Wayland Dystopian/Sci-Fi Book Group

December 2024 Meeting, 7pm, Dec. 19th, 2024

Discussion of Severance by Ling Ma.

email Elise Katz, ekatz@minlib.net for zoom link.

Like many great American works, Ling Ma’s Severance (2018) has taken on more meaning and cultural relevance with time. That may seem like a strange thing to say about a three-year-old novel, but in this case, the effect is acute. A book about an apocalyptic pandemic, millennial malaise, and the soul-crushing ramifications of international capitalism mirrors much of the 21st century — but it captures the conditions of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic far more specifically. The details of Severance’s apocalypse sometimes align eerily with our own; more often, they differ. Regardless, Ma never fails to capture the creeping dread and surprising stasis of modern life within a crisis. Severance did not predict the pandemic, but it drafted a chilling and personal framework for the way that it would feel for U.S. millennials.