Humans are a fractious species. I know that chimpanzees occasionally go to war with one another and that domesticated dogs can suffer from separation anxiety and that dolphins sometimes get high. But none of the other species on this planet seem so determined to confuse and make themselves miserable. In The Measurements of Decay by K.K. Edin, one of the most overblown books I’ve ever read, the problem with humans is our lack of empathy for each other—at least according to its insane philosopher antagonist. If only we could fully understand one another, he posits (over and over, in increasingly hysterical language), we would stop fighting, feuding, and fretting all the time.
The Measurements of Decay follow three characters across centuries to explore the idea of what might happen if people really could completely empathize with each other—and what it might take to transform a species to make that possible. Sometime in the present or near future, an unnamed would-be philosopher constantly restarts his treatise to solve the ultimate question of why humans cannot really understand one another. In the far future, Tikan Solafstir attempts to disrupt the system of procrustiis and metempsies that allow people to drift into memories and dreams at the price of being constantly surveilled and manipulated. Meanwhile, a mysterious woman named Sielle travels through space and time for her own purposes.
I’m not entirely sure why I finished reading this book. I was interested enough in the summary on the NetGalley site to ask to read it. Who wouldn’t want to read about a woman who could do what Sielle does or what might happen if people were networked together? But the author’s prose is so deliberately purple and pretentiously erudite that I found myself skimming through bad dialogue and exposition more often than not. This style made sense for the philosopher who descends rapidly into insanity. I could probably have handled those sections if the others had been written in a less showy manner. Unfortunately, the bizarre prose runs throughout the novel no matter who the narrator is at the moment.
There are interesting ideas in The Measurements of Decay; I won’t say this book was a completely miserable experience. I appreciated that it offered such a dark vision of forced empathy. On the surface, requiring humans to actually understand what people mean and what their experience is sounds like a good idea. How many problems could we solve if people were no longer allowed to isolate themselves from other people? The issue with this “solution” is that it takes away choice. Who has the right to assume that kind of authority? As I read the chapters from the philosopher’s perspective, all I could think was, “who died and made you god?” Sielle actually sees this perfectly peaceful society on one of her sojourns to the future and is horrified at the blandness and lack of independent thought among those future humans.
The Measurements of Decay is an interesting blend of science fiction and philosophy that some readers might enjoy pondering over. Speaking for myself, I had issues with the way that characters made what I thought were out-of-character decisions, the way questions of free will and choice were glossed over in just one short conversation, and the thesaurus-emptying logorrhea used by so many of the male characters. I finished this book, sure, but I didn’t like it.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.