C D Mackworth

Dystopias are popular. The heroic gang of misfits battling against a zombified populace, or the totalitarian state that sends its children to a battle-royal tournament to entertain the masses. First-person shooter video games or driving simulations where extra points are earnt by really messing up pedestrians that innocently walk down sidewalks. Maybe we crave death and destruction as we do not get that fix in our daily lives. If we did, we might crave a better place.

But I have long been fascinated by Utopias. Odysseus and the land of the Lotus Eaters, or Captain Kirk beaming down to a world where the sun always shined and beautiful woman were filmed through a special slightly-out-of-focus camera. But other than the brief spell of these visits, we learn nothing of their education system, their politics, their judiciary, their religion or even how their sanitation system works.

Some Utopias seemingly have cured the problems we face, such as Thomas Moore’s eponymous novel. But is a land that employs mercenaries to fight their battles perfect? They might have eliminated the need for theft by eliminating money, but surely a more advanced society renounces all forms of violence.

The Inconstancy of the speed of Light describes, at first, a perfect moneyless society of harmony and free love, until we later learn of soporific and hallucinatory drug-enhanced food, child labour camps, and eternal life in a digitised realm of the gods. However, the residents of that advanced world accept their state and are happy; even ecstatic. Who is to say that we too, not-so-far into our future, do not open our minds and accept the same?

Hope you like the reading. Of course, you would enjoy it more if you could read this book and at the same time drink the tea on Dara Nikita, but then that particular infusion is illegal on our backword and uninspirational planet.

Charlie Mackworth