These Lifeless Things
by Premee Mohamed
2021
Premee Mohamed's novella These Lifeless Things takes place across two time periods. In the near future, or alternate present, strange monsters invade the Earth and kill billions, knocking out the internet and electricity, wrecking most of our cities, and wiping out more than 99 percent of our population. A half century later, the brief invasion and near-extinction is known as the Setback, the millions of survivors and their descendants have rebuilt society, complete with universities, researchers, and grants that fund fieldwork in the ruined cities.
The thread that connects the two is a diary, written by survivor Eva from within one of the besieged cities, and discovered afterward by Emerson, the lone social scientist on a research trip into the city. About ⅔ of this 150 page book is the text of the diary, as Eva negotiates her unrequited crush on a fellow survivor, worries about a possible collaborator in their midst, and plots a desperate attempt to find and rescue kidnapped children. In Emerson's portions, she tries to locate sites Eva mentioned, thinks about the value of history and how this first-hand account updates what's already known about the Setback, and copes with the condescension of her colleagues in the natural sciences. Both women feel isolated, both think about survival and extinction, both want their lives to have meaning, to make a contribution.
The invading monsters Mohamed describes are kind of archetypal 'eldritch horrors,' but she describes them creatively enough to avoid them feeling generic. They come not from outer space, but from another dimension. They manifest only partially and temporarily, flickers of tentacles and stingers, unknowable, impossible to communicate with. They transform some plants into living weapons, and somehow 'possess' our metal and stone statues, changing their shape and bringing them to life as host bodies. No one knows where they came from, why they killed, why they left, or when or if they'll be back.
Mohamed's characters think about the similarities between this alien invasion and the history of human violence. The unnamed city where the story takes place is almost certainly in Ukraine, and might be Kyiv. At one point, Eva thinks about Chernobyl, and Mohamed writes "Isn't it funny that that was virtually the only thing the world knew about us, when they thought of us at all, and it took the Invasion for the entire world to start thinking about the same thing all at once. Solidarity at last." A bit later, when thinking about the Nazis, the Soviets, all the human invasions that preceded the alien one, she writes "Silence fell while we thought of how we have all been overrun, how this land has always been under someone's thumb ... What people want, always, is to conquer. To take what belongs to the seemingly weak or the outnumbered or the outgunned, to take from the other."
Mohamed wrote this book before 2022, which makes it seem really prescient, until you remember that Putin's Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, and that many in the US and Canada simply chose to ignore it then, which makes this less a successful prediction, and more an empathetic acknowledgment of a present reality. I've seen a review of Mohamed's new novella The Siege of Burning Grass, which she wrote before the start of Israel's recent destruction of Gaza, that notes profound parallels between her plot and the violence there, and credits her with foresight. I'm not sure that's it though. Awareness of, and willingness to face, known but neglected truths might be more powerful than the ability to make rigorously accurate predictions, honestly.
My one complaint is that I think These Lifeless Things lacks a satisfying ending. Eva stops writing her diary and hides it; Emerson goes home to the university. You sort of know what will happen next to both of them, but to me it still felt kind of incomplete.
The thread that connects the two is a diary, written by survivor Eva from within one of the besieged cities, and discovered afterward by Emerson, the lone social scientist on a research trip into the city. About ⅔ of this 150 page book is the text of the diary, as Eva negotiates her unrequited crush on a fellow survivor, worries about a possible collaborator in their midst, and plots a desperate attempt to find and rescue kidnapped children. In Emerson's portions, she tries to locate sites Eva mentioned, thinks about the value of history and how this first-hand account updates what's already known about the Setback, and copes with the condescension of her colleagues in the natural sciences. Both women feel isolated, both think about survival and extinction, both want their lives to have meaning, to make a contribution.
The invading monsters Mohamed describes are kind of archetypal 'eldritch horrors,' but she describes them creatively enough to avoid them feeling generic. They come not from outer space, but from another dimension. They manifest only partially and temporarily, flickers of tentacles and stingers, unknowable, impossible to communicate with. They transform some plants into living weapons, and somehow 'possess' our metal and stone statues, changing their shape and bringing them to life as host bodies. No one knows where they came from, why they killed, why they left, or when or if they'll be back.
Mohamed's characters think about the similarities between this alien invasion and the history of human violence. The unnamed city where the story takes place is almost certainly in Ukraine, and might be Kyiv. At one point, Eva thinks about Chernobyl, and Mohamed writes "Isn't it funny that that was virtually the only thing the world knew about us, when they thought of us at all, and it took the Invasion for the entire world to start thinking about the same thing all at once. Solidarity at last." A bit later, when thinking about the Nazis, the Soviets, all the human invasions that preceded the alien one, she writes "Silence fell while we thought of how we have all been overrun, how this land has always been under someone's thumb ... What people want, always, is to conquer. To take what belongs to the seemingly weak or the outnumbered or the outgunned, to take from the other."
Mohamed wrote this book before 2022, which makes it seem really prescient, until you remember that Putin's Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, and that many in the US and Canada simply chose to ignore it then, which makes this less a successful prediction, and more an empathetic acknowledgment of a present reality. I've seen a review of Mohamed's new novella The Siege of Burning Grass, which she wrote before the start of Israel's recent destruction of Gaza, that notes profound parallels between her plot and the violence there, and credits her with foresight. I'm not sure that's it though. Awareness of, and willingness to face, known but neglected truths might be more powerful than the ability to make rigorously accurate predictions, honestly.
My one complaint is that I think These Lifeless Things lacks a satisfying ending. Eva stops writing her diary and hides it; Emerson goes home to the university. You sort of know what will happen next to both of them, but to me it still felt kind of incomplete.
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