Okja - bacon sarnies, anyone?

I finally caught up with Bong Joon Ho's 2017 Okja, a film superior IMHO to the over-lauded Parasite.  There.  Nothing like getting the controversy in early.

As you can probably tell from that gambit, there's a lot I liked about the movie - from Jake Gyllenhaal's bonkers (and virtually unrecognisable) TV naturalist to the loveable (but not loveable enough to put me off bacon) Okja.  And credit to the effects people for remembering that post-violence physiology is as much about swelling as bleeding. 

There was, however, one element that grated.  It's how the film portrays our view of genetically modified organisms (GMO).  The story relies on Tilda Swinton's Lucy Mirando, CEO of the Monsanto-in-disguise corporate villains, hiding Okja's genetically modified roots under a smokescreen of a bucolic miracle, mother nature handing us this uber-porker through her munificence and benevolence.  It plays to - and worse, reinforces - all the misunderstanding about GMOs.

What is it about humanity's sudden mistrust of genetically modified plants and animals?  We've been genetically modifying them for millennia, just by guesswork.  It's called cross-breeding: putting the tastiest animal in with the biggest and picking out the ones that have both traits from the litter, or grafting a heavy-cropping stem on to a hardy rootstock.

Genetically modifying flora and fauna in the modern sense is no different, it's just doing it with the lights on and the boxing gloves off.  We can see the mechanism under the bonnet, pick out the gene combinations for colour, flavour, yield and disease resistance.  We no longer have to guess.

How we use GMOs may be problematic, of course.  Making a grain resistant to pesticides allows you Agent Orange the farm at the expense of every living thing other than your cash crop.  For clarity, I think that is a BAD THING.  But it doesn't make GMOs a bad thing.  It does, however, mean that GMOs open up a whole new world of bad things.  It's like saying that the invention of the internal combustion engine was a huge evil because it allowed the development of tanks and warplanes, forgetting that it also gets food into our shops and people to hospitals.

But a cursory search of the internet shows that many, many people have swallowed the whole Frankenfood scare story, more so amongst the young which, to me, demonstrates that the power of the social media echo chamber outguns the classroom's ability to teach people to think rationally.  GM foods cause cancer?  Well, let me name a couple of really quite natural consumables that do that just as well - tobacco and alcohol.  QED: being GMO or non-GMO has nothing to do with it.

Given this, and the resistance we've seen to Covid-19 vaccines, I wonder whether it's possible to produce something akin to Asimov's three laws of robotics, but for humanity's stance towards innovation?  How about:

• If I can see how it works, I'll trust it (e.g. the wheel)
• If I can't see how it works, but it brings me entertainment or pleasure, I'll trust it (e.g. the Internet, street drugs)
• If I can't see how it works, but it predates me, I'll trust it (e.g. fire)
• Everything else is witchcraft

As a species, we're fucked, aren't we?

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2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

Perhaps I'm part of the problem?

I sit before you splenetic and confused.

At the weekend I attempted a palace coup, as one does on a sunny Saturday in early Spring, to wrest control from those asleep at the wheel of the local branch of a national environmental body I recently joined (reading previous blog postings will provide dots for you to join).  For a little less than twenty-four hours, I was co-chair and co-treasurer, before the out-going chair decided that a constitutional rule requiring attendance at six prior meetings in order to be nominated for a committee role still held, hence my nomination, and therefore appointment, was invalid.

Given a) the meeting was to revive a moribund group and form a new committee, with few long-standing members having the continuing energy to push things forward, b) this was only the group's second meeting since 2019, and c) there were only eight of us in the room, two of whom wished to be shot of their responsibilities, with few others enthusiastic, and we needed four committee members, draw your own conclusions.  You may cite a focus on following procedure over achieving results: RMS Titanic, deckchairs, etc.  Mine is that they'd rather have the climate rise by two Celsius than me in a position of influence.

Why that may be so is, I think, illustrated by a drabble that I submitted to Solarpunk magazine.  Now, Solarpunk declares itself to be 'a publication of radically hopeful and optimistic science fiction and fantasy'.  My drabble concerned a bioengineer who solved the climate crisis, leaving her empty and depressed.  So, she lit the fuse of an even bigger problem, giving her life renewed focus, even if it left the rest of us like boiling frogs in a cauldron.

I sent it to them as much as a joke as anything; it fitted their brief, if not their ethos.  I sent it to them mainly because I enjoy being awkward and contrary (see above), but also to prick the smug 'it'll all be all right in the end' bubble that I see regularly.  Because, and this is what's driving this posting's title, I do wonder whether we, science fiction writers, do not carry an iota of responsibility by being a little too good at our game.

Yes, let me repeat, perhaps some of us, not all of us, are just a little too prescient.

I'm looking at you Mark Twain, inventor of the internet.  And you, Douglas Adams, father of ebooks.  Stand up, Hugo Gernsback, and admit you gave us Facetime.

Science fiction is littered with examples of predictions that actually came true.  And I think this may have fooled us into thinking that if we all hang around long enough, there'll be some magical technological solution along in a moment.  That Apple will save the apple, along with all the other flora, plus the fauna, including us.  Just look how we invented a vaccine whilst living through a live, interactive, global performance of Soderbergh's Contagion.

Just because we can write the solutions, and get really, really lucky every so often, doesn't mean we have, or ever will have, the solutions.  For every self-driving car (ta, Ray), there's faster than light travel or time travel.  Even those who don't make this basic category mistake are, I think, lulled into a false sense of security.  I know it isn't true, but I bet I'll be responsible for more carbon going into the atmosphere than coming out today, and I should be panicking more about it than I am.

Now, you may have expected Solarpunk to have batted my piece straight back to me.  But no, they liked the writing, and asked me to expand it and align it to their philosophy.  Make it positive.  Make it hopeful and optimistic.

At first, I guffawed - they'd misunderstood, hadn't got the joke, the snowflakes.  Rewriting as requested would negate the whole point of the piece.  Then I thought about it, tossed it over in my mind, saw it from the other side.  And now my drabble has doubled in length - still a quarter the length of this post - but guess what: Alex the bioengineer has solved the second problem she set herself, and has made the world an even better place.  I'm going to send it off to them today.

If it ever sees the light of day, I'd like to be clear that it's utter hokum, but optimistic, positive hokum.  Don't be fooled into thinking any of my hand-waving science signals a possible solution to the environmental crisis within.  But I rather like it.  We need more of it as the water levels rise and the trees catch fire.  Help take our minds off things.

#

Click on the images or search for these on Amazon.

You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.