Old Frisco—San Francisco—in the year 2115 after the War of the Annihilation, what’s left of it, sits high on Nob Hill. The population is maybe five thousand. There’s nothing left of electronic connectivity, culture, history, technology, art. The environment is toxic. There’s nothing to eat but synthetic food. There’s no entertainment. Tony Kruger wants to be an artist. Lisa Ivanova, a neuroanthropologist, one of the city’s social engineers studies Kruger to determine whether or not his role is necessary to the new community. The Quest of the Artist is a novella on dystopia and utopia, what it means to be human, the nature of love, and a reflection on the traditional romantic dichotomies: artist/bourgeois, art/life, mind/body, individual/society—after the apocalypse, with the quarter-billion humans in the world left in imminent danger of extinction. Do they need art? A homage to the 1903 semi-autobiographical novella Tonio Kröger about a writer by Thomas Mann, which addressed the theme of the separation of the world of art from that of everyday life, as well as where the artist stands between the two. The Quest of the Artist is speculative fiction at its best—both affirming and cautionary.
Description:
Old Frisco—San Francisco—in the year 2115 after the War of the Annihilation, what’s left of it, sits high on Nob Hill. The population is maybe five thousand. There’s nothing left of electronic connectivity, culture, history, technology, art. The environment is toxic. There’s nothing to eat but synthetic food. There’s no entertainment.
Tony Kruger wants to be an artist.
Lisa Ivanova, a neuroanthropologist, one of the city’s social engineers studies Kruger to determine whether or not his role is necessary to the new community.
The Quest of the Artist is a novella on dystopia and utopia, what it means to be human, the nature of love, and a reflection on the traditional romantic dichotomies: artist/bourgeois, art/life, mind/body, individual/society—after the apocalypse, with the quarter-billion humans in the world left in imminent danger of extinction. Do they need art?
A homage to the 1903 semi-autobiographical novella Tonio Kröger about a writer by Thomas Mann, which addressed the theme of the separation of the world of art from that of everyday life, as well as where the artist stands between the two. The Quest of the Artist is speculative fiction at its best—both affirming and cautionary.