麻豆传媒

Sandra Newman

Granta

WE ARE hallucinating all the time, according to neuroscience research. Our brains constantly tease comprehensible patterns out of a million sensory inputs 鈥� from buzzing bees to approaching animals. This isn鈥檛 reality, but a good prediction of what reality should be, informed by past experience. While it is an efficient way for the brain to generate the feeling of consciousness, it also means we are like passengers facing backwards on a train 鈥� the world, and all its possible futures, can only be pieced together from what has recently passed.

In her new book, The Men, Sandra Newman is very concerned with the past and how it tailors our ability to create the future. 鈥淭he truth is, history is more like physics,鈥� says one protagonist, presidential candidate Evangelyne Moreau, in a campaign speech. 鈥淭he world is made of it. We鈥檙e made of it.鈥� But some kind of biblical rapture has now excised all men from the world. So, asks Moreau, pitching a radical new way to organise society, 鈥渨hat does it take to change history?鈥�

The book鈥檚 premise puts it in a category of science fiction often called 鈥済ender dystopia鈥�. But this genre wasn鈥檛 pessimistic at first 鈥� early entries were meant to be road maps to utopia. The first of these, written in the mid-20th century, had a feminist battle cry. Wouldn鈥檛 the world be better if we got rid of the men? 鈥淭he problems ended when you did,鈥� say women of the future to time-travelling male astronauts in Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (written by Alice B. Sheldon under the pseudonym James Tiptree Jr).

More recent entries were less convinced that a woman鈥檚 world would be so much better. In Naomi Alderman鈥檚 The Power, women attain an ability that gives them physical dominance, but it turns them venal and militant 鈥� making the case that men鈥檚 bad behaviour throughout history isn鈥檛 an essential feature. Give the same advantages to a woman, and you would just get a toxic matriarchy.

Lauren Beukes comes to a similar conclusion in Afterland 鈥� here, men contract an oncogenic virus that causes untreatable cancer 鈥� but she focuses on the inescapability of the systems we have established. Women fill the absences in the military, sending society back into motion barely perturbed. Even Nazi biker gangs are swiftly repopulated. The bottom line in both books seems to be that human nature and institutions transcend gender.

Newman鈥檚 conclusion in The Men is a lot more unsettling and fundamental, in line with her idea that the future is stitched together from scraps of the past. History is a fundamental limiter for future behaviour. 鈥淲e gotta change!鈥� the women scream after Moreau鈥檚 speech. But can they? Newman鈥檚 refutation comes in the form of Jane, Moreau鈥檚 lover. When there were men, Jane was a man鈥檚 wife. Now, she has become a woman鈥檚 wife. 鈥淢aybe everyone, to optimally function, needs a wife,鈥� she thinks. And wife is the role Jane has stitched for herself from the remnants of the past.

Perhaps Newman is right and we all curate our futures this way. On the campaign trail, Jane reaches an epiphany: 鈥淲e have no real face; they are masks that are borrowed and passed on, that live for millennia, and are what a human is.鈥� After that, the book moves quickly to its conclusion, and Newman makes it clear that on a foundation of history, all you can do is rebuild the past.

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