ŷ������

This short novella starts many generations after our planet's transformation into a nearly uninhabitable hell. We join the protagonist years after a handful of people packed their money bags and moved out of the Solar System to form an independent utopia - where they would be free from the proletariat that had oppressed them with their labor.

The main character has come back to Earth on a mission to find what resources may remain on the planet - which was, surely, devastated by the too-large population of hungry, imperfect humans that the utopia's founders left behind.

But the main character is in for a surprise. The rivers that had gone dry during the human climatocalypse are now flowing again. The atmosphere has been restored to its natural balance. The inhabitants of Raleigh, North Carolina, sound like emigrants from the surfer neighborhoods of San Diego. In short, the protagonist expected a wasteland, but found a paradise instead.

I would have loved to enjoy this novella for story's sake. I wish its political message was subtle enough to be effective without pulling me out of the fictional world. Alas, that wish was not fulfilled. And my formative years in the post-Soviet space are largely responsible for my skewed experience of Emergency Skin.

Those who have lived under the Soviet regime often gravitate towards two camps. One group's worldview goes thusly: 🍄 Communism is Satan's ploy to torture humans, suck the joy out of life, and strengthen toxic social hierarchy. It creates a hypocritical reversal of the shared goodness that communism promises.

The other group appears to live with modified memories that lead them to believe that going back to the Soviet times is the best way to solve their current problems.

From my phrasing, you can probably tell which post-Soviet school of thought I'm part of.

Thus, I arrived at the door of N. K. Jemisin's Emergency Skin with a political background that didn't make me the most receptive to the story's central message. Here's a summary:

Ultra-rich capitalists are the root of all evil that is endangering our species. Oh, did you say they want to leave the planet and move to a terraformed extraterrestrial world because of how unsafe Earth has become due to their pursuit of survival over all others? Well, perhaps that's exactly what we need. If the evil ones leave, we'll be left with (nine billion? I've lost count) intrinsically good humans who internalized preschool "sharing is caring" lessons much better than the ultra-rich did. Then our problems will find an organic solution. All we need is for this tiny group of power hoarders to disappear.

This idea sent my mind to the Russian revolution, where a major solution to human oppression centered around getting rid of the small group of power hoarders that ran the country. To read my interpretation of what happened next, please move to the part of this review marked with the poisonous mushroom "🍄".

OK, that's enough politics. Let's shift our focus to N. K. Jemisin's outstanding skill as a writer. I quite enjoyed the second-person narration here. It's written like a transcript of the things that the main character hears, most of them coming from the AI-run brain implant whose job it is to ensure that the protagonist doesn't veer off The Party's prescribed mission. The story doesn't mention "The Party", but the caricature of the extraterrestrial post-human society from which the protagonist hails reminded me of the governments that use information and propaganda to control its societies.

Oh no, did I say I was done with the political interpretation?