253

So I'm sure everybody remembers when online multi-player networks first appeared on modern video game consoles, right?

You do? Oh good, because I have no idea. I was too busy writing angsty poems and doing theatre, two markets that have become way more successful and respected than gaming in the, uh....national and international.......er.....

M-moving on.

The introduction of multi-player gaming networks has completely revolutionized the gaming industry by pushing gaming into the realm of globalization. Different people from different cultures---America, Canada, Denmark, China, India, North Dakota---are now throwing themselves into the same playing space, where they are forced they are forced to interact, for better or worse, with people they will probably never talk to again. Gamers who have observed everyone in this “together alone” atmosphere have probably been prompted to ask themselves: who are we, as people? It is this question that author Geoff Ryman attempts to address in his 1998 novel 253. The novel is not about multi-player gaming, but any gamer who's played more than fifty hours of XboxLive or WoW will more-than-likely have lived the concept of 253.

253 began in 1996 as a web-page called “Tube Theatre”. The story is about 253 people traveling on a London underground train from Embankment Station to Elephant-&-Castle Station. Each passenger is introduced with a separate section of 253 words. These little blurbs give general details about the passengers outside appearance, background information, and inner thoughts. The “Tube Theatre” web-page(sadly no longer active) used hypertext to link one character to another character; the print version substitutes that hypertext for coach maps depicting where each passenger is sitting in each car.

253 won the Philip K. Dick award in 1998 and was praised by its publisher as “the future of fiction”. It has since fallen out of mainstream popularity, most likely because the novel is more proof-of-concept than a real story. The entire action takes place in 7 minutes 30 seconds, has no discernible plot, and no chronological order. The characters are motionless in time, never moving forward on any level, and don't really stand out. The average hungry reader will find the story very hard to get into, a fact the Ryman himself acknowledges in the novel's first five pages.

Ryman's little world is populated with a variety-act of characters. Notables include: a financial adviser re-imagining the end to An American Werewolf in Britain, a thirty-four year old woman with Down's Syndrome who is going to visit her mother's grave, an up-and-coming rapper who gets off the train one stop early to masturbate, and a character that has no idea who or what he/she is. The train is also populated with namesakes: there's a Margaret Thatcher who isn't the real Margaret Thatcher, a Billie Holiday who isn't the real Billie Holiday, a Geoff Ryman who isn't the real Geoff Ryman, and an Anne Frank who the narrator claims is actually the real Anne Frank.

The most enduring aspect of 253 is the narrator, a 254^th character who on-purposely undermines his own credibility. In some of the passenger sections the narrator includes “helpful and informative footnotes”, which he uses to joyfully poke fun at himself. He also throws in fake advertisements with mocking titles like “The 253 Guide to Homely English” and “The 253 Personal Ads: What You Really Need Other People For!” All this, plus the fact that none of the passengers ever truly speak for themselves, forces the reader to question the narrators reliability and motives. It is the concept of “the ambivalent narrator” that Ryman is toying with in 253, and he takes great pains to make his audience notice. He wants us to ask: who is this person? Am I like this when I'm on the bus, or in a waiting room? The profundity of these questions is strengthened by the fact that most of the novel's characters may very well be headed towards their ultimate end.

Though 253 is no longer in print, you can find a fair number of copies on Amazon or at local libraries. Geoff Ryman is still an active SF/fantasy writer and in December 2012 received the Canadian Sunburst Award for his short story collection Paradise Tales. If you're interested in his work, hop on over to smallbeerpress.com where you'll find an assortment of novels available for purchase.