Bethany C. Morrow’s Mem is a wonderful art-deco alternate history set in Montreal.
Professor Toutant has invented a means of extracting people’s memories, particularly (though not exclusively) traumatic events. The process creates a mirror-image of the person which houses the memory. These duplicates, called Mems, live in the Vault where they are tended to by nurses before they ultimately expire (because all memories have a use by date). Dolores Extract #1, though, is unique. Whereas the others play out the same memory, again and again, Dolores Extract #1 is self-aware, she knows exactly what she is and has access to the memories of the original Dolores. When the short novel opens, Dolores Extract #1, who calls herself Elise, has spent more than a decade in the world, creating her own memories, living a life. But when she’s called back to the Vault, Elsie discovers she is not her own person but someone else’s property.
Mem is plumbing the same themes that science fiction has been obsessed with for decades – identity, selfhood and self-awareness. Elsie’s story is similar to those Asimovian tales about robots and artificial intelligence becoming “conscious”, but without the tedious set-pieces where the robot attempts to figure out the complexities of the human mind – what is this emotion you call love? Elsie is born fully equipped with the tools to engage with her environment, but she’s also a product of trauma, and this allows Morrow to explore the psychology of anguish, grief and pain. While Professor Toutant is a compassionate man, one who cares deeply for Elise, there’s something unethical… unhealthy about what he’s created. The scene where he describes to Elsie the catalyst for his invention is heartbreaking and disturbing.
Morrow also looks at class issues – only the rich can afford the technique – and the question of liberty for a construct that was never meant to be human. Race also plays a part – Elsie is darker than her source, Dolores – but it’s subtle, an undercurrent that adds another layer. It all comes together in an extremely smart, emotionally astute narrative, told from Elsie’s measured perspective, the prose elegant, but never distant or detached.
Highly recommended.
