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.