#789 The Condition of New Death- China Mieville
This is a mind experiment in perspective. There is a new way people see death, it is called New Death. People dies the same ways at the same rates and in the same places, but the manner in which the living perceive of the dead bodies has changed. It began with the death of one M. Morris.
“With great alarm, Mr. Morris began to walk around the body, but he stopped when, in his words ‘those feet wouldn’t stop pointing at me.’ Ms. Morris’s body appeared to him to be swiveling like a needle on a compass, her feet always facing him.”
“Stated most simply, New Death is the condition whereby human corpses now lie always on a horizontal vector—no matter the angle of the surface or the substance of the matter below them-and now orient so that their feet are facing all observers, all the time.”
The mind experiment comes in when you realize that even on video, no matter which angle you look from, that angle will be feet first, even when recorded at the same time.
This phenomenon, not possible in our real physical word, is however a common occurrence in first-person-shooter video games. So, this could be seen as a satire on a society that is unable to unplug. That a society’s perspective has been shaped so much by the viewpoint of our personal electronic devices that it has become itself reality or at least a substitute for it that is so good, the people cannot differentiate one from the other. I say, not entirely far of from where we are now. Perspective becomes reality.
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