Speculative Fiction
2020 05 11
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I'm a sucker for speculative fiction, but that should not be news to anyone. I find the ways in which people reconfigure a society, a culture, particularly after an apocalypse fascinating. How will they make things work? How will it evolve? How will they govern? It's endlessly fascinating to me the myriad ways in which authors and screen creators envision the ways in which things might play out.
It's nice when someone does a decent job of a post-apocalyptic dystopia, which is far more common in the young adult book market than anywhere else, but one takes what one can get. The more adult TV series See I haven't finished yet, but I'm hoping somewhere in there someone explains how it is that masturbation appears to be some form of prayer for the queen. See is set in a world where the loss of sight is universal, or so they think. Anyone found to have vision is considered to be an aberration, even evil.
I do like an alternate history timeline story too. I've recently started watching Motherland: Fort Salem, not to be confused with Motherland which is something else entirely and I won't be watching that. The Motherland I am watching is an alternate American/world history set in a parallel timeline to ours, where the Salem witches had entered into an accord with the US government/military to take on the role of fighting America's wars for it. Fort Salem is the military base of the witch part of the army where they are put through basic training, which does include the same sort of physical training that conventional forces go through, along with refinement of possessed skills and teaching of new ones. There is a conscription that requires everyone from a witch bloodline to serve if able.
Their form of magic is vocal, but not in the vein of casting spells. They call them "seeds" or "seed sounds", which are based on specific harmonics and how they impact what they're directed at, which can create injury, storms, crush rock, cause people to fall asleep, et cetera. Other groups have used this ability to cause destruction by making groups of people commit suicide en masse.
It's very well-made, well-cast. I find the tone quite serious, as in they take the whole aspect of witchcraft seriously rather than treating it like an aberration or joke; an aspect of magic realism I can absolutely get on board with, which was absolutely not the case when I read One Hundred Years of Solitude, a book I ended up disliking completely. It's becoming a more and more used fiction tool, which makes some kinds of storytelling a little more accessible since it allows more subtle entry of extraordinary things into a more everyday-seeming environment. It pairs well with the more recent phenomenon of TV shows that look/feel like a comic book but aren't comic booky. It also makes It easier to turn the Bible, or aspects thereof, into the fiction stories they always should have been.