“Upside Down Frown”

Submitted by LT_Sargent on Sat, 04/09/2022 - 14:29
Title“Upside Down Frown”
Year for Search2022
AuthorsThompson, Jarred
Secondary TitleFiyah Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction
Volume / Editionno. 22
Pagination82-98, with a note on the author on 99
Date PublishedSpring 2022
KeywordsMale author, Queer author, South African author
Annotation

The story is set in a future that has overcome the climate crisis  where, under the Department of Happiness, everyone is being given a “social cohesion electroceutical,” a cranial implant that monitors the neural network and alters it to avoid distress before it occurs. Also, each decade the Department provides every citizen with a “life report” with details of how they should act “to reach and maintain their happiness” (84). The protagonist works in the Museum of Affect that depicts the past at a time that the Department has decided to eliminate it because the past contains “too much emotional baggage” (87). She puts on a final exhibit on the History of Happiness that presents happiness as based on exclusion, the creation of an Other.

Author Note

Queer, male South African author
Full Text

2022 Thompson, Jarred. “Upside Down Frown.” Fiyah Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, no. 22 (Spring 2022): 82-98, with a note on the author on 99.

The story is set in a future that has overcome the climate crisis  where, under the Department of Happiness, everyone is being given a “social cohesion electroceutical,” a cranial implant that monitors the neural network and alters it to avoid distress before it occurs. Also, each decade the Department provides every citizen with a “life report” with details of how they should act “to reach and maintain their happiness” (84). The protagonist works in the Museum of Affect that depicts the past at a time that the Department has decided to eliminate it because the past contains “too much emotional baggage” (87). She puts on a final exhibit on the History of Happiness that presents happiness as based on exclusion, the creation of an Other. Queer, male South African author.