I’ve never seen a story illustrate Orwell’s maxim from 1984 that “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past” as well as Yiming Ma’s haunting, troubling novel in stories, These Memories Do Not Belong to Us. This novel imagines a world dominated by a new version of China, a reborn Qin empire. And this empire has more than surveillance and informants to help it control its population. Most, if not all, Qin citizens have a Mindbank implanted in their brains. The original intent was to help people remember everything and to connect them to the Internet. What people didn’t know was that the government also had access to Mindbanks and, along with this access, the power to alter or censor memories.
Our journey begins when an unnamed narrator receives his mother’s archived memories from her Mindbank. This is normal practice in the Qin empire; memories can be inherited. When our narrator starts poking into these memories, he is terrified to learn that his mother held onto memories that are now banned. If he’s caught with them, he’ll be sent for re-education—and he is definitely going to be caught with them, just as soon as the Censors get around to reviewing his inheritance. The memories include old tales about what used to be Japan, about what happened when the Chrysanthemum Virus appeared, what happened when the Qin went to war with America, and about a few of the ways that the Qin government gradually extended its power even into the minds of its citizens and history itself.
It took me a few stories to understand why these memories had the narrator so worked up. The people in them and the events portrayed even seemed a little boring in places. Slowly, the stories and memories reveal alterations in the historical record. It’s amazing how a government ruthless enough to rewrite history can completely change how people see the world. One of the stories, set in a quarantined village during the epidemic of the Chrysanthemum Virus, reveals the government’s long-standing lie about citizens willing to metaphorically wall themselves up to slow the spread of the highly lethal virus. We know that they were never asked to quarantine; they were left to die by their government. By the end of These Memories Do Not Belong to Us, I was tense with worry for the narrator and the looming visit from the Censors.
A large part of what made These Memories Do Not Belong ot Us so frighteningly effective is that the idea of a neural implant to store memories and access the Internet doesn’t sound implausible. Elon Musk and his engineers have been working on NeuraLink for years now. It makes sense that some people would want a device to help us remember things: imagine never forgetting important dates, or remembering what others said when you weren’t completely paying attention, or being able to relive the best parts of our lives whenever we want. This novel argues that these abilities could come with a price so high I would never want to pay. Science fiction is so good at taking technology that is just on our event horizon and running with it in ways that highlight ethical dilemmas, harmful impacts on people and nature, and so on. These Memories Do Not Belong to Us makes me want to possibly become a Luddite.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.