The essay speaks for itself, so hope you enjoy reading it, have a lovely day, and see you Monday.
Writer's Statement - Pod 123 by Mac Clevinger, March 22, 2017
The intent in writing the short story Pod 123 began as a typical ‘large corporation exploiting the unwanted members of society for convenience of costs’ through their killing almost eight thousand people to store their personalities on a computer instead of having to keep them alive in stasis for some six-hundred years on the way to a colony-planet.
However, while that story is still present, I made efforts to tell that story in a way that goes against the grain of most science-fiction stories. I find that typically there is a very serious tone where outstanding personalities and unconventional reactions to certain events are largely ignored, which leads to a very particular tone and type of narration which, while effective in story-telling, does get to feeling a tad similar from story to story.
Thinking about the writing styles of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, I find that it is possible to use a conflict between the in-story events and tone of narration to express an idea differently than if you had the two match one another. If done poorly, of course you’re not going to adequately carry a message across to the reader, but the disparity between the mass-murder and how the narrator describes it makes the very shape of the story another aspect to acknowledge in reading it.
That approach to the story is mirrored by the man who had the idea to do this in the first place, more concerned with an office rivalry than with the idea that he’s suggesting, and not even really caring about the solution to putting humanity on another planet, i.e. the frozen embryos.
It’s a science-fiction story where the elements of science-fiction (space colonialism, uploading your personality to a computer, mass corporations caring not at all for the sanctity of human life) are taken for granted by the characters (except perhaps for John who is rightly unnerved by what’s happening to him,) shifting the focus from those elements to what may be a satirical approach to what is a highly-stereotyped story progression.
If this were written typically, I was likely to have had Peters be the focused character, likely first-person, who is putting people into the pods before getting into her own pod and discovering -shock! - that the pods were killing them. It’s an easy story to write, though, with a twist you know is coming from its own nature of existing as a science-fiction story. I tried to do something experimental and weird instead, and I quite like it.
Definitely influenced by the narration in a podcast called Welcome to Nightvale as well.
I also used a biblical reference for the pod numbers and their names: John 3:16 and Peter 1:23, both having to do with revival and eternal life. Thought it was a nice touch, and it helped to have meaningful naming convention instead of something arbitrary.
Hope you like it!