Day in the Life of a Tech Hub Librarian

I was going through some old files the other day, when I came across a speculative writing exercise I did for the Dream of a Low Carbon Future project back in 2014. The brief was to use the model of the future envisaged by the project (based on people, societies, and the human and physical environment) and write a 'day in the life' of someone from 2150. Reading it back now, some of these ideas already seem out of date (!) but anyway this is what I came up with... 

The Tech Hub Librarian

Let me describe for you the conditions of my life in 2150AD. I live a fairly solitary existence. I’m not exactly a social pariah but my position in my community is a precarious one. Now at 60 years of age, with no close family, it hardly seems to matter much, although loneliness sets in from time to time. I should be grateful, at least I’m never cold; a side-effect of living in the hub is the abundance of surplus heat generated in powering the knowledge servers. My job title ‘librarian’ is somewhat deceptive. The general understanding of such a role was for many years closely associated with books and written papers, and it was those things that initially drew me to the profession. I was always attached to the romantic idea of preserving material culture - caring for the books and artefacts accumulated over centuries and so treasured by 20th and 21st century societies - that old-fashioned notion of the ‘authentic’. The reality, of course, is vastly different. The hubs constitute a digital cultural record, made up of 0s and 1s. It’s not much to look at; rows and rows of servers punctuated by the odd terminal. There’s a popular myth that these hubs still hold and protect the original treasures. In fact, most of them were sold off long ago into private collections; no one really noticed, what with all the flooding and famine. And goodness knows what happened to them after that! 

Long-held prejudices persist, however, the old ‘knowledge is power’ stereotype... Naturally, it gives us librarians a bad reputation. We’re treated with general suspicion, subject to occasional threats and one extremist group is out to prove we’re a sect of information overlords, who control the inner workings of society. Par for the course, I suppose. Perhaps once there was some grounding for this conspiracy theory. Back in the 21st century, huge server warehouses (probably resembling the hubs of today) used to guide the investment of trillions of assets all over the world, prolonging the boom years and delaying the inevitable financial collapse of world economies by almost 100 years. Sinister stuff. Now, the economy is relatively transparent, although the Citizen’s Income allocation gets more farcical every year. Yes, gone are the ‘knowledge societies’ of the 21st century. A popular, widely held view is that culture is dormant and we’ve returned to the Dark Ages. Odd time to be a librarian, eh? 

It’s all nonsense though! The concept of high culture may be dead but a different kind of cultural value has taken centre stage: know-how, as opposed to Knowledge with a capital ‘K’. There’s still an appetite for heritage in my community but more in the form of family history, which has always been popular. That’s what the majority of the hub’s visitors come for. In the 21st century, there were companies that compiled huge databases of information, digitized from written records: birth, death and marriage certificates, newspapers etc. The floods wiped most of them out but there are still records, saved from the Amazon servers, of individuals’ purchasing history. An odd kind of family history if you ask me but people seem to be fascinated to learn that on the 23 May 2050 great great grandad bought a new birdfeeder. They obviously find all that consumerism rather quaint.

Saga

Guest post by Peter Martin, see also Old Rope blog: https://oldrope.wordpress.com/2020/02/06/saga/

A comic about an alien family on the lamb in a flying tree in space? You had me at comic, but yes, obviously I want to read that. It’s been going since 2012? Why has no one told me about this sooner? My dear friend Giro recommended me the curious tale of the Saga, er, saga. Yeah, it’s not a great name I grant you, but to quote Lisa Simpson, it’s apt – APT! At the time of writing, the 54 issues of the series have been collected into nine volumes, with six comics comprising each story arc. The series is planned to finish at 108 issues or 18 volumes. I have read four so far and it is these that inform the below.

Drawn by Fiona Staples and written by Brian K Vaughn, Saga follows the plights of Alana and Marko, a couple who are on the run from both sides of an intergalactic war. Their crime is falling in love with the enemy and having an interracial baby, a political affront to the two extraterrestrial species embroiled in the long-standing conflict. They hop from planet to planet, hunted by soldiers, hired assassins, irate parents and disgruntled exes, all the while just trying to live a normal family life.

Saga is no ordinary comic and not just because it is narrated by a baby. Though it would be disingenuous to say that the medium is all unsubtle macho superhero fodder – and also conceding that I am no expert – it’s rare to get something so rich and varied in the mainstream (it’s published by Image, one of the big three publishing houses). Saga’s themes of family, motherhood, racism, war, politics and sex, while by no means unique to this book, are a rich and refreshing blend. Not only are the heroes young struggling parents, they are actively refusing to fight in the war that rages around them, setting this story apart from much of the work we might wish to compare it to. Pacifism is seldom at the forefront of popular sci-fi, bristling with blasters, troopers, space-battles and laser-swords, nor its fantasy counterparts with whopping big blades, magic and monsters. That’s not to say that Saga doesn’t have its fair share of any of the above – it does in spades – and barely an issue goes by without some form of gratuitous, albeit funny, violence.

Our protagonists are basically sexy alt-rock tattoos come to life. Alana, with her dyed fringe and unlikely post-natal smoking bod, is from the planet Landfall where the locals sport delicate insect-like wings. Her beau is Marko, all brooding brows, trench coats and a massive pair of curly goat horns. Phwoar! Don’t worry, they regularly go at it like hammer and tongs, as if unable to resist the collective yearning of hundreds of thousands of swooning readers. Sex is never shied away from throughout the pages of Saga, be it the impossibly hot and passionate form in the early days of Alana and Marko’s relationship, the lovesick longing of the hit man loner reminiscing of his time getting it on with an armless spiderwoman (armless not harmless, she too is a deadly hired assassin) or the seedy underbelly of alien sex work where anything goes. Taboo is a strong undercurrent, from forbidden love in the prism of societal racism lived by our heroes or the homophobia experienced by journalists Upsher and Doff, to alien fetishism, subversive literature and indeed the belief in peace in a time of war.

Taboo also bleeds into real life with several instances of censorship affecting the book. As a young mother, Alana is regularly shown breast-feeding Hazel – tolerable until it graced the cover of the hardback edition prompting squeamishness from retailers. Digital editions of the book were also briefly censored for an act of homosexual fellatio, shown on a blurred TV screen. The American Library Association included Saga in its 2014 list of the ten most frequently challenged books that year, for containing nudity, offensive language and for being “anti-family, … sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.” And people wonder why it sold so well.

Like many endearing works of serialised fiction, one of Saga’s strengths is its cast of thousands. Alana and Marko may be recognisable lead characters – fit, loveable, morally right – but they are ably supported by a bonkers, imaginative and genuinely diverse bunch: Izabel the disembodied severed-at-the-waist war casualty teen baby-sitter, a sort of floating ghost with hanging entrails; Prince Robot IV, from a breed of royal androids with TVs for heads; the Freelancers, with their distinctive definite articles, The Will, The Stalk, The Brand; Marko’s relatably in-the-way mum and dad, but doting grandparents to Hazel; Lying Cat – a giant feline who speaks only to tell if someone is fibbing or not; whatever the heck loveable fan-favourite Ghüs is; and of course D. Oswald Heist, author of the dangerous polemic that ‘radicalised’ Alana and Marko.

A Night Time Smoke, the fictional novel by Heist, is shown in glimpses through the perspectives of characters on all sides of the war. From what we know of it, at face value it’s a fairly trashy affair, akin to pulp fiction or throwaway romance of the Mills and Boon ilk. Coursing through its pages, however, is the outrageous message that war is – get this – ‘bad’ and worse, the cover art shows us that the principal characters, Contessa and Eames the rock monster are from different races.

I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for a text within a text. From The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, by Hawthorne Abendsen (Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle), to K/L. Callan’s Marx, Christ and Satan United In Struggle (Stewart Home’s Red London), to The Benefit Of Christ Crucified (Luther Blissett’s Q), to The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy), to the endless quotations of Stewpot Hauser and Out To Lunch (Ben Watson’s Shitkicks and Doughballs), to the book within the book within the book within the book neo-pulp madness of Bobo the Monkey (Steven Well’s Tits Out Teenage Terror Totty). It’s all good baby and super meta.

Returning briefly to the issue of diversity, something that many well-known comics have struggled with in recent years. Though I am sure there are plenty of books telling stories other than those of hetro-normative, mostly white massive ab-ed and big boobed superheroes, it’s fair to say that many of the medium’s biggest sellers still have room for improvement. Clumsy attempts to make minor characters ‘come out’ still result in shitfits from keyboard warriors lamenting the fact that writers can’t make new, minor, LGBQT or POC heroes that they can ignore. Saga shouldn’t need to be lauded for starring loads of women (including breastfeeding mums), gay characters and every kind of alien-sexual preference you can think of, but it does feel uncommonly vibrant.

It’s not all politics, proxy wars, racism towards ‘horns and wings’ and baby McGuffins. Much of the story is about how hard it is to be a parent, the challenges of keeping relationships afloat and the pressures of daily life. There is much that is relatable despite the fantastical settings. Gun for hire The Will munches space-cereal and sulkingly blanks his ex’s calls. There are translation problems (the Horns speak some sort of Latinate, Esperanto language). Alana gets an acting gig on a space soap opera. Marko takes their toddler on play-dates. Unions struggle against employers. Mums – albeit ones with TV screens for faces – take their kids to the beach. People have baths. This is key to making the world of Saga appealing and enduring. It’s not all decapitations and saggy-testicled ogres, there’s hues of real life in all its humorous mundanity. And it does make you laugh. Liar Cat and the Royals with TV heads are the gifts that keep on giving and Staples’ artwork veers between heart-string tugging poetry and mischievous comedy.

Vaughn has made clear that much of the inspiration behind the narrative of the book came from the birth of his own child. Let’s leave the final word to him:

I realized that making comics and making babies were kind of the same thing and if I could combine the two, it would be less boring if I set it in a crazy sci-fi fantasy universe and not just have anecdotes about diaper bags … I didn’t want to tell a Star Wars adventure with these noble heroes fighting an empire. These are people on the outskirts of the story who want out of this never-ending galactic war … I’m part of the generation that all we do is complain about the prequels and how they let us down … And if every one of us who complained about how the prequels didn’t live up to our expectations would just make our own sci-fi fantasy, then it would be a much better use of our time.

A Dream of a Low Carbon Future: New Graphic Novel for 2016

View of York's streets in 2150

In 2013, I wrote a post about the graphic novel project 'Dreams of a Low Carbon Future', coordinated by James McKay, a comic artist and manager of the doctoral training centre for low carbon technologies at the University of Leeds. The launch of the novel was accompanied by an exhibition at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, featuring selected items from Leeds University Library's Science Fiction Collection in Special Collections. Following the success of the first novel, James is now working on a second novel, to be launched at the Thought Bubble Comic Art Festival on the 5-6 November 2016.

Rather than multiple visions, this second novel focuses on one dream of a low carbon future, viewed through the eyes of a young girl in the year 2150. The story unfolds in the form of a history lesson, which goes through the changes to the environment that have taken place in the last 100 or so years, particularly in the northern region of England. For example, the caption for one frame (see above) reads:

Lazing in the sun, the port of York straddles the estuary of the River Ouse where it opens out into the saltmarshes of the Bay of York. Once Caer Ebrauc to the Celts, Eboracum to the Romans, Eoforwik to the Saxons, Jorvik to the Vikings, and finally York, its days are numbered, with scientists predicting it will be fully under water within a century. Already, although a thriving port with floating leisure complexes, large numbers of residents have had to evacuate, to be replaced by Da Hai You Min (Sea King) settlers in kychys (floating communities), gaining a living in the ocean of reeds that line the bay.

The inevitable submersion of York under water (by 2250) is not portrayed negatively here. James's thinking is that our current challenge is to attempt to imagine environmental change positively, in contrast to the dystopian tropes that pervade disaster movies.

While coming up with solutions to the environmental problems humanity faces is no easy task, the novel explores such possibilities, drawing from the contributions of school children, students, sustainability researchers and professional artists. The emphasis is primarily on low-carbon technologies but also on changes to the way people live, and is less a plan or roadmap to the future than an imaginative response to future eventualities. Difficult as it is to think of ourselves living and being otherwise, the project shows how stories and SF narratives can help us to try. 

Dreams of a Low Carbon Future - New Graphic Novel Project

Artwork by James Mckay

Scientists based in the Energy Building at the University of Leeds have won £25k funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering to produce a graphic novel entitled Dreams of a Low Carbon Future. The novel will be a collaboration between scientists, artists, and school children, and will examine the issues of climate change and how we adapt our society to achieve a low carbon sustainable future.

The project is currently seeking artists and designers from the University's UGs, PGs, academics and support staff who are interested in participating in this project.

5,000 copies of the graphic novel will be printed. It will be launched at Thought Bubble Comics Festival in Leeds (23-24 November 2013), and exhibitions of artwork will be held at the Cartoon Museum London and the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery on campus in early 2014.

High profile contributors include the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy & Climate Change, Prof. David Mackay, Futurologist and author of You, Tomorrow, Dr Ian Pearson, and US environmental activist and author of Endgame, Derrick Jensen.

The project is managed by James Mckay, a professional comics artist working for 2000AD magazine and manager of the Doctoral Training Centre for Low Carbon Technologies.

Participants are invited to contribute:   

* Comic strip art   
* Single images e.g. sketches/paintings
* Text e.g. poems, stories that could be illustrated by other artists   
* Design – help design, format the book and promotional material (e.g. posters, flyers etc.)   
* Concepts – what do you think the future will look like?

Anyone with Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Futurist/comics/graphic novels interests, or with interests in the environment, technology or science in general will hopefully find this a fascinating, unusual project to be involved in.

ANY contribution, no matter how small, will be valuable. Please contact James at j.mckay@leeds.ac.uk for further information.