The Passing of the Dragon by Ken Liu

Author:Ken Liu [Liu, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9781250333148
Google: XszREAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B0CG4L57LK
Goodreads: 197351497
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2023-09-13T07:00:00+00:00

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After days of obsessive research—it was the only way for her to feel she was making some progress, however illusory, toward getting her life back—this is her best reconstruction of what happened:

A group of activists in South America is trying to save a valley from commercial development, and lacking a charismatic bird or mammal or even flower to serve as an ambassador, they settle on a species of mushroom, the Splendid Soldier, a striking gilled fungus with a purple stem and a crimson cap. It’s critically endangered and exists nowhere else. They turn the mushroom into a mascot, make postcards and indigenous handicrafts, knit llama wool plushies of an anthropomorphized version (The Little Splendid Soldier) with big eyes and protest signs (not guns; never guns) and then try to get celebrities to post pictures with the plushies on social media.

They don’t have much success. It’s hard to get people to love a mushroom, even in the form of adorable plushies, and no celebrity takes up their cause. In fact, a popular singer who Kay has never heard of is caught on camera making disdainful remarks about the fuzzy oversized mushroom shoved in her face by an activist at one of her concerts. The obviously meme-able moment causes a minor ripple on social media before it’s forgotten.

Aaron H., a harried writer for a website fueled by “engagement,” stumbles across The Passing of the Dragon while randomly clicking around his browser. He has recently written an article about the minor commotion over the singer who cursed out the mushroom-hugging activist, so, his mind, like a neural network trained on cell phone photos of that moment at the concert, is primed to pick out the fungus. He notices the critically endangered mushroom in a corner of the painting.

“This is a picture of a poem by a famous poet?”

He’s on deadline. He has no time for research. He needs to write five hundred words and get them posted within the next thirty minutes to be paid fifteen dollars. He starts typing. “Famous Poet Supports Indigenous Claim to Valley.”

The article is so preposterous in its claim—the writer seems to have neither read the poem nor realized that Chilton died in the last century—that it goes viral. It fits perfectly into certain mass narratives that are always on the prowl for more confirmation. Some point out the absurdity of dragging a dead poet whose favorite subject consisted of the high-culture experiences made possible by being the heir to not one, not two, but three of the oldest family fortunes on Wall Street into a contemporary controversy over decolonization, as though Chilton could possibly have anything relevant to say on the topic. Others note that this particular article, high in opinion but low in facts, represents everything wrong with the “progressives,” ignorant of everything except their own righteousness.

In the incomprehensible logic of the internet, Chilton is soon forgotten but the mushroom becomes the latest social media sensation. Celebrities rush to take a stand, and the plushies now sell for hundreds of dollars online.

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