What will become of our self-destructed planet? The answer shatters all expectations in this subversive speculation from the Hugo Award-winning author of the Broken Earth trilogy.
An explorer returns to gather information from a climate-ravaged Earth that his ancestors, and others among the planet's finest, fled centuries ago. The mission comes with a warning: a graveyard world awaits him. But so do those left behind-hopeless and unbeautiful wastes of humanity who should have died out eons ago. After all this time, there's no telling how they've devolved. Steel yourself, soldier. Get in. Get out. And try not to stare.
N. K. Jemisin's Emergency Skin is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.
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[You are our instrument]***
(Amazon Original Stories, 17 September 2019, 33 pages, ebook, borrowed from @AmazonKindle #PrimeReading)
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I'd never read the author before. I thought Emergency Skin was just okay, a so-so novella that I didn't a particularly strong, either positive or negative reaction to. I found the style of the novella a little tricky and didn't really get used to it. I've read second person narrators before but something didn't quick work about this one. I've read a decent amount of fiction that features AI but this really didn't do much for me. It was okay but mostly forgettable and certainly won't stick in my head for very long. The novella seems to imply that socialism could save the planet and create a utopian society if the selfish, horrible men in charge would crawl away into a dark hole. I found this a bit dubious. Also, there are too many political themes and ideas on offer here and this didn't work for me. I like fiction, especially science fiction to offer some escapism. There's just extremism on both sides which left me cold.
