After World by Debbie Urbanski

 

After World by Debbie Urbanski was on a list that the author Michael Chabon recommended and someone in my book club sent it along. It's not right for our book club, but it sounded like something I'd like!

I also borrowed Dearborn from the library. We'll see if I read that one.

In a terrible future Earth, humans ask an Artificial Intelligence to find a solution to the climate crisis. The solution is to release a virus into the world, S, that eliminates humans from the world. The AI writes the story of one of the last (the last?) humans left, a young woman named Sen.

It's a weird little epistolary novel, with diary entries, news announcements, and all sorts of weird messages from the AI interspersed with the AI's attempt to fully capture Sen's story. 

This book was so hard to read. It's an unflinching examination of a possible world and is merciless in its personal attacks against the reader. While I sort of know that the extinction of the human race is possible, reading about how we get there is hard. It's hard to balance the thoughts that humans sort of deserve everything they (we?) get because their (our?) stewardship of the planet has been so terrible with the thoughts that we're still human beings who are aware and the biological imperative of how meaningful and important life itself is. 

It's also sort of hard to figure out what's going on. Who or what is narrating? What timeline are we in? But that makes is more special when you do figure out how everything connects in the end. This book isn't really about the humans - they're all going to die in the end - but about what happens after the humans. 

Tough read. But really thought-provoking. 4/5 stars

Lines of note:

Either she imagines this happening or this actually happens. The border between these two states is become frayed and delicate. (page 38)

Ha ha. Do you ever have those moments when you're like "did I turn off the heating pad?" and you honestly just can't remember the details of how you got from one room to another? I feel like my border between those two states has been frayed since I was sixteen. 

Maybe humans weren't meant to be here in such enormous numbers. Maybe we really had ruined everything and were ruining everything. But even if we ruined everything, I think we still deserve to live. Don't we? Didn't we? (page 107)

So many literal existential questions in this book. Didn't every extinct species deserve to live?

At what point in this process do we stop being human and become something else? And are we all operating on the same timeline, or are some of us further along in this process than others? And what will we become? (page 175)

In the year of 2024, I sometimes find myself thinking that some humans are not as fully evolved as others. And I'll leave that there.

The collective grief of billions of human beings flaps its wings across the clearing. (page 205)

Is there a collective anymore? 

Negative Carry is the point at which the cost of sustaining humanity on Earth exceeded any possible benefit, occurring approximately on S. - 109,500 days, way before any of us were born. This means we shouldn't feel guilty about the state of the world we inherited, as the world we inherited had already been fumigated, dynamited, melted, drilled, scorched, bombed, overcrowded, deforested, and submerged by the poor choices of our ancestors. Let us blame our ancestors. Let us wash our consciences clean in the overfished and flooded rivers. (page 257)

Scientists put the carrying capacity of the planet somewhere between 2-40 billion (we're currently at roughly 8 billion). I will just leave that fact there. 

Voice Widow, n.

Here's what I'm wondering. What if the sea ice wasn't meant to last forever? What if the planet wasn't meant to stay forested and pristine in its pre-industrial state? What if human beings belonged here more than other species? Like many people, I had liked the Earth. And, like many people, at the same time, I didn't mind its destruction. (page 303-304)

It's hard, isn't it? We want to see this world, so we get on a plane and pollute it. We want to enjoy ourselves, so we light fireworks and scare wildlife and tiny babies run away and can never find their ways back to find their mothers. We want to protect the environment, but we still use single-use plastics and throw away that food that rotted in the back of the fridge. We are all pro-environment until it becomes an inconvenience for us. 

Things I looked up:

lobelia (192) - Flowering plant that, if ingested, can be potentially toxic to humans. 

bacopa (192) - A perennial, creeping herb native to the wetlands of southern and Eastern India, Australia, Europe, Africa, Asia, and North and South America. It's sometimes used to treat anxiety, insomnia, and epilepsy. 

cranesbill (192) - AKA geranium. I'd never heard this alternate name before. 

Uebelmannia buiningii (194) - Brazilian cactus currently threatened by habitat loss. 

Dioscorea strydomiana (194) - A critically endangered species of yam from South Africa with fewer than 250 mature individuals known to exist.

Cadiscus aquaticus (194) - A critically endangered species of aquatic flowering plant in the aster family, Asteraceae. It is endemic to the Western Cape of South Africa, where it grows in vernal pools.

Sunda pangolin (194) - A critically endangered species of pangolin known as the guardians of the forest because they protect forests from termite destruction, maintaining a balanced ecosystem.

dwarf wedgemussel (194) - A small freshwater mussel that rarely exceeds 1.5 inches (38 mm) in length. It is brown or yellowish-brown in color. Classified as vulnerable with a decreasing population.

Powassan virus (283) - Flavivirus transmitted by ticks, found in North America and in the Russian Far East. It is named after the town of Powassan, Ontario, where it was identified in a young boy who eventually died from it. It can cause encephalitis, inflammation of the brain. Approximately 10-15% of cases are fatal. 

Hat mentions:

Adults in sun hats and robes scrubbed the exterior walls. (page 54)

...women wearing broad hats, and open beach umbrellas...(page 66)

Sen is to pack a jacket, gloves, and a winter hat. (page 101)

...we would have seen people wearing hats on vacations, and people holding their babies in a waiting room, and people standing in line, fanning themselves with their hands...(page 212)