Oh darn, it’s raining again. And—gasp—the weather app says it’s going to rain all day!
No choice but to brew a pot of coffee, pile some dried figs into a bowl, and stay in bed reading books all day. 🙄
At some nondeterministic point, I will translate the coffee pot into a wine bottle.
Today’s read is @mjohnharrison ‘s Nova Swing.
Its predecessor, Light, gently gutted me a few years ago. I had come to identify with aspects of the furious intelligence, Seria Mau, once human, now a space ship, who is cut free from her physical form in the final pages.
“In the micro-cameras she saw herself for the first time in fifteen years. She was this small, broken, yellowish thing, its limbs all at odd angles, curling and uncurling itself feebly against the pain of the open air.”
At that exact moment in my life, this was a #trans allegory, and the resolution had me sobbing quietly in the dark.
@nicole You probably noticed, as I just did, the mention of "transsexual brothels" as Saudade local color.
You have to wonder, in this world of cultivars where body modification is a matter of course, what would transsexuality as such even look like? And would it still carry anything like the erotic charge it does in our world? I have suspicions!
@pauline I did notice this. I have thought about it. I can’t imagine a culture of extreme body modification finding it nearly as titillating as we do, but then again: kinks will find a way.
Maybe these brothels offer services that are more than just the mere, proximate manifestation of transexuality, and instead transexual eroticism of some subtle flavor that’s culturally imperceivable to us?
What are your thoughts?
@nicole Oh, or if “transsexual brothel” is not “standard old brothel with trans workers” but “brothel that (temporarily?) transes you”? There would be takers for that!
If I remember right the Culture novels posit this sort of generational cycle with body modification: there are decades where everyone does everything they can, and then decades where they mostly get tired of it and go au naturel again, which also seems right.
I’m not any kind of posthumanist but it’s always disappointing to meet one who can’t go big or go home!
@nicole Also, to stop hammering on a particular phrase, the way sex in MJH is always such a lonely missed connection is just one of the most poignant things all round.
@pauline honestly, given my quirks, … I have absolutely no idea what you’re suggesting. 😇
@pauline I just read Player of Games a few weeks ago; you remember correctly.
I love the notion of a temporary transing, if only because of how many eggs it would crack. That’s the best sort of mess.
@pauline Also, but tangential: every so often, you’ll stumble across a self-identifying transhumanist (often a billionaire, or billionaire-aspiring) who is simultaneously and vocally anti-trans, and you just have to giggle. 🤭
You want a hot swappable brain, but your transport is only ever going to have two legs and an outie?
Now _that’s_ a failure of imagination.🙄
🥺 Okay, _fine_.
🥹 Cue the waterworks.
“This was how life went. A single moment seemed to extend forever, then suddenly you were snapped out of it. The forward motion of time stretched whatever rubbery glue-like substance had fixed you there until it failed catastrophically. You weren’t the person you were before you got trapped; you weren’t the person you were while you were trapped: the merciless thing about it, Liv discovered, was that you weren’t someone entirely different either.”
😭 #NovaSwingMadeMeCry