I was happy with the pleasure of reading "People of the Sand and Slag" by Paolo Bacigalupi. Its subject matter is fairly grim but there was the macabre facination of people cutting their own limbs and stylizing their bodies with broken pieces of metal and glowing materials.What hit me most about this story was the future humanity's disregard for non "biojobs" such as a dog running among Montana's acid-soaked surface. Humanity is fond of playing video games, blowing rubbish up and having sex on the beach. Is this different from modern humanity who do similiar things? Well, we would care more for the dog by buying food for it. The characters in "People of the Sand and Slag" think it is a waste of time to care for the poor pooch. Would some humans in real life think caring for a kitten would be less important than say, playing Halo 3? We certainly don't have TS-101's to incinerate things with and not all of us have the day job of being mercenary security guards. Yet we cling to more material goods than the wholesome, "warm" materials such as Fido.
In my Science Fiction class, there was a discussion that people in the future had become the earth; irradiated, toxic, and fruitless. Humans have not lost their taste for food and sex but when
it does some to food and sex, it comes up in strange ways. The characters eat rock and sand, considering that all other life forms are up for study and not for culinary purposes. Humans have become the Earth it created; unknowing and uncaring of its environment.Bacigalupi, a winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Award, would be making a statement about our relationship with technology and nature. If we keep too close to technology and neglect nature, we will become like the "people of the sand and slag," nuking things for the fun of it because the surface is already destroyed and become something less than human. This story featured in this blog post was a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula Awards and is featured in Pump Six and Other Tales.
-Kristopher
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