Metatropolis: Meta-worlds and Otherwise

There have been a lot of theories lately about what the future will hold for America and for the world. If you are an environmentalist you might hypothesize that in the near future we will all drown from a freak tidal wave. If you are Conservative you might live in fear that one day we step into 1984; if you are a Liberal you might celebrate. And if you’re a techie you might fantasize about a world where we all send our Avatars out into reality to do our bidding. Metatropolis, edited by John Scalzi, has a little bit for everyone.

While the stories in Metatropolis are written by different authors and the stories create worlds of their own, each story is a thread in the bigger world weaved by the writers. They have managed to take all of these theories, throw them in a hat, rattle them around, pour them out and just sit back while meta-worlds build themselves. Each of the five stories introduces you to a day-in-the-life of a city. They could be describing any city that has been altered over time or is currently going through a change. But don’t stop at envisioning, say, a city losing its manufacturing industry; the cities in Metatropolis are a little more meta than that.

There seems to be as many ways of defining meta as there are theories of what our future will look like. “Denoting a change of position or condition”, “something that is characteristically self-referential”, “at a later stage of development”, “after; beyond; with; adjacent; self”, and “an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter” are just a few I found online. Metatropolis illustrates all these definitions and more. There are virtual worlds within virtual worlds, virtual worlds projected on top of reality, characters who refer to the cities in the other stories and the continuing theme of change and altered cities.

“If you shot a time-lapse movie of the whole city at, say, a year-per-second, you’d see it evolving the same way. A city is a whirlpool of relationships but it changes so slowly that we humans have no control over how its currents and eddies funnel us through it.” This description is from a character in the last story, To Hie from Far Cilenia, comparing a real city to a game the characters play where virtual cities, societies and companies are created and dissolved overnight. It’s like World of Warcraft on steroids and projected on top of your own reality. Instead of role-playing from the comfort of their own couches, the characters go about their daily lives, seeing the fantasy world projected on the real world. And “leveling up” involves entering deeper into a game within a game. A game that has its own food production, prop production, real estate (virtual estate?) and currency. Talk about meta, right?

The live-off-the-land-nomad-style way of life the characters create, especially in Stochasti-City, are very appealing to me. The author of this story, Tobias S. Buckell, challenges the notion that huge leaps in society can’t possibly be made overnight. Through a complicated process of turking, where a big project is accomplished by divvying out tasks to multiple people referred to as turks, Buckell’s characters are able to take over a neglected business complex to install what they call Vertical Farms.

We are intimately introduced to the inner workings of a Vertical Farm in (big breath) Utere Nihil Non Extra Quiritationem Suis, where we follow a young man named Benjamin Washington at his new job as a Biological Systems Interface Manager. The “biological” bit refers to pigs and the “systems interface manager” bit refers to taking care of the pigs including, but not limited to, transporting poop to the recycling shoots in order to uphold the title of the story which is Latin for “Use everything but the squeal”. The pig’s pee is even turned into plastic. Oh, and the pigs are potty trained.

In these stories, the characters have created an alternate way of life without the need or even desire for traditional luxuries like grocery stores, cars, and even money. By building virtual worlds or vertical farms or forcing a 100% recycle-or-die policy they try to engineer human nature away or at least conform it to their own belief systems.

Metatropolis has forced me to question what I believe about my world right now. I’m actually Libertarian and had mixed feelings about the self-sufficient/police-state messages portrayed. And while I enjoyed wondering if my Libertarian ideals will hold up in a Meta-world my beliefs in individual freedom and a truly capitalist society remain unthreatened. We all need our worlds jarred every now and then. And no matter your political persuasion Metatropolis will definitely jar all your worlds, your Meta-worlds and otherwise.

So far, so good, still unread

I'm still plugging along. I haven't forgotten about you. I've finished reading Metatropolis edited by John Scalzi and Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris.

And I have so many more books to read. Perhaps I should set a deadline? But how would that work? I can barely read one book a month and even if I read 2 books a month it would take me 8.75 years to read all 210 books.

Eep!

That's a bit depressing when I put it that way. Almost 9 years without buying another book...

But I guess I probably have some that are so boring I couldn't finish them. So if it's not interesting by the 5th page I'll just stop reading and give it away. I might even be able to put some books in the give away pile right now. And that's why I joined www.paperbackswap.com.

I'm currently reading Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident. I learned today that Eoin Colfer, the author, is writing the 7th book of the Fowl series. Well, those will just have to wait...9 years.

Better get reading then.