'Information is the future, history is the past. Where data storage is scarce and social media reigns supreme, history is simply deleted. An archivist risks everything to save humanity's greatest works, hiding them inside the memory of the surrogate robot carrying his unborn child. But when he is discovered, the cost of preserving the past may be his family's future.'
We live in a time where we have more access to information than at any other point in human history, though we are seeing restrictions and rollbacks on our rights to access certain things in many places now. There's simply more entertainment, history, and academic texts than a single person could experience in their entire lifetime if that was all they did. But what happens when that ever expanding information reaches a breaking point, when our ability to store and record that can't keep up with its production? This is one of the key questions of System Preference a graphic novel that creates an interesting, and often morally grey future.
We're introduced to this world through Yves Mathon, a young man with a beautiful wife, a child on the way, and a well paying job. However, he's recently gone though the loss of his father, and he's come to hate his work. Yves is an archivist, whose job it is to go through huge data stores, select historical works, and evaluate if they need to be deleted to make more storage space. Whilst this doesn't sound bad on the surface, it means he has to destroy great works of fiction, pieces of art that have inspired and shaped the world to make space for people's fashion photos, and their vlogs about their daily lives. Yves feels like he's destroying the vital pieces of our past so that the inane, almost pointless slop of the modern day can be saved.
Going against regulations, Yves has been stealing copies of these works and sneaking them out of work, uploading them into Mikki, the family robot who also happens to be carrying his unborn daughter; a piece of tech that allows his wife to forgo being pregnant. However, this decision is putting his family at risk, as those who've done similar in the past have simply vanished. So when the powers that be discover what Yves is doing he and his family must go on the run; a choice that leads to shocking consequences for them.
In a lot of ways System Preference feels like a story of two halves, two narratives that could have easily carried their own books, but who work wonderfully here to produce a finished piece that manages to explore some interesting themes.
The first half of the book follows Yves as he puts everything on the line to save pieces of the past, and shows us how sterile the world has become in a lot of ways. Whilst this world isn't as cold and controlled as some dystopian tech futures we've seen in fiction it has a lack of any real hope. We see that the entertainment being produced in this time is soulless, made to order where hairstyles, faces, and actions can be changed in post at the direction of the studios. It's made for no one and everyone at the same time, with no vision behind it, no aim other than to be made. At the same time we see that what would still be considered art, pieces in galleries and shows, are being made simply for money, with the artists themselves admitting they know their work won't last, won't make an impact or inspire. It feels like people are going through the motions of creativity without any real passion or reason to do so.
In this way it feels like System Preference is a piece that's in part taking aim at AI 'art', even if that was perhaps not the intention of Ugo Bienvenu. We live in a time where resources are being used and destroyed so that people who have never wanted to create art, who have never cared to explore learning to do so, to develop those skills can type some commands into a machine and have it spit out flat, fake, soulless 'art' for them. Whether it be still images or videos, this fake art takes from what's come before, what's been created by others who had that passion, who were trying to make something special, and has been recycled into something no one wants. And the internet is being swamped with it, real human art is being pushed aside for this slop, and it's leading to a future like the one Bienvenu has created here.
This half of the book has the most drama, the looming threat that Yves is going to have people come for him, to steal him away in the middle of the night. There's an underlying sense of dread to these scenes, and you can't help but see this future as a sanitised hell, one where any non-conformity, any act of love is seen as other and wrong. And when that hammer does drop the book almost becomes a thriller, with Yves and his family having to vanish, running from pursuers, staying off the grid in order to survive.
However, at the halfway point disaster strikes, and the entire tone of the novel changes. Due to tragedy, Mikki and the baby he's carrying, Isi, are the only survivors, forced to run into the forest to survive. Finding an old home off the grid and long forgotten, Mikki begins the task of raising young Isi, being the parents she's lost.
Things slow down in this half of the book, and whilst we know that the two of them are still in danger that threat moves into the background as we focus on the relationship between this girl and her robot guardian. Mikki does his best to raise Isi, teaching her how to survive in the world, how to cook, hunt for food, care for her body, and to love the wonders of nature. He also shares with her her fathers love of the art that he stole away from deletion, sharing films with Isi, reciting poetry and stories to her. It's a beautiful section, one that continues the theme of saving our history so that it can be imparted to future generations, but also examining if machines, robots may some day be human enough to be able to care for us.
The book doesn't outright say that Mikki loves Isi, and based on earlier conversations in the book it seems like Mikki goes out of his way to tell the reader that he's incapable of love, but if that's true it's hard to lay all of his actions and choices squarely on programming. The bond that forms between this machine and girl feels like love, it feels parental, and you come to care for the two of them greatly.
System Preference is a fairly layered and complex narrative, but it's balanced out with some simple, elegant artwork. Bienvenu keeps things straightforward, with fairly flat, large blocks of colour with minimal use of colours for shading or layering. People and environments are largely big blocks of single colours, and it creates a sense of simplicity, of functionality without passion that fits the tone of the world that Bienvenu has made. This changes in the second half of the book, when we enter the countryside. Here, the trees have multiple shades of green in them, rocks are more than one simple colour, and animals have life to them. Mikki and Isi are still coloured simply, showing how out of place they are, how they've brought some of that sterility of the human world with them. It's a subtle detail, but once you notice it it becomes very obvious, and I think it further adds to Bienvenu's theme of how humanity has lost something of itself.
System Preference is a fantastic read, one that has a lot more to say then you first think, and is a book that even though you can ready pretty quickly in a single sitting, it invites you to go back and read it again, to dive deeper into it and examine what it's trying to say.
System Preference is available now from Titan Comics.
