Gaia, symbol of climate change failure, in Every Version of You, by Grace Chan

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Gaia, symbol of climate change failure, in Every Version of You, by Grace Chan

5 June 2023

Climate change ravaged landscape, image by Pete Linforth

Warning: spoilers ahead. Return to this article once you’ve finished reading the novel.

Every Version of You, published by Affirm Press in 2022, is the debut novel of Melbourne based Australian author Grace Chan. Set in the late twenty-first century, primarily in Melbourne, Chan’s novel is about a young couple, Tao-Yi and her boyfriend Navin, and a momentous decision they need to make, which has life changing consequences.

Climate change has rendered Earth almost uninhabitable. Outdoor activities have become uncomfortable and dangerous. People need to don protective clothing and equipment before leaving the cocoon-like sanctuary of their dwellings. Body suits to block the Sun’s burning rays. Goggles and facemasks to combat dust, and other airborne irritants.

But the creation of a would-be new world, a “hyper-immersive, hyper-consumerist virtual reality” named Gaia, offers humanity an alternative to the world outside. And while this digital, artificial, macrocosm, mimics the old world in virtually every way, it also offers inhabitants a whole lot more.

Accessing Gaia, called logging in, is facilitated by climbing into a small, diving bell like chamber, filled with a gel-like liquid, called a neupod. While people’s bodies lie immersed in the pod’s gel, their minds roam free in Gaia, and they go about their lives, as normal. Except here, their presence takes the form of a digital avatar, one they are able to continually customise.

They go to work and school. They see friends and family. They engage in sporting and recreational activities. People “live” in Gaia just as they do in the real, outside, world. But within its realm, people can do more than live their old lives. They can venture to places they once only dreamed of, and become someone they could never have been otherwise.

Gaia, a promise of eternal life, but at a cost

Like everyone else, Tao-Yi and Navin switch back and forth between Gaia and the outside world, although Navin spends more time in Gaia than Tao-Yi. But one day a technology emerges allowing people to permanently meld with Gaia, through a process called “Uploading”.

In essence, Uploading, also known as mind uploading, allows a person to live forever within Gaia’s seemingly boundless domain. But there is a crucial caveat. Once uploaded, a person cannot return to the old world. Not, at least, as a corporeal entity. Uploading transforms a person into a conscious digital entity, through a procedure that extracts their every thought, memory, and personality.

A person’s no longer needed body is disposed of in manner they choose beforehand, once Uploading is completed. Despite Tao-Yi’s misgivings, Navin was a keen proponent. And not just because he saw himself as an early adaptor. Navin was also afflicted with a chronic illness, one that medicine could not alleviate. Uploading would allow Navin to live disease free.

And there were doubtless others in Navin’s position. Medical science could offer these people no hope, but Uploading, and becoming a digital version of themselves, would completely eliminate their ailments. For some, the decision to Upload was easy to make. They could enjoy full “health”, and also be free of the ravages of climate change. To say nothing of “living” forever.

Although in a minority, there were people — called holdouts — who refused to Upload. They wished to remain in the “meatspace”, a derogatory term given to the old world. Xin-Yi, Tao-Yi’s mother, was among them. And even Tao-Yi — for the benefits Uploading bestowed upon Navin — was far from convinced that permanently merging with Gaia was the right thing to do. And for good reason.

Gaia, a symbol of climate change denial

Tao-Yi knew Gaia was not a solution to climate change, only a means by which to escape it. To her, and other holdouts, Gaia was humanity’s way of signalling defeat in the battle to restore Earth’s environment to the way it once was. But not only that. Gaia, while being heralded as a new beginning for humanity, also potentially spelt the end of the line for humans.

Aside from a small number of holdouts braving life in the near inhospitable real world, all of humanity’s eggs were in the single basket that was Gaia. Its digital inhabitants had condemned themselves to eternal imprisonment on Earth. Gaia also left humanity all the more vulnerable to some sort of planet-wide calamity, such as the asteroid impact that brought about the end of the dinosaurs.

It was be hoped the tech savvy denizens of Gaia would eventually figure out a way to leave Earth, and at least put down roots elsewhere in the solar system. If not beyond. But a global catastrophe was not the only danger facing Gaia. The digital realm also depended on an army of (presumably self-replicating) robots to maintain its infrastructure.

There would be the hope the robots continued to serve, and replace themselves. But what if these maintenance droids infused themselves with an intelligence of their own? And what if they one day turned against their digital masters, and pulled the plug on them?

Some of these concerns — and could they be the basis for a sequel, or even an Every Version of You expanded universe? — are alluded to in the novel, even if they are beside the point. Gaia is a potent symbol of climate change denial, and the unwillingness, by some people, to do anything about it. Gaia might promise eternal life, but that could be an eternity spent regretting sacrificing Earth to climate change.

Gaia, why does the name sound familiar?

In Greek mythology Gaia is the goddess of Earth, and the mother of all life. She is one of the “primordial deities”, the first generation of Greek gods, and the grandmother of Zeus, god of sky and thunder, and later king of the cosmos, and the other Greek gods.

As a name for the digital realm humanity withdraws to, Gaia may also derive from the Gaia hypothesis, which was formulated by late British scientist and futurist James Lovelock in the 1970s. His theory proposes “living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating, complex system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet.”

In Every Version of You, humanity has well and truly failed to “maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet.” But by creating a new, artificial, domain named Gaia, perhaps the people of the late twenty-first century — up to their eyes in denial — could claim to have succeeded in achieving this goal.

The 2023 Australian Book Design Awards (ABDA) winners

31 May 2023

Book cover of Son of Sin by Omar Sakr, designed by Amy Daoud

Book cover of Son of Sin, written by Omar Sakr, designed by Amy Daoud.

The Australian Book Design Awards (ABDA) not only judge books by their covers, they celebrate them, and last week the winners of the 2023 awards were announced. Son of Sin written by Omar Sakr, pictured above, won the Best Designed Literary Fiction/Poetry Cover award, with a cover created by Sydney based book designer Amy Daoud.

In other categories, Zeno Sworder, who both wrote, and designed the cover for My Strange Shrinking Parents, won the ABDA Cover of the Year prize, while ABDA’s Book of the Year award went to QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection, with a cover by Dirk Hiscock and Karina Soraya, who both work at the National Gallery of Victoria.

All of the winning covers can be seen on ABDA’s Instagram page.

The rise of experimental, strange Australian literature and fiction

29 May 2023

There’s a lot to like about smaller, independent, book publishers. The first has to be the quality of the stories they’ve been bringing to bookshelves in recent years. This is borne out by the increasing presence of indie published titles in the long and short lists of Australian literary awards such as the Stella, and the Miles Franklin.

The second is the “risk” smaller publishers — many of whom are members of the Small Network Press — will take on a book with a storyline that might be regarded as fringe, something perhaps their mainstream counterparts are reluctant to do.

Nina Culley, writing for Kill Your Darlings, says the publication of titles including Grimmish by Michael Winkler, Every Version of You by Grace Chan, and Dropbear, a collection of poetry by Evelyn Araluen, is signalling a move away from “realist” stories, towards writing more on the experimental and strange side.

Small presses, literary magazines, anthologies and poetry collections have long since encouraged outlandish stories, experimentation and play, and we are now seeing more smaller publishing houses doing the same. Publishers like Spineless Wonders, SubbedIn, UQP, Transit Lounge and Giramondo are revolutionising Australia’s literary output by responding to an expanding readership that craves literary disobedience.

I’m intrigued by what is regarded as “literary disobedience” though (much as I like the term). For instance I finished reading Every Version of You last week, and despite the novel being described as a work of speculative literary fiction, the entire premise really seemed all too plausible. But maybe I need to stop consuming as much science fiction and fantasy as I do.

Marzahn, Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp wins 2023 Dublin Literary Award

26 May 2023

German author Katja Oskamp has won the 2023 Dublin Literary Award with her 2019 book Marzahn, Mon Amour. The Dublin Literary Award is an international literary award that has been recognising excellence in global literature since 1994. Books written in, or translated into, English are eligible, but must be nominated by one of the award’s participating libraries.

After Story by Larissa Behrendt, Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down, and Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au, were some of the Australian authors to be longlisted for this year’s award.

Tiktok reading community BookTok prompts reading surge

22 May 2023

Short-form video hosting service TikTok certainly has its nay-sayers. Security analysts believe the app may be compromising the privacy of users, while lawmakers in some countries are considering banning it. But the news isn’t all bad: TikTok appears to be behind a recent surge in book readership, thanks to the app’s reading community, BookTok, according to Kristen McLean of NPD Bookscan:

The romance novel It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover was the second best-selling Adult Fiction book and sixth best-selling book overall in 2021 — selling more than 770,000 copies last year — despite being a backlist title originally published in 2016, and McLean believes that is “almost exclusively there because of BookTok,” where it was championed.

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Australian authors, illustrators say generative AI is a threat

22 May 2023

A recent poll of just over two hundred Australian Society of Authors (ASA) members reveals local authors and illustrators are concerned generative AI technologies pose a threat to their livelihoods. This despite about twenty percent of poll participants stating they made use of AI tools — if only partially — in their work.

The survey results demonstrate that while a small minority of authors are using AI tools as part of their writing and illustrating process, there is overwhelming concern about the threat generative AI poses to already precarious writing and illustrating professions.

While it seems certain authors will more fully embrace tools such as ChatGPT to help brainstorm, edit, and correct work, most ASA members feel the part AI technologies play in the writing of a book should be publicly divulged.

Bath image sees Mem Fox children’s book removed from Florida libraries

18 May 2023

Guess What?, a children’s book written in 1988 by Adelaide, South Australia, based Australian author Mem Fox, has reportedly been removed from school libraries in the US state of Florida. An image of a character — drawn by illustrator Vivienne Goodman — taking a bath, apparently contravenes anti-pornography laws in the state:

In one illustration, Daisy sits across a double bowl sink (that she is comically too big to fit in) wearing a scuba mask. The bowls are filled with water, and she sits sideways in one with her feet splashing in the other. She is nude, but not exposed. Limbs cover her breasts and genitalia. The room is busy and pleasantly chaotic: soap on the floor, a frog on a towel, fish pegged to the clothesline that hangs over the sink. It’s far from a sexual image.

That it’s taken thirty-five years for this… transgression to come to light is mind boggling. The offending illustration — safe for work by the way, at least in Australia — can be seen here.

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Vale Gabrielle Carey, co-author of 1979 novel Puberty Blues

6 May 2023

Australian author Gabrielle Carey, who co-wrote the controversial though iconic novel Puberty Blues, with Kathy Lette, died this week in Sydney.

Set in the southern suburbs of Sydney, Puberty Blues polarised readers with its no holds barred depictions of the antics, and sexuality, of Australian adolescents. Although published in 1979, Carey and Lette began writing the novel some years earlier as teenagers. The book spawned a film adaptation in 1981, and a two-series television run in 2012.

Carey went on to write a number of other books, both fiction and non-fiction, and also worked as a freelance journalist and university lecturer.

Limberlost, Wandering With Intent, win 2023 Age Book of Year

4 May 2023

The Age Book of the Year Awards 2023 winners were announced this evening, at the opening of the 2023 Melbourne Writers Festival. The awards, presented annually, are made in two categories for Australian writing: fiction and non-fiction.

Limberlost, by Tasmanian author Robbie Arnott was named winner in the fiction category, while Wandering With Intent, by Wamboin, New South Wales based author and artist, Kim Mahood triumphed in the non-fiction category.

Arnott’s win today is his second in the awards. He also won in 2021, the year the prize returned after a nine year absence, with his 2020 novel The Rain Herron.

The 2023 Better Reading Top 100

3 May 2023

The Wife and the Widow by Christian White, and The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams, are among Australian titles I’ve read that make the 2023 Better Reading Top 100 list.

Other books by authors outside of Australia I’ve finished, include Normal People by Sally Rooney, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

A full list of all one hundred titles in PDF format can be found here. For those not in the know, Better Reading is a Sydney based Australian community of engaged book readers. Just the sort we like…

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