The Emoticon Generation, by Guy Hasson

Posted by: Redhead on: February 22, 2013

• In: Guy Hasson
• 9 Comments

The Emoticon Generation by Guy Hasson

published in 2012

where I got it: received review copy from the author (Thanks!!)

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

 

Guy Hasson is an all around imaginative man. He lives and works in Israel, publishes short fiction in Hebrew, English (and ocassionally Spanish and German), writes plays and short films.  This is the second collection of stories I’ve read by him. Many of his stories have a journalistic feel to them, where the characters attempt (sometimes successfully, but mostly not) to investigate something in a non-biased way.  His collection Secret Thoughts was about how people deal with naturally ocurring telepathy, and his newest collection, The Emoticon Generation, is about the intersection of people and technology. I should have expected it would be weirder and more dangerous than the intersection of people and telepathy!

What makes this new collection so compelling is that with today’s technology we’re only a few years away from many of these stories becoming non-fiction.  A new texting language for teens, hacking into CCTV systems, brain scans that offer secrets of how minds words, we’re on the cusp of much of this.  These are character driven stories, and it’s  nice to see characters who demand to know what’s happening and take steps to find out, instead of passively allowing things to happen to them.  The truth might set us free, but sometimes it shatters us first.

Hasson has a nice handful of stories for free on his website, and I’ve linked below the ones in this collection that are available.  His writing in subtly complex, where at first the story appears simple, but by the time you get to the end of it, you realize this is a tale that will stick with you for a long time.  Two of the stories in The Emoticon Generation that hit me in that way were The Assassination and Hatchling. Here are my thoughts on those two stories and a few others:

The Assassination – Aryeh Shamgar is a national hero. Schoolchildren learn about him, documentaries have been made about him. Nearing the end of his life, Shamgar is sick of answering the same questions over and over and over again about his role in the war. He assassinated the right person and the right time and turned the tide of events, he was the perfect soldier. Why should the specific reasons behind his orders matter?  A new technology allows scientists to record and listen to audio of events that occurred many decades ago. Shamgar is about to hear the real reason he’s a national hero.  To tell you anymore would ruin the twist.  You think this is a war story, but it’s not, not at all.

Hatchling – Glynis Hatch wants only one thing for her birthday – to know who her father is. Her mother refuses to answer her questions, her homeschooling tutor refuses to answer her questions.  Was her father a criminal? Was he abusive? What could possibly be so bad that no one will tell her anything? Glynis will just have to find the answers herself, by eavesdropping, hacking into publicCams, and doing everything possible.  As the secrets  becoming larger and more complex, I began to really feel for Glynis, to fear for her. Something very dark is happening here, and it can’t end well. This was a very powerful story for me; I didn’t want Glynis to get hurt, she’s never done anything wrong, why can’t her happy life just continue?  I had my guesses as to who and what she was, but Hasson takes the story in a refreshingly different direction, and gives it a terrifying shocker of an ending.

Generation E: The Emoticon Generation – a father spies on his teen daughter to find that at least she’s not getting texts from strangers. But what are these thousands of icons and emoticons she’s sending and receiving?  The father, a journalist, decides that instead of confronting his daughter, he’ll research and investigate what all these teens are up to, in hopes he’ll learn her language.   His research first leads him to a young poet in the desert,  then to an experts in language development who discuss how metaphors evolved when humanity had a smaller vocabulary. I’m a nut for etymology and lexicon, so I got a kick out of the discussions on language. And that’s the thing with communication – if it works (and for the teens in the story, these weird icons and emoticons sure are working!) it doesn’t matter that it sounds silly or that us old farts just don’t get it.

Freedom In Only A Step Away – A  family watches as news stories unfold about a scientist who has discovered how imagination works. How come children are so overly imaginative and us grown ups seem to have forgotten how to imagine? Why is using our imagination important for our well being?  The scientist on the news doesn’t give any concrete answers (he hasn’t finished his research yet),, and  the news anchors insist on dumbing down everything he says and getting a sexy news story out of the whole thing. Have you see that graphic floating around that shows how the media assumes causation when a scientist says two things might possibly be connected?  the commentary on how the media dumbs everything down would be funny if it wasn’t so sad, and  I found the commentary about the newsmedia more effective than the plot line about our imagination.  As with so many incomplete news stories (are byproducts in pet food killing your cat? will eating nothing but grapefruit make you look like a supermodel?) first people completely overreact, swinging from one extreme to the other.  this story kinda dragged after a while, and as I became increasingly entertained by the useless of the newsmedia, I because less interested in what I think the story was supposed to be about – that as adults, it’s very easy to sabotage our own imaginations and our own well being, and that the solution is to seek a balance, and to turn off the damn news!

Her Destiny – when Tony’s wife Tony (yes, they have the same first name, spelled the same way) dies in a freak accident, he’ll do anything to get her back.  Tony’s company, Eternity Plus, is developing a method of downloading a person’s brain into a computer. They’re able to get only the last 10 seconds of Tony’s life, which her mourning husband analyzes over and over again. Having both spouses have the same name with the same spelling was a turn off, and felt like a gimmick. BUT, this story is really neat, so I was able to get past it. As Tony digs deeper into the last seconds of his wife’s life, he’s able to glean more and more images our of her mind, things that she was thinking about as she was dying. It’s understandable that Tony was thinking of her dead mother, but how is it that there are people she’s never met in those images? People she couldn’t have ever met?  Tony (the husband) believes in destiny, he knows that certain things are supposed to happen at certain times in his life.  what if he’s been wrong all this time, or just looking in the wrong direction? 

Tags: future, science fiction, short stories