In Memory of Izumi Suzuki

(Verso, 2021)

 

 

I. 

 

Recently, someone sent me an email asking:  

 

Don't you ever get tired of endlessly - and almost exclusively - writing about white European male authors?

 

The answer is no, I don't. 

 

However, just to demonstrate I am aware that there are writers who can't be characterised in these terms, here's a post in memory of Izumi Suzuki; a woman described not only as a pioneer of Japanese science fiction, but a countercultural icon; a woman who initially found fame as a (nude) model and (pink film) actress; a woman who was a member of Tenjō Sajiki, the avant-garde theatre troupe led by Shūji Terayama; a woman who committed suicide in February 1986, aged thirty-seven. 

II.

 

Although Suzuki had decided to devote herself to writing four years earlier, it wasn't until 1975 that she published her first sci-fi short story and it was in this genre that she became something of a cult figure, developing a quirky feminist style in which she expressed her concerns about technology, gender, and the future.

 

Unfortunately, being a cult doesn't pay the bills and although Suzuki managed to support herself and her daughter for a brief period with her writing, she ended her days in ill health, poverty, and, tragically, hanging from a rope tied round her neck.  

The first English language edition of her work has just been published by Verso: Terminal Boredom (2021) - a collection of seven short stories, including the title story, which was the last she wrote before topping herself. 

 

Although critics describe these tales as singular, punky, irreverent, darkly playful and charmingly deranged, I've so far found them to be disappointing - not least in their despairing humanism; future races and alien beings it seems are pretty much just like us and still struggling with the same issues of loneliness, sorrow, and pain. Unfortunately, this melancholic mix of angst and sentimentality isn't really my cup of tea.

 

Having said that - and to be fair to the memory of Suzuki - I've only given them a cursory reading, so may yet discover many things to interest and enjoy within the pages of her book when I return to it in due course and subject it to a rather more considered, critically attentive reading.   

 

But, for now, it's back to the white European male writers I'm accused of privileging ... 

 

See: Izumi Suzuki, Terminal Boredom, trans. Polly Barton, Sam Bett, David Boyd, Daniel Joseph, Aiko Masubuchi, and Helen O’Horan, (Verso, 2021). 

The Shape of Felines to Come: Brief Notes on the Speculative Evolution of the Cat

I.

Speculative evolution is a genre of hard science fiction with a firm basis in biology, even if the future scenarios it imagines are hypothetical.

It may sometimes stretch the limits of possibility, but by retaining a concern with real-world processes and building on our knowledge of how things actually work, it retains a level of plausibililty that distinguishes it from pure fantasy.   

II.

One thing is for sure, a posthuman world - in the sense of a world in which Homo sapiens have become Homo extinctus - would not present any difficulties for the cat.

Even the most domesticated of breeds is never more than a whisker away from happily returning to the wild, as the feral populations successfully breeding and assuming their place as apex predators in many types of environment demonstrate.

With or without us, these natural born killers will survive and prosper. But the interesting question is how they might evolve ...

Not only might they increase in size, for example, but some commentators have put forward the idea of semi-aquatic cats evolving to exploit tide pools, mangrove swamps, or even coral reefs. Others, meanwhile, like to imagine flying cats, gliding from one tree (or one ruined skyscraper) to the next with the aid of a patagium, their long tail helping to provide in-flight stability. 

Thankfully, because cats cannot digest plant matter and need to eat meat to survive, it's extremely unlikely they'll evolve into some kind of boring herbivore.

Note: those interested in this topic are encouraged to read After Man: A Zoology of the Future (1981), by Dougal Dixon - the Scottish writer and geologist often credited as being the founder of speculative evolution (though he admits to being inspired by H. G. Wells). 

Reflections on Brains in Jars

Dr. Hfuhruhurr meets Miss Uumellmahaye in

The Man with Two Brains (dir. Carl Reiner, 1983)

I.

Readers with knowledge of analytic philosophy will know of the brain in a vat idea that is deployed as an updated version of Descartes's concept of the evil demon in thought experiments concerning mind and meaning, or the relationship between consciousness and reality.

Typically, a brain in a vat scenario is used to support an argument for philosophical skepticism and solipsism. In brief, this argument goes as follows: since a brain in a vat transmits and receives exactly the same impulses as a brain in a skull - and since these impulses are its only way of interacting with the world - it's impossible for that brain ever to know for sure its own location and this has serious implications for the truth or falsity of a subject's beliefs.

In other words, because it's impossible to completely rule out that one is not simply a disembodied brain in a vat, there cannot be firm grounds for believing the things that one believes to be true (or real) with any certainty. As might be imagined, there are objections raised from within philosophy and biology that suggest this thought experiment is fundamentally absurd, but, unfortunately, I don't have time to go into these here.


II.

Readers without knowledge of analytic philosophy - but who know their sci-fi literature and films - will be more familiar with a scenario in which a mad scientist or advanced alien being removes a person's brain and suspends it in a jar containing some kind of life-sustaining fluid that is connected up with electrodes to a machine that simulates reality for the disembodied brain, thus allowing it to continue to have thoughts and feelings without these being related to objects or events in the actual world.

Think, for example, of Anne Uumellmahaye in The Man with Two Brains (1983), starring Steve Martin as pioneering neurosurgeon Dr. Hfuhruhurr, famous for his method of cranial screw-top surgery. Whilst at a conference in Vienna, Hfuhruhurr encounters Dr. Necessiter (played by David Warner), who has invented a radical new technique enabling him to (briefly) preserve living brains in jars (the plan being to eventually transplant them into new bodies, beginning with that of a gorilla). 

Of course, this is just a movie. But, apparently, it is medically possible to keep an isolated brain alive in vitro before one places it into a new body, or, as in the case of Mr. Spock, returns it to its rightful owner. This requires a method of perfusion, or the use of an oxygenated solution of various salts (i.e. a blood substitute).

Any reader thinking of playing Dr. Necessiter, however, should note that they would probably have greater success attaching a whole head to the body of another organism, rather than simply attempting to pop a brain into an empty skull. It might also be noted that so far most of the experimental research in this field has been carried out using guinea pigs and not human test subjects; certainly no such procedures using people have been reported in a peer reviewed scientific journal that I'm aware of.

Click here to watch the scene in The Man with Two Brains in which Steve Martin as Dr. Hfuhruhurr meets Anne Uumellmahaye (voiced by Sissy Spacek, although she was uncredited in the movie). 

For a follow up post to this one on the theft of famous brains, click here.