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Posted on 2 Apr 2019 in Fiction, SFF |

MELISSA FERGUSON The Shining Wall. Reviewed by Dasha Maiorova

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In Melissa Ferguson’s imaginative and original debut, Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal clones inhabit a bleak and desperate dystopia. The Shining Wall questions the nature of humanity and compassion in a world bereft of both.

The depiction of an unhappy future, societal collapse – and its rebuilding by a powerful corporation which asserts control over somewhat powerless citizens – are traditions common in speculative fiction, perhaps because these portrayals strike us as frighteningly prescient of our own future. The ease with which social structures break under the pressure of environmental stressors and adverse scenarios, including those of our own making, will always fascinate us.

In The Shining Wall, ‘plastic faces’ occupy the highest strata of society, able to extend their lives and thrive behind the security of a giant metal wall. The privileged life of these patricians is denied to Demi-Citizens who inhabit the slums outside the wall. There, orphans like Alida struggle for survival amid horrific conditions. In this harsh world, vulnerability means death. One of Alida’s first considerations after the agonising death of her mother is that she must show no weakness to her neighbours, despite her belief that ‘it wasn’t right that Mum had died so young and those plasticised oldies in City 1 were shiny and smooth well after their hundredth birthdays’.

LeaderCorp controls all facets of life both inside and outside the wall, from overarching infrastructure to the most basic of human rights, including food rationing, shelter and health care. LeaderCorp also administers security forces to uphold the status quo, which includes the use of worker-slaves: cloned Neo-Neanderthals, or Neos. Considered the lowest of the low by ‘Sapiens’ (who in turn are referred to as ‘Little Brains’ by Neos), clones are expendable and able to be exploited for undesirable labour. Shuqba, a Neo officer demoted to the Demi-Settlements after witnessing an infraction by a Sapien officer, is advised by a superior to ignore the injustices she sees:

No matter what a Sapien officer is doing, no matter how unjust, stupid or cruel, you stand by and let them do it.

While Neos and Demi-Citizens might be united by their unjust treatment via the machinations of LeaderCorp, the two groups are adversarial in their impulse for survival. In a fascinating move by Ferguson, both see the other as repugnant. The citizens in the Demi-Settlements were:

… such an angry group … Shuqba was beginning to understand why. The deformities and diseases she saw; the blackened teeth, ulcerated skin and twisted limbs.

Meanwhile, Demis murmur about the Neo Shuqba:

‘They’re even uglier up close.’ ‘I don’t want her touching me when she scans my wrist. What knows what germs she has.’

The Shining Wall depicts imagery reminiscent of apartheid and segregation, as when Shuqba hesitates before entering ‘an automated cafe not far from headquarters. A No Neos allowed sign graced the front door.’ However, an interpretation of the book as a parable of racial discrimination might be overly simplistic.

In the societal divide-and-conquer, LeaderCorp spouts propaganda about the unsullied perfection of civilisation in the City:

LeaderCorp’s official line was that when Citizens were well housed and well fed, crime and desperate acts like sex work vanished on their own … no Sapien had to sell their body or steal from anyone else in order to feed themselves.

It is an eerily Soviet portrayal of the state versus the lived reality of the masses.

Ferguson is particularly adept at thrusting the reader headlong into the language of this terrible world. It takes mere pages before anecdotes of anti-tekkers, Rewilders and bio-recyclers become accepted vocabulary. The technology underpinning Ferguson’s social constructs is particularly fascinating for what it reveals about the perceived value of life. The implant system HealthSentinel contained:

… nano sunscreen, an infection and malignancy hunter … other menu items had a lock symbol next to them, which meant they were only available to full Citizens or to Demis flush enough to pay the pricey subscription fees.

Closely tied to survival is health, and in this world of irreparable pollution and environmental destruction, toxic sun and chemical exposure, Ferguson does not shy from depicting defecation, infection, and disease.

Though well-written and inventive, more introspection could have been invested into the question I suspect Ferguson wanted to explore in The Shining Wall – namely, what would it do to one’s psyche to live as a clone of an extinct species. Nevertheless, the book’s visceral, gritty environs will appeal to fans of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy and lovers of sci-fi classics such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Melissa Ferguson The Shining Wall  Transit Lounge 2019 PB 295pp $29.99

Dasha Maiorova is a Belarus-born emerging writer and visual artist whose fiction has been published in The Big Issue, Baby Teeth and Voiceworks. She writes about books and reading at www.dashamaiorova.wordpress.com and tweets @DashMaiorova

You can buy The Shining Wall from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW here or you can buy it from Booktopia here.

To see if it is available from Newtown Library, click here.