Voici le texte en anglais que j'ai écris sur proposition de l'écrivain canadien Margaret Atwood sur la plateforme d'écriture Wattpad. Ms Atwood a été choisie pour être le premier écrivain à écrire un texte pour le projet Future Library de l'artiste écossaise Katie Paterson. Un millier d'arbres ont été en effet plantés à Normarka, une forêt près d'Oslo afin de fournir le papier qui permettra de publier une anthologie de textes à découvrir en 2114. Tous les ans jusqu'à cette date, un écrivain est invité à composer un texte.
Une chose est sûre: je ne pourrai jamais lire ces textes. Mais écrire ce petit quelque chose m'a permis d'imaginer ce que serait 2114.
The International Announcer
Opinion
A WORD FROM THE EDITOR IN CHIEF
By SERENA LEE
January 1, 2114
Today we are launching a new series of opinion columns written by outstanding young people under 20 of the 22nd century. We have asked them to give their unrestrained viewpoint on the world of 2114 they live in. They will be sharing with us their hopes, fears and indignations in the coming weeks.
In this first issue of the year, we are also inaugurating a new application. You will thus be able to read The International Announcer directly in the language of your location settings.
Our first young columnist is Mina, a Korean teenager of 15, who was born on the year of the reunification of the two Koreas and who was chosen as one of the ambassadors for the Future Library project which is coming to an end this year.
The Future Library : a project for our generation
So this is my first column. I would like to tell you, to begin with, how I, a fifteen year-old Korean girl, came to be asked to write for The International Announcer. It all boils down to : Blame it on my favorite librarian ! A Saturday morning in 2113, I was borrowing my usual weekly stack of books: novels, poetry and comics. This time, when I gave my card to the librarian at the checkout desk, instead of the usual question "Would you prefer the e-book format? " I saw a quizzical look on his face. I thought it was because of the huge amount of still not returned books appearing on my record. But, on a second glance, it was not THIS look which, after all, I get from time to time. It was something else. He just nodded to me and asked: " Would you please stay here a minute ? " Then I saw him take the phone and talk in whispers. At this point I was really awfully intrigued and strongly tempted to send a text message to my best friend. But before I could do that. He guided me into a room near the storage area where I was asked to wait. When the door opened, my favorite librarian, Miss Moon, was before me. She had a very solemn air. She just said "Mina " and made a sort of curtsey which strangely reminded me of those made by the characters in Jane Austen's novels which she had recommended to me. This gesture was a little bit disconcerting as it is supposed to belong to persons in 18th century England and not to Korea in the 22nd century where old manners of Asian polite greetings have disappeared. She handed me a small white envelope and vanished before I could question her. I watched my name written on it in the scribbler moon as we, book worms, like to call the notes she writes to us with mocking fondness. Miss Moon indeed knows all the young library regulars and care for them to the point of sending them, while they are on vacation, an e-post card with a nice message in digital handwriting. I came to look forward to them as it is so very rare that persons use that mode of writing now, everything being typed by compulogs. I would imagine her tracing words with her electronic pen as she would sketch a drawing. In the envelope, there was a cream-colored card on which I read : You have been designated as one of the ambassadors of the Future Library project to attend the opening ceremony which will be held in Oslo at the end of 2114.
I was completely overwhelmed by this nomination. I could not believe I had been chosen to participate in this legendary adventure. I had heard of this project three years ago in the telernet evening news broadcast which is watched all over the world since the merging of television and internet. They said it was launched in 2014 by Katie Paterson, an artist, who had proposed to publish an anthology of books to be printed in one hundred years on the paper supplied by a forest planted in Norway and had invited one writer to contribute a text each year during this time span. My parents were not even born! Now we are in 2114 and the manuscripts are to be made public. I am really excited because I am going to read at last the story written by Margaret Atwood, the first author of the project who also happens to be one of my favorite classic writer of the 21st century and the works of the other 99 esteemed authors. To think that they have written for us, readers of the future, so long ago is simply extraordinary. So many things have changed since their time. Comparisons are supposed to be odious but, according to what I read in history books, the world I now live in strongly resembles the one after East and West Germany were reunited in 1989. We, Koreans, can now travel freely throughout the country. A trans-Korean train was even inaugurated last year which would have been unimaginable for my great-grandparents. The cities of the former South and North are being entirely reshaped both to start on a new basis and out of necessity. Ten years ago, following the Huge one, a fog spreading from Russia to Japan which has persisted for nearly six months, completely darkening this territory, the international awareness of global warming's dangers finally gave rise to political action. The obligation of completely replacing gas by electric consumption, severe taxes on polluting industries and forest preservation were imposed. All this I have learnt in school because pupils all over the world are now required to take a course called Environmental compliance. My parents told me that it would have been unthinkable at their time. Those who predicted the potential incoming disasters were simply viewed as the child who cried wolf or, in the long run, as Cassandras said my father. Speaking of youth, following the 2068 uprising, youngsters obtained to come of age at sixteen. This has caused, at first, trouble and fights between the elderly and young people, the latter trying to contest the former's authority by exerting violence. After brutality ceased, they were progressively marginalized. They had to retire at 50, their right to vote was withdrawn and they had to abandon their properties to their youngest heirs. I have always known this situation but I cannot help feeling uncomfortable when I see them in the streets of Seoul wandering aimlessly or, for those without a spouse or a family to care for them, destitute King Lear figures, sitting all day long in parks and gardens. Besides, there is also a generalized trend of delinquent seniors: elderly people committing offenses because they prefer being imprisoned than being down and out in the city where they may be attacked at any time. The only thing which consoles me is that my grandparents are not here anymore to witness it. More materialistically, they would have also been sorry for the disappearance of movie theatres. I have some faint memories of sitting in one of them when I was around four: the sweet oily smell of popcorn and of dust, people laughing, scared or weeping at the same time. But it is only a memory. Now people still watch films but not in theatres which have disappeared since the prohibition of public gatherings. According to the world government, the risk of clashes between youngsters and the elderly would have been too high. They like to remind us that peace talks have so far utterly failed. The only means of avoiding tensions would be separation. I am convinced that there is some other way. Why not build together a bridge of words? The reunification of the North and the South was done progressively not only by political will but also through the works of Korean writers who proposed a different view of reality. I know that nowadays youngsters regard paper printed books as antiquities compared to e-books which are widespread. Fiction is also not popular anymore because of its so-called lack of utility, economy and politics being the considered subjects. However, in the airway, I noticed that, while everyone was immersed in his you watch news, the elderly directed approving glances to my paperback fiction book reading. This could form the basis for bridging the gap between both groups. I see that some youngsters hate their elders and paper printed books and fiction merely through ignorance. A year ago, some friends and I created the Fiction preservation club. The idea is to keep books of fiction alive by tracking those existing, reading them and sharing them with unknown people by sending them an e-note which includes a video in which one of us reads an excerpt of the book and provides an explanation. We hope that we can thus show that reading fiction is not quaint. I am aware of the difficulties they may find even in their own families though. In mine, for example, my parents were very dubious of my choice. They would certainly have preferred my attending compulog programming or aircar repairing classes. One day, my mother found some Dickens's and Margaret Atwood's novels under my bed. She came to see me and I was forced to admit that I read fiction. She stared at me bewildered. "So the time has come " she said. "I knew you were dreamy and imaginative. I was afraid to think you were the kind of child who loved fiction. " Tears began to well up in her hazelnut slanted eyes. "But you are. You don't have to say a word. I tried to put yourself to sleep with books on politics thinking it would prevent you from loving novels, short stories and poetry. I reckoned that it worked because you slept so soundly and quickly. But I guess not..." and she sobbed. Everything ended well, dear readers, because they eventually accepted my idiosyncrasy. But I had to deal with their hostility at first when I came out as a fiction lover. And now I still read in my parent's eyes, when they look at me, during a flickering instant, a silent pleading or a suffering wonderment saying: "What have we done wrong?" They surmised the difficulties I could encounter in a society dominated by non-fiction readers: misunderstanding, teasing, or even bashing. When they realized that I grasped this, they tried to cover it with a faint smile but I knew their fears. I have accepted to be one of the ambassadors of the Future Library project and to write this column to say to the people of my generation not be afraid to love fiction. Fiction must be transmitted to future generations. Fiction is indeed dangerous because it can make people think and change. We must be will willing to take this risk.
