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ABOUT J.M. BERGER INTELWIRE BOOKS BY J.M. BERGER |
Dystopian fiction and radical politics
Friday, October 8, 2021
The Social Network 1.0"There was the button that produced literature, and there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world." -- The Machine Stops, E.M. Forster (1909) E.M. Forster’s celebrated book A Room with a View is
considered one of the greatest British novels of all time. Published
in 1908, the Edwardian comedy of manners was Forster’s breakthrough novel, part
of a prodigious literary output that would span decades and genres, including
fiction and non-fiction, living after his death in 1970 in the form of
acclaimed films, including Howards End and A Passage to India. The
book describes a young British woman’s adventures in Italy and her pursuit of
love within the period’s social strictures. One year after A Room with a View was published to
wide acclaim, Forster turned his hand to a short story of a starkly different nature,
The Machine Stops. Sometime in the far future, Vashti spends most days alone in
her room, wired into an elaborate worldwide electronic network. Run by “the
Machine,” the network allows her to give and attend remote video lectures, and
to endlessly trade “ideas” with her friends, whose messages arrive with in a
clangor of bell-like notification sounds. The Machine fulfils her every need;
buttons summon food, drink, even her bed. She only leaves her chair to sleep,
her body atrophied from lack of use, just like all of her friends. When Vashti’s son, Kuno, requests to see her in person, she protests
that she is too busy for such distractions, but reluctantly agrees, boarding an
airship. She keeps in touch with him out of pure sentimentality. According to
the Machine, the duties of the parent “cease at the moment of birth,” when babies
are whisked off to public nurseries. As the airship soars over the majestic Himalayas, Vashti asks
the airship attendant to cover the windows, complaining, “These mountains give
me no ideas.” Kuno, unlike his mother, is curious about the surface world,
but he fails to spark her interest in his explorations. She returns to her
room, and her friends, and her ideas. Years pass before she hears from Kuno
again, who calls her on the network with a warning: “The Machine is stopping.” She
scoffs, but soon the signs become clear. The music, transmitted over the
network, begins to glitch. The air, circulated mechanically throughout the
compound, goes stale. The food and water taste bad. Eventually even the bed
fails to materialize when the proper button is pressed, and finally, the
communication network fails, forcing the near-invalid populace to crawl out of
their rooms into the hallways of the underground compound, wailing in despair. The Machine Stops is a remarkable work. Vaulting far ahead of the steampunk contrivances of his contemporaries, Forster offers the first literary comment on social media—and its limits, subtly noting the vacuity of the “ideas” community and the flattening effect of virtual communication. When Kuno begs Vashti to visit him in person, he says, “I see something like you in this [screen], but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you.” Saturday, August 22, 2020
Beware John Progress
And here you are, carried into the heart of the civilization you yearned to know. … There’s no need to be afraid.
Marthe and Maurice are young newlyweds living in 19th century Paris. Smitten with the idea of progress, dissatisfied with the world as it is, and intensely curious about what the future might hold, they hold each other close one night, idly wishing that they could sleep through the centuries and awake to see what wonders humanity will someday create. As they gaze out the window of their attic garret apartment, lost in such reflections, a man appears before them in an airship of “English make” surrounded by plumes of its smoke exhaust.
“Here I am,” he announces. “You called me, and I have come!”
He presents his card: “M. John Progrès, member of all the Utopian Societies of
Europe, of Asia, of Africa, of Oceania, etc. etc.” Described only as a “genie,”
John Progress places the lovers in suspended animation and promptly disappeared
upon delivering them to the future. While they find wonders aplenty when they
awake in the year 3000, Marthe and Maurice soon discover that progress also
comes with a dark side.
So begins The World as it Shall Be, an 1848 novel by
the French author Émile Souvestre, sometimes referred to as the first “modern”
dystopian novel. This was untrue both chronologically, being preceded by at least half a dozen contenders to the title, and
structurally, as the book is barely a novel, forgoing a traditional plot in
favor of a travelogue through future society.
Nevertheless, The World as it Shall Be is more than
just a footnote; it inaugurated several of the most important and recurring themes
in dystopian literature—most importantly the perils of unchecked technological
progress.
While obscure today, Souvestre was a minor literary
sensation during his lifetime and immediately after his death, with “immense
sales,” according to one contemporary observer, and many of his more than two
dozen books and other works were translated into foreign languages and sold
abroad.
Falling in the middle of his career, The World as it
Shall Be depicts a future where technology has run amok and traditional
social values—such as equality and brotherly love—have become meaningless
catchphrases. The book’s skeletal storyline barely supports its extensive
social commentary. Known for moralizing, Souvestre walks his protagonists
through a long series of loosely connected vignettes depicting almost every
aspect of life in the year 3000. His comprehensive review of future society is
so sweeping that the book almost defies thematic classification—encompassing corruption
and greed, capitalism and journalism, fashion and sexual mores.
Marthe and Maurice are increasingly horrified by what they
see—a decadent utopia of unequally distributed wealth and power. The lovers are
shown to a stunningly beautiful hotel, which is revealed to be made entirely
from synthetic materials with a planned obsolescence of just two years. The
hotel restaurant offers a dizzying menu of water selections—spring water,
carbon-filtered water, rock-filtered water, a list contained in a gilt-bound
volume that continues for 366 pages. Food and drink are served by machines,
which cut the meat and apply sauces.
“You can see that in a really mechanized house like this
one, there is no need for anyone else,” explains their host, Mr. Atout (the French
word for “asset”). “Progress must aim to make life simpler, to ensure that each
one lives for himself, and by himself. … Just a little more effort, and
civilization will have achieved total individual freedom for everyone; every
individual will be able to dispense with the services of the rest of mankind.”
This theme continues throughout the book in multiple
iterations. High-speed underground and undersea transport lines relieve
humanity of the burden of conversation with fellow travelers. Children are selectively
bred in the manner of livestock, raised and educated in terrariums by machines
in order to solve “the great problem attendant on the perpetuation of the
species… the strong emotional attachment of individuals.” Life is
transactional, with financial incentives for husbands to let their wives cheat
on them, and children to keep their aging parents alive but in ill health.
Marthe and Maurice come to regret their wish to see the
results of progress. Exhausted from their tour of the dysfunctional future,
they fall into sleep, dreaming that God will send three avenging angels to raze
this world and force humanity to start over “from the ruins.” John Progress
never returns to rescue the ill-fated lovers from the dystopian future, but his
hidden hand would shape many novels to come.
Technology plays an important role in the vast majority of
dystopian stories. In most, technological innovations have been turned to the
service of social malfeasance. But in some stories, like Souvestre’s, the inherent
nature of technology at large creates the beating heart of a social
catastrophe.
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For more on technodystopia, check out J.M. Berger's new novel, Optimal, now available for pre-order.
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DYSTOPIAN TRAILERSRESEARCH STATUSBooks/short stories read: 95Films and TV series watched: 124 THE TURNER LEGACY
The Turner Diaries, the infamous racist dystopian novel by neo-Nazi William Luther Pierce, has inspired more than 200 murders since its publication in 1978, including the single deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, the Oklahoma City bombing.
The book is arguably the most important single work of white nationalist propaganda in the English language, but it is not a singular artifact. The Turner Diaries is part of a genre of racist dystopian propaganda dating back to the U.S. Civil War. A new paper from J.M. Berger documents the books that directly and indirectly inspired Turner and examine the extensive violence that the novel has inspired. RECENT J.M. BERGER VIDEORECENT POSTSThe Social Network 1.0 Beware John Progress OPTIMAL: J.M. Berger's new dystopian novel Let the Game Do Its Work The First Dystopia Supergirl: Man of Steel Deliver Us From Dystopia When? A Prophetical Novel of the Very Near Future The Turner Diaries on PBS American Experience Logan's Run ABOUTJ.M. Berger is an author, consultant and analyst studying extremism. He is an associate fellow with the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism -- The Hague and a fellow with George Washington University's Program on Extremism. For more about Berger, click here.BOOKS BY J.M. BERGER"...smart, granular analysis..."ISIS: The State of Terror 
"Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger's new book, "ISIS," should be required reading for every politician and policymaker... Their smart, granular analysis is a bracing antidote to both facile dismissals and wild exaggerations... a nuanced and readable account of the ideological and organizational origins of the group." -- Washington Post
More on ISIS: The State of Terror "...a timely warning..."  Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam:
"At a time when some politicians and pundits blur the line between Islam and terrorism, Berger, who knows this subject far better than the demagogues, sharply cautions against vilifying Muslim Americans. ... It is a timely warning from an expert who has not lost his perspective." -- New York Times More on Jihad Joe |
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