This series focuses on stories that are both well-written and do something that I find interesting from a technical perspective. This week, everybody to the limit!
Nobody enjoys discovering their own limitations, but those weaknesses are just as much a part of being human as our strengths. Medical science is chipping away at them, though, and each decade we have to re-engage with the meaning of “humanity” as more of our limits disintegrate. As a result, I enjoy stories that ask tough questions about the nature of humanity in a future where many of our current physical boundaries fall away. When you take away disease, cognitive limitations, and even old age, does that fundamentally change what it means to be a human? If not, what remains that we can call human?
In the case of “Travellers in an Autumn Wood,” by Andrew Barton and published in Persistent Visions, what remains of that recognizable humanity is a solid murder mystery. Humans may have split themselves into a variety of subspecies inspired by both fantasy and science fiction, but we’ll probably still want to murder each other in creative ways…and obsess about what it means to be whoever we are.
I think that’s a remarkable achievement. What would it be like to be one of fifty clones, or one of five interlinked minds? No one can know, but Barton makes us believe that whatever it is would still be human, for good or ill. Go check it out!