BIOHACKED & BEGGING / AUTHOR: STEPHEN ORAM / PUBLISHER: SILVERWOOD BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Stephen Oram’s anthology of biologically-enhanced characters and stories of the not-too-distant future leaves you wanting more, but only because it often feels rather half-finished. Biohacked & Begging’s 26 short stories are spread out across nearly 160 pages, meaning that some stories clock in at just under two of the book’s pages in length. The end result is that where some stories feel rich and lived-in, effortlessly packing in a novel’s worth of ideas, others simply trip over themselves in attempting to condense a similar amount of content into their perverse perspectives.
Oram’s vision of societies overwrought with biological advancement is laced with snarky humour. He delivers compelling characters and stories burdened with the fallout of the morally questionable actions of humanity’s exploration with biological engineering. Oram’s literary execution in delivering these stories has trouble complimenting the wide-spanning scope of his ideas. The incomplete manner that brings these stories to life routinely dogs his delightfully intriguing ideas, but it can also help them to land with palpable force, depending on the individual story.
The grim sense of humour peppered throughout the book lends a biting quality to some of Oram’s tales. “Effort Less” and “The Queen’s Heart” are two definite highlights that tap into that unflinching meld of humour and less than optimistic futures. Curiously, one of the longer stories, the 30-page “Envoy of the Ultimate Observer”, personifies its aforementioned weaknesses. The story of an alien arriving and staying on Earth for a year to learn of its societies and cultures comes off as somewhat listless in its themes and smug in its tone.
Conversely, the title track in Oram’s mixtape of enjoyably warped, often sadistic looks ahead towards a biologically dominated future crystallises the better points about the book. A gorgeously empathetic tale of a beggar longing for physical connection in a world lost in its own cyber-genetic connectivity, it captures the strongest elements of Biohacked & Begging with its engrossing narrative and clearly mapped-out themes.
Even if the writing style is haphazard more often than the reader would like it to be, Biohacked & Begging bears a tremendously cohesive vision of the pitfalls of obsessions with integrated technology. Oram leaves no stone unturned in his quest to pass judgement on how biological enhancement affects every strand of our society. The awkward narrative packaging results in that vision occasionally slipping under its own weight. Still, Biohacked & Begging is a tense, vibrant and often humorous take on speculative futures.
