Click on the tag “hope” at this bottom of this post to read about all of my suggestions for hopeful science fiction. If you have recommendations for future instalments of this series, I’d sure like to hear them. Leave a comment below or send me message about it on Twitter.
Last winter I discovered the Better Worlds series, a science fiction anthology of short stories and films about hope that was published at The Verge two years ago. This is the ninth story from this anthology I’ve covered here, and I will eventually blog about all of them.
Move the World
In “Move the World” by Carla Speed McNeil, Margery must decide whether to take the risk of using her once-in-a-lifetime chance to pull a lever and reset the world. Whether pulling that lever will make things better or worse is unknown.
The world Margery currently lived in was cold and harsh. Everyone who survived in it had to make difficult decisions to ensure there was enough food and warmth for all. This included sticking to the rigid roles everyone was assigned from young ages.
I do wish these roles were described in greater detail. Individuals were called various parts of speech like Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives. Small groups of people were called Clauses or, sometimes, Sentences. I was fascinated by this social structure and wish the meaning of every designation was clearer.
This wasn’t the only possible life for Margery and the other folks in her world. I can’t describe the rest of them or how the audience learns about them without wandering deeply into spoiler territory, but I was fascinated by the many different among them. Each one was unique and made me want to keep reading.
There were so many things about Margery we never learned. I couldn’t begin to describe her age, race, nationality, sexual orientation, or backstory, although I wish they had been included whenever this information might have changed. What I can say is that her personality remained the same no matter what was going on around her.
She was always an intelligent and persistent person who believed that there was something better out there than what everyone was currently experiencing. The fascinating thing was that there was no evidence that supported this belief.
Perhaps she was wrong. Maybe pulling the lever would only make things worse for everybody.
And yet she continued to feel the irresistible compulsion to pull it. She was sure there was a better place out there somewhere.
Our world has seen a lot of suffering this year. I can’t help but to emulate Margery’s approach to situations that feel like they will either never end or will only get worse over time.
None of us know what the future holds, but that doesn’t mean we should ever give up hope that it will be better than our current circumstances.