Dewfall

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In Dewfall, Philip Chatting, winner of the Proverse Prize 2014, takes a new direction – bonded to his earlier publications by a recognisable style – with insights surely gained from his three decades of experience as Vice President of Human Resources for an outwardly-facing company.

Dewfall posits a situation in which the lives of a group of people, with no history, education, culture or social structure, unfold. To some degree their behaviour is dictated by circumstance. Those with ample resources lack drive; those without become more combative. But beyond circumstance, do we have the ability to choose, to do good or not? Or are we destined for perpetual discontent and conflict? The story asks the question, Do humans have an identifiable character and, if so, where is it taking us? Is there such a thing as free will? Or are we the victims of our unavoidable natures? This story, set in an alien environment, is humanised by internalised echoes from the Bible, Shakespeare, and other familiar sources of ideas about the human condition from the world of our actual culture.

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“Seasoned and newer readers alike will tremble at the cold dimensions of this lush yet bare Manichaean world, where the all-consuming lust for absolute power by a few – because of the absolute absence of Eros, of art, of aesthetics? – because of the absolute absence of laughter, of children, of sorority? – corrupts absolutely. A paean to the solicitude and conscientiousness that the bots will never remanufacture, much less ever grasp.”

——From “An Allegory of Tomorrow” by Jason S Polley

Associate Professor, English, Academy of Language and Culture, FASS, Hong Kong Baptist University