Living Large With My 84-Year-Old Sci-Fi Muse
– In the future nobody eats anymore, and nobody has sex! –
My Grandma-in-law is an eighty-four year old who cannot bring herself to accept the Internet and the changes it has wrought in contemporary life. This lady is no sourpuss, mind you. She hails from my favorite generation: those weathered WWII folks, so many of whom possess a warmth and social grace unsurpassed by subsequent generations.
Every minor transaction is, in my Grandma-in-law’s way of seeing the world, an opportunity for human connection — the face-to-face kind. She charms strangers in grocery lines. When there’s a party, she’s the life of it. She’s been known to dance with a champagne glass balanced on her white curls. She does high kicks on New Years Eve.
She cannot understand all this fuss about the presumed pleasure of sitting at a computer keyboard interacting with (or through) a machine.
Knowing I’m a writer, this lady has long been at me to create a science fiction tale about the metamorphosis of the human species as a consequence of unrestrained Internet use. We’ve had many informal “cram sessions” in which she unloads her ideas.
People’s eyeballs get sucked out from staring at screens too long! Nobody eats anymore, nobody has sex! They can’t tear themselves away from the terminal long enough. It’s like the end of the human race, see?”
She’s worked for years as a travel agent, and recently recounted a scathing run-in with a friend, a Catholic priest she’s known for decades.
He said to me, ‘Why on earth would anybody use a travel agent these days. You can use the Internet!’
‘Is that so?’ I told him. ‘Well then, next time I need a priest I’ll use the Internet!‘
I’m no extrovert myself, but I know Grandma’s got a point. She lives larger than many people one-third her age — and bifocals or not, she sees far beyond our puny screens.
Maybe someday I’ll write a book as large as her life.
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1 Comment to Living Large With My 84-Year-Old Sci-Fi Muse
Tell your grandmother somebody already wrote that book. 100 years ago. His name was E. M. Forster and the book, or story rather, is called “The Machine Stops”. You can find it online, ironically enough. http://www.plexus.org/forster/index.html. Or in book form.
Enjoy.