It’s easy to say violence is everywhere today. Easy to assert that its effects can be felt in the real world and those we lose ourselves in alike. That its prevalence is evidenced in the video games we play as much as the news we watch, by way of the books we read no more or less than the things each of us experience.
We could also talk, for a time, about the climate of fear and the war economy it contributes to. We might additionally consider the stigma attached to sex versus our acceptance of violence in every sphere of society. But let’s leave all that for someone smarter than I. I’m here to review a book, in any event... albeit a book which addresses, in a sense, many of the aforementioned questions.
The Serene Invasion’s premise is simple yet suggestive, plain yet potentially progressive. In 2025, aliens invade. But strangely, they don’t wage war on the world. Instead, the Serene park their ships in the skies and unilaterally impose peace. By manipulating the strings of existence or some such thing, they make it impossible on the quantum level for any human being to hurt another. Every sort of violence imaginable simply ceases.
Lucky for some.
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