Short Story Watch: "The Transmissions" by John Bonello

Cities under domes: The future of our existence?

By Péter MARTON

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A friend has recently shared this article as a reminder (from a couple of years ago). In it, US speculative fiction author Neal Stephenson is mentioned, calling, at the time (in 2012), for less dystopias and more of the optimistic futuristic in science fiction, addressing the call to "SF authors" as such.

I don't think the call by Stephenson projected a truly representative characterisation of the huge and diverse population of SF authors (and their equally, if not more, diverse set of works). But I did talk in a critical way about there being a dystopia bandwagon of sorts earlier on myself, so this may be worth reflecting on.

The trend of dystopia mania is most visible, ironically, outside the SF realm, when authors who rather belong to mainstream literature choose to go down this road -- think Cormac McCarthy or Emily St. John Mandel, for example, as authors of actually valuable works.

Many SF/genre authors use dystopias well in the meantime to highlight real issues and problems, and they/many often bring literary value out of this themselves, avoiding the cheap disaster tourism of some of the works carried by the bandwagon.

For a short reading recommendation fitting the above profile, let me mention Maltese author John Bonello's work, The Transmissions.

It is noteworthy first of all because it is presented in an unorthodox way, where the technological novelty of the presentation is organically intertwined with the nature of the story, and thus adds to its value. Basically, we get 60 short, one-hundred-word-long instalments that were published from January 2016 through to May 2018 (the timeline of the story is independent from this). You need to click through them. Each episode is just what the title suggests: a transmission -- a message from the main character to people who left this planet (the first part's here; after this one, always scroll down for the link to the next transmission). The word limit thus makes sense in terms of the story itself. The breaks between the transmission-episodes are used creatively, for example to confront the reader with sudden and drastic developments as well as (on one occasion) to bring in a voice other than that of the main character. All of this is very well done.

The second reason for the recommendation is the link and the novel approach to the subject of dystopias. The story focuses on a character who has a mission to remain behind on the planet in a dark version of the future. Not a mission one would hope for. Let's just say he grabs the bull by the horns... Without quite spoiling the story that has its twists and a good deal of action in it: it all starts after the bio-city of Deosai is vacated by its inhabitants who are off to some space station or perhaps an exoplanet. But some remain behind. Those who do include the determined ones, who refer to themselves as TWS, or Those Who Stay, plus a separate group of prison inmates who are left behind to fend for themselves -- and then some others still. Life, under a dome, was already somewhat bleak for the characters before the departure. The physical world of the story, as we are introduced to it, seems to consist mostly of the extensive desert that surrounds Deosai and the cold barren far to the north. Yet there are still people, including good people, in this world, and also missions to accomplish... so find out what happens next. And since this is, at the time of writing this, still an unnoticed gem, be a good reader and go help people find it! 

Previously reviewed here in EUtopias and Other Futures: Mortal Engines, the movie