Reading Science Fiction Politically: Severance by Ling Ma

Next, Monday July 14, 5:00 pm

Get started with the Science and Visionary Fiction book group with our July Book Selection: Severance, by Ling Ma.  Severance combines two things. It offers a satirical, sardonic look at 21st century lives, loves and labor as experienced by Candace Chen. Candace has both the classic dilemmas of a first generation immigrant and the here and now reality of a millennial New Yorker setting out in today’s world.

Into this world comes Shen Fever, which brings an apocalypse not unlike what Covid 19 might have been. Ling Ma published the book in 2018, which makes its dystopian vision all the more remarkable.  Candace winds up in a group of like minded would-be survivors and the tale unfolds.

The novel does offer a brisk pace yet we mostly read it for the author’s eyes and ears on our current dilemmas as we struggle to survive.

For more than three years, the MEP Science and Visionary Fiction reading group has explored topics of oppression and resistance, history and science, capitalist and post-capitalist future, human and nonhuman intelligence. We read with an overall commitment, To build a better future, we have to envision it first (adapted from Walidah Imarisha). Reading science, speculative and visionary fiction, discussing it together, and reading it politically, offers one tool for envisioning a future worth building.

Give it a try for your summer reading: drop in, stay for a while, and contribute to lively, present day-centered discussions. Everyone has something to contribute, whether you read this sort of thing regularly or have hardly ever given it a second thought. Convened by Steve Backman.