Introduction
I wrote the collection “Lobe” under the pen name Paul Baden at a time when I was quite active on thephilosophyforum.com where I post as “Baden”. “Lobe” was one of the first books I completed and I was attracted by the idea of maintaining the identity I had on the forum. The charm of the pen name wore off somewhat with subsequent books, and now all volumes except “Lobe” appear under my real name, Paul Buckle. However, “Lobe” seems to me to be my most “Baden” of books—somehow most reflective of my “Baden” persona—and so I have kept it on.
The first full short story I wrote, The Soul Machine, appears as the last story in the collection. It’s a kind of coming of age story for a protagonist who should have already come of age but didn’t—who got blocked somehow. I still relate to that protagonist and always feel just in the process of coming of age but perhaps never really getting there. And this, I suppose, is a roundabout justification for placing this first story last.
That tale is also notable for being one of the most whimsical and hopeful of what is a generally bleak group of stories, which are so because they focus on the darker side of how we live now. This darker side is exemplified in the opener, Zebo and the World Spirit, which takes the split between commercialism and religious fundamentalism and forcefully ties the two together in what turns out to be a rather violent marriage. The follow-up Robert, Robert, and the Misshapen, similarly examines how our media-driven lives distort self-perception and human relationships, and the third story The List presents a dystopic future where this logic is taken to the extreme in a supermarket game show populated by hopeful psychopaths.
The titular story Lobe consists of a pastiche of interwoven vignettes written in dramatically disparate styles that aim to unite form and content as a description of / allusion to / performative impression of a future drug, that much like technology itself, seems to hover between poison and care. This extended story is probably closest in conception to my non-fictional essay collection ”Technoethics”, and is my first “constellational“ work, foreshadowing the more obviously systematic constellation that is “The Beast Machines’’.
From a literary perspective, at least in terms of pure linguistic gymnastics, I humbly aspire to the right to consider Skin Game the most accomplished piece. It’s a layered puzzle that performs its own title and, I can only hope, with some finesse.
I believe the collection offers food for thought for those interested in philosophical fiction, and though it may not always present, in its narratives, the sweetest of morsels, I hope they are at least digestible, and perhaps, dare I suggest, edifying?
An Excerpt from The List: The Polished Panopticon
In this extract we get a glimpse into the psychopathic social dynamics of the supermarket competition that seem to have been fully internalised by our protagonist, who blandly expounds on how the commodified “soft violence” of the event can lead to very disturbing real-world consequences.
There’s a clear theoretical link between the narrative here and, for example, the philosophical concepts explored in the essay Giddiness and Noise from “Technoethics”, available as a single paper here on academia.edu.
I am acutely aware that any extended delay caused by my cogitations is likely to cause concern amongst my public support, some of whom have a financial interest in my winning the competition or at least my high placement among the finishers, and most of whom are likely to be watching my every move—the show gives viewers the option to follow any of the 50 or so cameras positioned strategically around the store, including, in some cases, hidden in and amongst (especially, though not exclusively) listed produce. We are also viewed from a variety of positions and at all times by the competition referees, of which at least five are on duty at any moment, leaving no room for infraction, large or small. So when, for example, six years ago, a competitor took a rival’s product from her trolley and put it in his, he was immediately identified and disqualified. The fact that he had then to be physically removed from the competition area with no small degree of force is testament to the disturbed mental state that prompted such a theft in the first place. The incident happily resulted in a significant increase in ratings the next year (and a concomitant amelioration of prize money), which our protagonist did not get to witness due to his death from injuries he suffered in an apparently unprovoked street attack soon after the original incident, an attack which the authorities did not definitively link to the show (though multiple media outlets speculated along such lines). The attacker was never identified, the case remains unsolved, and no-one since has attempted such blatant trolley thievery.