The Apocalypse with Comic Pratfalls

Dystopian fun, sound like an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Dystopian fiction takes place in the future (usually) where things are not going well, where there is hardship and suffering. Examples include the novel 1984 by George Orwell, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, Make Room, Make Room by Harry Harrison, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Or instead of being set in the future, it can be set in an alternate history like Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. Dystopia is the opposite of utopia. In short, it does not sound like a fun place to be, right?

But I recently read a novella by Charlie Jane Anders called “Rock Manning Goes for Broke.” It’s a hoot. It takes place in a near future where the government and militias are sort of competing to see who can be worse. Yet the Novella has more in common with silent movie comedies than it does with 1984. The protagonist, Rock manning, is a young man who seems to be a modern Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton. He doesn’t seem to mind crashing, falling, being run into or hit over the head. If there was entertainment in it, he was willing to go through it. In school, bullies found that it was pointless to beat him up because he would mess himself up faster than they could keep up with.

He meets a girl named Sally and they become best friends. They do art together. Their art consists of films, usually involving something like Rock Manning riding on a broken bicycle that is on fire while going over a cliff, or some such. Rock seems indestructible in a cartoon sort of way. The world around them continues to get darker with war, government lies, conspiracy theories that fuel repression, and the breakdown of society. Still Rock and Sally continue making their films. They are not oblivious to what is going on, but to them, it is even more reason for them to pursue their art. Comic disasters are their defense against what is increasingly becoming a train crash of a world they live in. When Rock is questioning his worth and worrying about the danger he is putting other people in, Sally tells him, “You are good for exactly one thing and one thing only, and that’s turning people’s brains off for a few minutes. You should stick to that.”

This story was in a collection by Charlie Jane Anders called Even Greater Mistakes. This might not be the most important story in the collection, but for me, it was the most fun. (There are plenty of other good stories in the collection and I recommend it as a whole.)

Dystopian fun. Could be a whole new genre.

Star Liner

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