Did you know that speculative poetry existed? Science fiction poetry wasn’t something I’d even considered before stumbling upon The Octopus Museum, but Soft Science has sold me on the genre. The Turing Test is a test that we use for AI in order to see if they have developed consciousness. These poems takes the Turing test and twist it, evolve it into something new.

What would poetry written by an android look like? If we’re cyborgs, does that remove our humanity from us? Could we say it does if art is still created?

Would we even be evolved enough to understand and empathize with these new types of beings? Or would we be stuck with the same old ugliness?

Soft Science leaves the answers to you.

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I can’t be the only one who’s thought about just disappearing into the woods before, right? We think about what it would be like to disconnect from a fast-paced world and for me, at least, know that we’d never be able to do it. Me becoming a hermit in the woods would be a fast track to me being dead in the woods. But in The Stranger in the Woods, we learn the story of Michael Knight. A man who not only managed to survive, but thrive living in the woods for over 25 years.

Slowly, through this book we’re able to peel away the layers of what makes Knight who he is even as we grapple with what he did. Silence is a punishment for most. Solitary confinement is considered one of the greatest punishments for prison inmates. We’re social creatures, but Michael Knight was able to make it through with his sanity intact.

So what knowledge of the universe does the hermit have to give us? What advice and wisdom does he want us to hear?

None. Michael Knight didn’t do any of this for our sake.

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There’s no fight to be had in Brenda Shaughnessy’s Octopus Museum. There’s no raging against the dying of the light to be had. Humanity has already lost and there can be no resistance against a telepathic Octopus society. Shaughnessy paints a world where humans had their shot and we blew it.

Thanks to Covid-19, we’re all very stressed right now. I know that’s the understatement of this (already very messy decade). But like I mentioned in my Get Well Soon review, it always feels like humanity will make it through.

Not this time.

Welcome to the Octopus Museum. All hail our cephalopod overlords (COOs)

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