Eliminate men and women will shape up
Boing Boing recently raved about "Y: The Last Man"
comic book series. In short, this is a story of the last remaining man
Yorick who mysteriously survived when all men suddenly perished, and
how this hapless happy-go-lucky hero travels in the world of women to
look for his lost girlfriend on the other side of the Earth.
Along the way, Yorick is aided by a bunch of strong and independent female characters as he finds himself in various places where diverse groups of independent groovy women live together in peace and harmony now that they are free from the oppression of patriarchy. Or not. With all men gone, life is materially pretty much as it was in the 19th century, with some aspects of modern life and technology surviving. Some places even have electricity, but of course there is no air travel or anything like that. With the thousands of passenger planes that are in the air at any time, and most of them piloted by men, the resulting carnage must have been pretty serious.
I have now read the first four trade paperbacks of this series, and I have to say that unless I have seriously misunderstood something, certain massive plot holes have begun to annoy me so much that it makes the simple enjoyment of the story difficult, although I am curious to see how the writer gets out of the corner that he has painted himself into. These plot holes do not include the rather implausible fact that Yorick remains totally celibate because he is so faithful to his girlfriend. This is an absolute storytelling necessity, as "Y" is not supposed be a Milo Manara comic book. So let me explain what I mean.
First, it is not just human males who instantly perished, but all male mammals with the Y chromosome. Curiously enough, this seems to have had no effect whatsoever on the ecosystem. This loss of all mammals is apparently no big deal for humans either, since after a year and a half of the cataclysm, one of the characters laments that one species whose lifespan is a year and a half just went extinct, but the others just don't seem to care much. According to the Wikipedia page, this comic book series is supposed to run for 60 issues, so the writer won't have to tackle the question of what the world will be like after a few years when there are no mammals left. (All species of wild animals have to constantly replenish their ranks, as their life tends to be nasty, brutish and generally short.)
For the same reason, it's strange what all these women plan to do, since obviously there will be none. The existence of Yorick is kept a secret from the general population, even though he seems to have no problem showing himself wherever he goes. Or will there be a future? At one point of the story, our heroes have a MacGuffin of getting to the creaky landing capsule of the International Space Station, from which two male and one female astronauts are coming down. Both males die in the landing, knowing their place in the story to the end and thus allowing the lady exit the burning capsule first and survive, as she is pregnant with a son. My priorities would have been a bit different in this situation, but fortunately later in the story we find out that the son is born healthy so there is hope for the future.
In this light, one really has to wonder why no woman anywhere in the world has gone to a sperm bank and attempted to inseminate herself to continue the human race. You'd think that at least one woman somewhere would try this, but nope, not even one did. The story tries to spin an explanation about the "Amazons" (basically a gang of feminazi nutjobs) who burned down the sperm banks, apparently trusting that cloning and infinite life extension technologies will be perfected within their lifetime. (And even if they didn't, why should there be future generations? Grab some thrilling living for yourself right now.) How the Amazons managed to immediately achieve this all around the world, including Israel with its tough-as-nails army of women who take no crap from hippies, is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps some kind of ucca-pucca-wicca magic was involved, or the fact that by the grand traditions of this whole genre, only Americans matter and ever really do anything, and thus destroying the American sperm banks is just as good as destroying all of them. You might think that at least Israeli Colonel Alter Tse'elon, in her enthusiasm to capture Yorick to ensure the survival of Israel, would have tried to have a few of her subordinates impregnated with the Israeli sperm banks. But I guess not.
For that matter, I'm sure that Yorick's dream girlfriend would understand if all those scientists and government officials at least tried to use him for artificial insemination, to see if it worked. Hey, it's only the future of the human race that we are talking about here, and we are informed in the story that Yorick constantly wanks a lot to keep himself from yielding to the temptation. (In many places of the story you can't avoid the impression that somebody ought to slap Yorick on the face for being such an idiot. I can't understand why the Wikipedia page says that "Yorick in particular is a source of one-liners", since at best he an utter bore, an inoffensive blob.)
In the collection "Safeword", we learn that there is only one highway that connects the East and West coasts of America, and that about eight militia-spirited conservative women armed with rifles and pistols have roadblocked it so that food and other supplies can't go through, which in turn keeps millions of women in hunger. This setup sounds rather implausible to me even under catastrophic circumstances, so the only explanation that I can think of is that the US Marine Corps must have been disbanded or something. Fortunately, the mysterious supergirl agent 355, who is assigned to protect Yorick in his travels, manages to kill all these women even though she is tied up and facing the execution squad. Since we learned earlier that the same gang had earlier killed the whole force of Texas Rangers who attacked them, that sure is one tough broad.
Agent 355 is part of a clandestine government agency "The Culper Ring", which in turn inspired me to learn about Revolutionary history of United States. I only regret that I have but so much energy for learning about serious stuff. Instead, I'd rather wonder if the agents of this secret group ever argued who gets to be agent 69.
Along the way, Yorick is aided by a bunch of strong and independent female characters as he finds himself in various places where diverse groups of independent groovy women live together in peace and harmony now that they are free from the oppression of patriarchy. Or not. With all men gone, life is materially pretty much as it was in the 19th century, with some aspects of modern life and technology surviving. Some places even have electricity, but of course there is no air travel or anything like that. With the thousands of passenger planes that are in the air at any time, and most of them piloted by men, the resulting carnage must have been pretty serious.
I have now read the first four trade paperbacks of this series, and I have to say that unless I have seriously misunderstood something, certain massive plot holes have begun to annoy me so much that it makes the simple enjoyment of the story difficult, although I am curious to see how the writer gets out of the corner that he has painted himself into. These plot holes do not include the rather implausible fact that Yorick remains totally celibate because he is so faithful to his girlfriend. This is an absolute storytelling necessity, as "Y" is not supposed be a Milo Manara comic book. So let me explain what I mean.
First, it is not just human males who instantly perished, but all male mammals with the Y chromosome. Curiously enough, this seems to have had no effect whatsoever on the ecosystem. This loss of all mammals is apparently no big deal for humans either, since after a year and a half of the cataclysm, one of the characters laments that one species whose lifespan is a year and a half just went extinct, but the others just don't seem to care much. According to the Wikipedia page, this comic book series is supposed to run for 60 issues, so the writer won't have to tackle the question of what the world will be like after a few years when there are no mammals left. (All species of wild animals have to constantly replenish their ranks, as their life tends to be nasty, brutish and generally short.)
For the same reason, it's strange what all these women plan to do, since obviously there will be none. The existence of Yorick is kept a secret from the general population, even though he seems to have no problem showing himself wherever he goes. Or will there be a future? At one point of the story, our heroes have a MacGuffin of getting to the creaky landing capsule of the International Space Station, from which two male and one female astronauts are coming down. Both males die in the landing, knowing their place in the story to the end and thus allowing the lady exit the burning capsule first and survive, as she is pregnant with a son. My priorities would have been a bit different in this situation, but fortunately later in the story we find out that the son is born healthy so there is hope for the future.
In this light, one really has to wonder why no woman anywhere in the world has gone to a sperm bank and attempted to inseminate herself to continue the human race. You'd think that at least one woman somewhere would try this, but nope, not even one did. The story tries to spin an explanation about the "Amazons" (basically a gang of feminazi nutjobs) who burned down the sperm banks, apparently trusting that cloning and infinite life extension technologies will be perfected within their lifetime. (And even if they didn't, why should there be future generations? Grab some thrilling living for yourself right now.) How the Amazons managed to immediately achieve this all around the world, including Israel with its tough-as-nails army of women who take no crap from hippies, is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps some kind of ucca-pucca-wicca magic was involved, or the fact that by the grand traditions of this whole genre, only Americans matter and ever really do anything, and thus destroying the American sperm banks is just as good as destroying all of them. You might think that at least Israeli Colonel Alter Tse'elon, in her enthusiasm to capture Yorick to ensure the survival of Israel, would have tried to have a few of her subordinates impregnated with the Israeli sperm banks. But I guess not.
For that matter, I'm sure that Yorick's dream girlfriend would understand if all those scientists and government officials at least tried to use him for artificial insemination, to see if it worked. Hey, it's only the future of the human race that we are talking about here, and we are informed in the story that Yorick constantly wanks a lot to keep himself from yielding to the temptation. (In many places of the story you can't avoid the impression that somebody ought to slap Yorick on the face for being such an idiot. I can't understand why the Wikipedia page says that "Yorick in particular is a source of one-liners", since at best he an utter bore, an inoffensive blob.)
In the collection "Safeword", we learn that there is only one highway that connects the East and West coasts of America, and that about eight militia-spirited conservative women armed with rifles and pistols have roadblocked it so that food and other supplies can't go through, which in turn keeps millions of women in hunger. This setup sounds rather implausible to me even under catastrophic circumstances, so the only explanation that I can think of is that the US Marine Corps must have been disbanded or something. Fortunately, the mysterious supergirl agent 355, who is assigned to protect Yorick in his travels, manages to kill all these women even though she is tied up and facing the execution squad. Since we learned earlier that the same gang had earlier killed the whole force of Texas Rangers who attacked them, that sure is one tough broad.
Agent 355 is part of a clandestine government agency "The Culper Ring", which in turn inspired me to learn about Revolutionary history of United States. I only regret that I have but so much energy for learning about serious stuff. Instead, I'd rather wonder if the agents of this secret group ever argued who gets to be agent 69.
Ha. That's nothing. I recently read the series DeathDay and EarthRise by William C Deitz.
This was an equal opportunity Tour de Force if nothing else.
Man, there seemed to be more heroic blacks in the novels than their actual number in the US, and of course, only whites could be truly evil (and stupid enough to help a woman escape from a dire situation only to be killed because only she was small enough to escape through a sewage pipe) and so on.
Even even aliens practiced a sort of reverse racism, since they came in three casts, the black ones, who were the rulers, the browns, who were the military, and the whites, who were the menial types.
Of course, when the aliens enslaved the humans, they put blacks in charge.
In the end, not a very satisfactory series of books.
Posted by loki on the run | 2:12 PM
Agree. I figured there would have been a huge fuckfest for the Y already within a couple of weeks but no... Total bummer. I mean so unrealistic bullshite...
Posted by Anonymous | 6:40 PM
Even if Yorick decided not to yield to temptation, wouldn't you think that he would get raped quite a bit? I mean, if a woman thought that this would be the last man she would ever see alive, I would think that biological imperatives would start to take over.
As I recall, there was an episode of Sliders (about a ragtag bunch who explore alternate universe Earths) where they visited a world where something like 99% of men had died. The remaining men were kept under lock and key by the various governments and used as studs.
Posted by Glaivester | 7:43 PM
the good thing about finnz is that they speak english.
Posted by Razib | 8:28 PM