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A review by sunbean
Mockingbird by Walter Tevis
5.0
I started out thinking I wouldn't like this book, then ended up thinking... this is pretty amazing.
Likes: Imagine a full grown human being seeing the world like a newborn; that's essentially what happens when the main character takes the forbidden fruit of emerging from the drug-induced haze of the future, where no one knows what a book is or how to read, or has any sense of anything but the moment... no past, no future. Among human beings, there's no SHARED experiences; no family, no community, no friendships. Even in large groups, everything is experienced in complete isolation. No one converses, no one reads, no one... anything. If there is any accidental contact or conversation in the book, the characters often take extra drugs to avoid thinking or feeling anything about it. Paul, his first baby steps of experiencing things, does not know how to experience emotion because he's never had experiences that provoke emotion before. He has to learn how to have basic human interaction, how to be HUMAN.
He learns to read. He takes a journey. It's awesome and sad and did I say awesome. The woman, Mary Lou, that he experiences experiences with at first, has her own part in the narrative, as well as Bob the robot. THE robot, the perfection of humanity and robotics, who is, unfortunately, humanity's keeper and maintainer and, also unfortunately, very suicidal.
Dislikes: There is some swearing including the f-word and some sex... it is about human beings, after all. Not so much a dislike as a disclaimer, since I thought they were important to the story and nothing super graphic. I thought it was interesting that porn was ubiquitous in the future world of human isolation; studies have proven that porn strains relationships and changes how the brain thinks about partners. Paul never thinks very much about it, but my thinking from my perspective is that if you were trying to get human beings to not like or want to interact with each other, flooding them with porn would be a great place to start. Porn sex is purely selfish; for the individual viewer's pleasure only. "Quick sex is best;" as in it's the act that matters, not the people or the relationships, which is exactly what porn says.
Likes: Imagine a full grown human being seeing the world like a newborn; that's essentially what happens when the main character takes the forbidden fruit of emerging from the drug-induced haze of the future, where no one knows what a book is or how to read, or has any sense of anything but the moment... no past, no future. Among human beings, there's no SHARED experiences; no family, no community, no friendships. Even in large groups, everything is experienced in complete isolation. No one converses, no one reads, no one... anything. If there is any accidental contact or conversation in the book, the characters often take extra drugs to avoid thinking or feeling anything about it. Paul, his first baby steps of experiencing things, does not know how to experience emotion because he's never had experiences that provoke emotion before. He has to learn how to have basic human interaction, how to be HUMAN.
He learns to read. He takes a journey. It's awesome and sad and did I say awesome. The woman, Mary Lou, that he experiences experiences with at first, has her own part in the narrative, as well as Bob the robot. THE robot, the perfection of humanity and robotics, who is, unfortunately, humanity's keeper and maintainer and, also unfortunately, very suicidal.
Dislikes: There is some swearing including the f-word and some sex... it is about human beings, after all. Not so much a dislike as a disclaimer, since I thought they were important to the story and nothing super graphic. I thought it was interesting that porn was ubiquitous in the future world of human isolation; studies have proven that porn strains relationships and changes how the brain thinks about partners. Paul never thinks very much about it, but my thinking from my perspective is that if you were trying to get human beings to not like or want to interact with each other, flooding them with porn would be a great place to start. Porn sex is purely selfish; for the individual viewer's pleasure only. "Quick sex is best;" as in it's the act that matters, not the people or the relationships, which is exactly what porn says.