Science fiction is a way of exploring the future without going there. But science fiction is not all about futuristic machinery. It is a genre of social writing, and often takes the nature and future prospects of civilization as its topic. Building, maintaining, losing, and if necessary rebuilding a civilization is the huge theme taken in hand by countless works of science fiction. Another great theme is an outrageous protagonist surviving in a dysfunctional civilization.
It’s a daunting tradition, and I never imagined I would write Sci Fi myself. But about fifteen years ago my son Edward handed me an untitled manuscript, 30 pages long, framing the mad adventures of Reese Macaque. More than a few people saw Ted’s work and thought it was either deadly funny or seriously disturbing. It was a manuscript ambitious past the dreams of English Majors, told from inside a startlingly real world, a world disturbingly like our own, and yet backlit with unjustified flashes of hope and aspiration.
For a time Ted and I worked on a short story version of his original manuscript, and he produced several more short passages that would most naturally make up additional stories in the collection. The main artistic question about Rhesus A. Macaque was not simple. How is it that Macaque is a human? Or is he a monkey? The main artistic question promptly split in half on us, but both halves pointed in the same direction: is there just one Macaque or are they a kind of thing?
That was how I found myself writing a science fiction detective novel, The Adventures of Reese Macaque, P.I. Detective novels are generally novels of manners. A science fiction detective novel of manners is (I suppose) about social interactions in a future world—and an obvious way to dissect social behaviors in our world. In the case of this book, the society in question is ours, in the year 2296.
There is a certain amount of nonsense in Macaque, but nonsense is a very serious business. Over the last few years, I began to suspect that these little tales of mystery and detection occur in a more-than-probable future world—a world we will in fact be hard pressed to avoid. Though the world of P.I. Macaque didn’t seem likely to be an accurate or literal description of the future when we started, Macaque seems to be on the road to actuality after all. So thanks, Ted. In an act of imagination, or maybe prescience, you created the world of Reese Macaque. We’re its first citizens, but I have a notion that in the years to come just about everybody is probably going to have to live in it, whether they read this book or not.
It’s a daunting tradition, and I never imagined I would write Sci Fi myself. But about fifteen years ago my son Edward handed me an untitled manuscript, 30 pages long, framing the mad adventures of Reese Macaque. More than a few people saw Ted’s work and thought it was either deadly funny or seriously disturbing. It was a manuscript ambitious past the dreams of English Majors, told from inside a startlingly real world, a world disturbingly like our own, and yet backlit with unjustified flashes of hope and aspiration.
For a time Ted and I worked on a short story version of his original manuscript, and he produced several more short passages that would most naturally make up additional stories in the collection. The main artistic question about Rhesus A. Macaque was not simple. How is it that Macaque is a human? Or is he a monkey? The main artistic question promptly split in half on us, but both halves pointed in the same direction: is there just one Macaque or are they a kind of thing?
That was how I found myself writing a science fiction detective novel, The Adventures of Reese Macaque, P.I. Detective novels are generally novels of manners. A science fiction detective novel of manners is (I suppose) about social interactions in a future world—and an obvious way to dissect social behaviors in our world. In the case of this book, the society in question is ours, in the year 2296.
There is a certain amount of nonsense in Macaque, but nonsense is a very serious business. Over the last few years, I began to suspect that these little tales of mystery and detection occur in a more-than-probable future world—a world we will in fact be hard pressed to avoid. Though the world of P.I. Macaque didn’t seem likely to be an accurate or literal description of the future when we started, Macaque seems to be on the road to actuality after all. So thanks, Ted. In an act of imagination, or maybe prescience, you created the world of Reese Macaque. We’re its first citizens, but I have a notion that in the years to come just about everybody is probably going to have to live in it, whether they read this book or not.