MEM

MEM by Bethany C. Morrow (2018) 189 pages

Are you a fan of the Netflix series Black Mirror? You might like this. This short novel is set in the 1920s and doesn't feel as dystopian. A scientist has discovered a way for people to extract memories. The MEMs are zombie-like pale copies of the original person that just re-experience the emotional core of the memory until they expire. Except for Dolores Extract #1, who chooses the name Elsie to distinguish herself. She breaks all the rules by remembering all of her source's memories and has the unique ability to remember new experiences. Is she fully human? The mystery of her existence in a non-linear timeline with profound questions about identity, memory, and civil liberties are explored with much contemplation.
 

Planet of the Apes Omnibus

Planet of the Apes Omnibus by Daryl Gregory with art by Carlos Magno (2019) 512 pages

I love this franchise. I read this on Hoopla. The movies all seem to take place in America. The story in this graphic novel series has an international scope. It takes place after Caesar leads the apes to form their own civilization, but before the events of the first movie with Charlton Heston. I enjoyed the art work and the steampunk touches in the design here. At the center are two women, an ape and a human, who were raised as sisters. Their grandfather was an idealist ape who led a small city where apes and humans were treated as equals. Now the sisters are grown and leading their respective groups as ongoing fighting continues. Alaya is the Voice of the council of the Apes. Mayor Sullivan leads the humans in their segregated part of the city. The characters and shifting power dynamics kept me engaged through the five different adventures. The fifth part of the series has a new artist take over who simplified the characters a bit, which I did not enjoy. However, the growth of the characters by writer Gregory was still entertaining.
 

Exhalation

Exhalation by Ted Chiang, 350 pages

In this collection of short (and one long) stories, Chiang presents a wide range of thought-provoking tales, from the Middle Eastern-set first story examining the implications of communicating with your past or future self to the final story of the ethical complications of communicating with a version of yourself in a parallel universe. But they're not all about your self messing with your other self — other stories consider the role of Earth in the universe as created by God, the nature of digital pets/children in the wider world, and why we are so determined to search for intelligent life in outer space instead of right here on Earth. Without exception, these are fantastic stories and I'd recommend them to anyone.

Tenth of December

Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders, 251 pages

Saunders offers up a selection of thought-provoking short stories with Tenth of December, with topics as varied as an attempted kidnapping, futuristic psychological testing, exploitative garden decorations, and, in the titular story, the chance meeting of a suicidal older man and a lonely kid. These stories are alternately sad and funny, and, ultimately, enjoyable. That said, Saunders style is disorienting, with stories starting and ending at odd points. It takes quite a while to figure out exactly what's going on in many of the stories, sometimes not until the story abruptly ends. I felt a bit like I was watching a television that kept switching stations whenever a commercial came on, with the important distinction that I was never the one in control of the channel-change. I suspect that Saunders' goal was to provoke contemplation of the many ethical issues addressed in these stories, while making sure that the reader never has time to fully settle into a story. If that's the case, he certainly succeeded.

Warm Bodies / Isaac Marion

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion, 256 pages.  Narrated by Kevin Kenerly, Audio length: 7 hours, 59 minutes.

    R is your average guy (for a zombie).  He has a job (hunting down the few remaining human survivors), he's married (to a zombie woman) and has kids (zombie kids)  He even goes to church (yeah, a zombie church).  But that's really not enough for R.  Somehow, he just finds it hollow and meaningless, like he's just shambling through life without any real purpose.  His wife leaves him for another shuffling undead monstrosity, but he finds it just doesn't affect him all that much.  After indulging in some recreational brain eating, he finds something that catches his interest like nothing else: a living girl named Julie.  But rather than kill her and consume her sweet, delicious brains, he finds he has the urge to keep her alive and protect her.  Awesomeness ensues.  

    Warm Bodies is, fundamentally, a story about defiance, hope, and fulfillment.  I've found that most stories in the zombie apocalypse genre focus on accepting the inevitable nature of a bleak situation and moving on, but this story has a diametrically opposed spirit.  It screams at the you to reject inevitabilities and embrace the things you think are impossible.  

    Maybe it's a goal that you're just too old and tired to accomplish, an unrequited love you have no chance of winning over, or a cure for a civilization-killing zombie plague: The things that you hope for may be impossible, but that doesn't make them worthless or dumb.  Our aspirations shape us and energize us.  They carry us from what we are to what we can be.  They pull us out of the rigor mortis of normality– that grey haze in which we find ourselves doing the same thing, day after day, because we can and it's easy– and force us to confront both life's limitations and it's possibilities.  

    R's story shows the reader that a life without something impossible to strive for is one that's mostly dead.  True, there's little in the way of pain or fear in that kind of life, but it also lacks the joy and exhilaration that impossible something inspires in you. And sometimes, every once in a while, the impossible turns out not to be.  

    Read this book, you won't regret it. 

P.S.: The movie version comes out next year, here's a link to the trailer:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3ErWNBX9Rc