Mobilization by Allegra Hyde, 2023
The magic trick:
Weird events in a normal world
It’s Earth Day, which, unfortunately, mostly now reminds me that we’re all going to die.
So an Allegra Hyde feature seemed appropriate for today.
“Mobilization” is not science fiction. It’s not surrealism. And it’s not even dystopian.
It’s very much set in a realistic, familiar America. The names of places and references are very familiar: Texarkana, Galveston, music from the Talking Heads.
But the story makes weird things happen in that familiar reality. It’s clear from the beginning that this isn’t necessarily going to be normal.
Weird events in an otherwise realistic setting can make for an interesting plot and an open a window into conveying themes about that reality.
And that’s quite a trick on Hyde’s part.
The selection:
What mattered was that everyone was always at home, but always away. Gas pedal down, we cracked the code humanity had wrestled with for too many millennia: how to have an adventure yet keep your home close. How to wander the world yet never get lost. If only Odysseus could have taken Penelope and Telemachus with him, could have taken the old lady and the looms, the goats and farmers and the grape vines and Ithaca’s gravelly shores, because we did. We brought our Siamese cats and Welsh corgis. One man had a sixty-year-old Greek tortoise that rode in his passenger seat. He let it roam during pit stops; it never got far. We brought our children, cousins, parents, partners, best friends, neighbors—packing together, as condensed as the sardines we ate—everyone headphone-wearing, video game-twitching, knitting, audiobook-listening, steering wheel-gripping.
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