Emergency Skin

This is one of six short stories published by Amazon and all of them deal with some sort of technological advancements which is not my usual kind of genre, so I don't think these would have even been on my radar if not for this short story by N. K. Jemisin. And she never disappoints.

I've actually come to associate second person POV with the author, so I wasn't at all surprised when this story began the same way. As per the premise, I was expecting the space explorer to find a much destroyed Earth but what he encounters is something completely unexpected. The author tells most of the story through the AI which lives inside his head (if we could even call it that), giving instructions to him about what to do on Earth and what rewards await. In just this short story, we get a great glimpse of the kind of new society these so-called Founders have built in a far away galaxy - a white homogeneous male world in which only the rich and privileged have access to skin and all other pleasures, whereas the majority live in composite suits.

The major theme of the story is the belief in a socialist utopian society, the idea that all the earth's problems would be solved if all human beings worked towards the betterment of everybody and not just themselves. In a story that's just about 33 pages, we get excellent commentary on misogyny, fat shaming, racism, classism, ableism and capitalist greed and while the author's solution to save the world might not feel realistic, the underlying problems she talks about are nevertheless completely true. And there's absolutely nothing wrong in envisioning a world that's better for every one of its inhabitants.

In the end, all I can say is that Jemisin packs a powerful punch in just a few words, and it's overall hopeful message is brilliantly done. It's a very short, enjoyable and thought provoking read and I think everyone should give it a try. You'll of course enjoy it more if you are familiar with the author's writing style (and like it) or lean more left liberal in your politics. I haven't still decided if I should try the remaining five stories in this collection, but maybe I should.

I did not even know how much I needed a story that showed a better world and a way to get there. This is (more or less) what might've happened on Golgafrincham if they'd sent out only an Ark of rich people.

I wanted science fiction, not a comically heavy-handed political statement with caricatures of the extremeists on both sides. The evil people are all rich, white capitalists who check of literally every possible ticky-box for bigotry there is: gender, race, age, disability, financial/working class status, hair type, sexuality, body size. The good people are all purely communist, non-white, predominantly female, patronizing and blindly accepting of violence from outsiders. There's no moderation here. There's no compromise, no believable middle ground, nothing but pure extremism on both sides.

The story was interesting until it got heavy-handed political, at which point it was just immensely uncomfortable from every possible angle. Being written in second person, it means the reader has a disembodied voice directly addressing them while talking trash about others who are fat, brown, disabled, old, female, etc. It means the reader has someone directly speaking to them to disregard the gender of another character and insist she's a man. It means that there's no reprieve from the heavy-handed, mustache-twirling villain level bigotry... and when finally the reader character breaks away from the idealogy of the disembodied voice (an AI embedded in their head), then comes the other side bearing down with insistence that as soon as the white capitalists yeeted themselves into the galaxy far, far away, Earth was suddenly able to make itself better and be a perfect utopia.

What about all the non-white governments with oppresive regimes? What about all the non-capitalists who are still greedy and self-serving? What about people in general who fall somewhere between the two extremes? Shh, don't think about those, the world was suddenly able to overcome an apocalyptic level of doom just by getting rid of the caricatures of rich white men.

I think what frustrates me the most is that, if the absurdly overdone, anvil-on-the-head level politicism had been toned down to far more believable levels or left out completely, this would have actually achieved the statement it seems so desperate to make without getting into obnoxious levels of politicism. (I read to escape, not to have more of the overwhelming crap in the real world thrown at me, ESPECIALLY when it comes to science fiction.) The storytelling style itself is interesting and inventive. The worldbuilding is intriguing. The concept in general is amazing. The execution, however, is nothing short of a complete and utter disappointment.

I feel like I wasted my time reading this one, and that makes me sad.