charm », “glamour” and most obviously, “enchanting”.
Calli or Not?
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…Suite