This is a short novella, so short that I finished it on the flight back to New York. But it is so hard to read. I almost quitted at the first several pages, confused by the three stories which intertwined and jumped back and forth, as well as the abstract writing and metaphors throughout the book.
It is an alternate history that combines three storylines: a folktale in the collective memories of elephants (long long ago), a radium girl and Topsy the elephant (early years of the 20th century), a scientist who tries to find a way to warn humankind away from nuclear waste sites (near future). In the second storyline, the author ties the unrelated two historical events into one dark storyline, revealing the cruelness of human beings, not only to animals, but also to the minority group. Interestingly, the three stories are written in parallel, and none of them has a straightforward ending.
I went through the reviews on Goodreads, most reviews pointed out the themes in the book, selfishness, cruelty, animal abuse, greediness, and the manipulation of history. But I am more interested in another topic in this book: the role of Kat as a scientist.
Kat’s storyline happens in the near future where she is a member of a research team, trying to find the most effective way to keep humankind away from nuclear waste sites. They came up with an idea that is to make elephants glow when they are near the poison (by some DNA techniques I guess). This idea sounds reasonable with Topsy’s tragedy as a background story. Topsy was a killer elephant sold to US radium to replace the dial painters. Those painters were suffering and decaying due to the poison. Topsy was sentenced to death by electrocution because she killed a man (again) in a violent way. Like what happened in the true history, Topsy was taken to Luna Park at Coney Island. But in the book, the radium girl Regan showed up and gave Topsy a vial of poison. That is the ending of the second storyline, the author did not tell us what exactly happened. But from the fragments in Kat’s memory dozens of years after the tragedy, there should be a large-scale explosion with serious nuclear pollution. That is why elephants are closely associated with nuclear radiation in the memory of Kat’s generation.
Kat devoted half of her life to find the solution, to make elephants glow in the dark. Now she needed the last step: the agreement of elephants. Elephant is a creature with language, sentiment, and collective memory in this book. The negotiation did not go smoothly. The matriarch was like a granite statue. The elephants compromised on her proposal, but requested public education of the truth. As the matriarch said:
“Please do not misunderstand me. We aren’t protecting your secrets. We are guarding the truth. They will see how we shine, and they will know the truth.”
Truth.
The truth is that humankind is selfish, cruel, and thoughtless. They put everyone on earth in danger, including themselves. It is the elephants who are willing to sacrifice themselves and be exiled to wasteland for the sake of all creatures.
Kat felt exhausted and frustrated. As a scientist, she had devoted too much on this project. What she wanted is to find a solution that can benefit the humankind. Utilizing human’s fear of elephants looks a perfect one.
But what about the elephants? What about the truth?
She told her supervisor:
“I have many ethical questions about the legitimacy of this project. I have to at least make sure an attempt is made at educating the public before continuing on with the research. A major attempt.”
As you can imagine, her boss would not support her idea.
“Justified, unjustified — she’s (Topsy) at the center of this project, but do you really, truly believe anyone should know in detail how the sausage is made?”
“We’re scientists,” Kat says. She stands. “All we do is teach people how sausage is made.”
The end of her storyline did not tell us her decision. But her attitude was clear here: a scientist should tell people the truth, and perhaps making elephants glow is a wrong decision.
I resonate a lot with Kat’s internal struggles. She may have two layers of concern. On one hand, the proposal of making elephants glow is acceptable, but the public should be educated; one the other hand, the proposal is not ethical at all. The first one is about communication between researchers and the public. How to present the research results truthfully without being influenced by external factors? There are a lot of debates about it, political pressure, financial interests, or personal desire, may bury the truth.
The latter is about the researcher’s ethical bias. There are many gray areas in scientific research, such as the right of research subject, either human or animal, the real experiment result versus its social impact, or explainable study process and algorithms. Researchers often have a hard time to balance what they think is important and what the public may think is important. More or less they have some biases when the decision is made.
The association between elephants and radiation has been deeply embedded in Kat’s culture, her childhood memories. So she took it for granted that elephants should glow in the dark for humankind’s safety but seldom thought from the perspective of elephants.
Isn’t it so similar to real life? We are doing research with bias. Thefuture life should be surrounded by digital products and smart devices, everything should be digitalized, furniture, clothes, even plants. But seldom did we notice how many people in the world are suffering from the lack of resources, seldom did we consider the benefits of minority groups, seldom did we compute the environmental cost if the technologies become pervasive.
I found researchers’ ethical bias an interesting topic to discuss. It is an increasingly popular topic in HCI too. Though I have not got clear criteria to judge it, this book evokes my thoughts and reflection. It is an excellent novella and is worth reading for several times.