Unwind (Unwind Dystology, book 1) by Neal Shusterman

[james_davis_nicoll]

Unwind (Unwind Dystology, book 1) by Neal Shusterman

Comments

[thornsilver]

This premise does not merely break my suspension of disbelief, it makes it stare in stupefied confusion. Did the author who wrote this ever met any humans at all?

[kjn]

Unfortunately, yes.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

Perhaps the author thinks abortion rights activists just really, really want to kill kids?

[jamoche]

Judging from what I've read at Slacktivist, the Left Behind authors seem to think that - there's one bit in the first book, when all children, born or not, have been raptured, that an abortion clinic worker is upset because it means she's out of a job.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

As the talk over the ginned-up Planned Parenthood video makes clear, the US religious right has held for decades that abortion is a massively profitable industry that seeks to make as many abortions happen as possible, for the money or just for the thrill of killing fetuses.

The Sarah Silverman joke about how she'd like to have an abortion but she's been having trouble getting pregnant would not be a joke to them.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Making stuff up is so much more entertaining than actually checking facts. I recently found a list explicitly labeled "bat shit crazy" that linked to a site called Liberal Logic 101 which fully fit the description. The creators seem energetically wrapped up in a War on Straw Men that's in no way encumbered by facts or having any idea what real liberals might believe.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Yes, James's comment about the incorporated quotation of a "evil post-Soviets killing babies for stem cells" story suggests that the author genuinely believes that pro-choice people want to kill babies for the sake of it.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

Modern Western culture engaging in filicide is absurd, particularly as a compromise over abortion, but a survey of history shows that it's soundly within the realm of human nature. There were officials in ancient Sparta whose job was to examine all newborns and determine which were fit to live; other Greek states left it to the father to decide. In Rome the pater familias held the right to kill any of his children or grand children who displeased him. Tacitus, when he describes Hebrew culture in The Histories, mentions the Jewish prohibition on infanticide on a list of their supposedly barbaric customs.

[thornsilver]

Well, yes, and we were dealing with an interpretation of modern western culture. But they are not actually killing infants. The point of this book is that they are actually killing teens. For parts.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

You asked whether "the author who wrote this ever met any humans at all?" which suggests that your objection to the subject goes beyond modern Western culture.

And even limited to Western culture, the situation in the book is only unbelievable as an outgrowth of the abortion debate. Western civilization has, within living memory, sanctioned the mass murder of children, the use of children for scientific experimentation, and many other things equally odious.

[thornsilver]

Yes, we did. The thing that I find unbelievable in this particular concept is that it is something that is targeting teenagers that are not actually children of "Others". Because it would mean that not only this particular society condones killing of people for body parts (actually "condones" is not the word, I just can't think of a duly descriptive word for it), it is that it seems reasonable to take an infant, raise it for a number of years, while investing both material and emotional capital and than had it killed.

(And this has absolutely nothing to do with the above argument, but, as a person who did not read this series, it has been driving me crazy: a) Why only teenagers? Why not kids? Why not criminals? b) Do parents get money for the kid they give up for unwinding? and c) Do they find some way to use brain tissue as well? Human has 1:40 brain to body ration, which means that more than 1% of body is unusable for transplants.)

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

One of the incidental characters was the recipient of a partial brain transplant. The donor was still home enough to be very confused about their situation.

[thornsilver]

Now, see, *this* is the most horrifying part. I need something with happy kittens before I tackle sleeping tonight.

It would be a different form of dystopia ...

[(Anonymous)]

... if the career criminals were given full brain transplants.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Since given the silly parameters the brains must be transplanted, it seems only logical that after the teenagers are unwound various career criminals are given brain "upgrades" whether they want them or not. After all, those repeat offenders have demonstrated there's something malfunctioning in their heads and it's obviously cheaper for the government if that can be sorted out.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

That's better than just killing your unwanted teenagers and leaving them to rot outside town:

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. -- Deuteronomy 21:18-21