Just finished ‘How High We Go In The Dark’ – some thoughts, and queries

I really enjoyed this collection of short stories, all related to a devastating pandemic which emerges from the Arctic Ice at some point in the near future.

It was recommended previously in a thread about novels with interlinked tales, like Cloud Atlas or Cloud Cuckoo Land.

The novel starts strongly, with a teaser for the upcoming devastation, as well as introducing a few mysteries surrounding goings on around the Arctic Circle, and where and why the virus comes into being.

Then the reader is sent into a complete tailspin, with a brutal chapter about a euthanasia theme park. On first look, there seems to be an element of dark satire brimming up, but in fact the chapter ends up being completely tragic. I think most would agree it is the high point of the book, and I think that the idea of Osiris and it's riders will stay with me and my thoughts for decades.

To be honest, after this point the book never really reaches those same heights, although there are excellent chapters about a psychic pig, Japanese capitalism/marketing in the face of mass deaths, and various other characters coming to terms with loss, funerals, what happens to their bodies after death and other themes, interspersed with ideas about how the near future could look after climate catastrophe and new tech/medicine etc becomes normalised.

I feel like fans of Black Mirror will enjoy this. However, this is not a book to open up if you're already feeling a bit down, as almost every chapter focuses on grief and death. In fact, it is probably a good idea to queue up some comedy, or a lighter read to open up later, to wash some of that mood away from your brain.

A few things I found tricky to follow. One chapter focuses on a scientist attempting to harness Hawking Radiation to power interstellar flight, its quite short and refers often to a minitature black hole living in the protagonists head. This idea was really beyond me, I couldn't quite get it.

Another is about the introduction of 'elegy hotels', while it's clear these are used for the bereaved and bodies are sent their pre-funeral. I couldn't really figure out the real purpose of them, or what was actually going on there. One analysis I read described them as a adult version of the euthanasia theme park, for the dying to turn to for some last days of comfort before passing on. But the chapter seemed to imply the people in the hotels were already dead when their bodies arrived.

I also am quite befuddled with the chapter set 'in the dark' with various apparent plague victims appearing to be disembodied, whilst memories of each of their lives play in the dark amongst floating orbs. At some stage they work together to push the body of a newborn child to the (seeming) top of the area they are trapped in. What do you guys think it actually happening here? Is it an afterlife? A simulation? Have their consciousness been uploaded to the cloud? (the last chapter references that humanity has achieved this in the far future). I thought perhaps that due to the plague their souls or DNA or otherwise have become partly of Clara's alien race, and their situation is somehow related to these creatures (especially due to the floating, glowing orbs) which seem to be a feature of the aliens true bodies.

Anywhow, overall an excellent, and heavy read.