消滅世界（2015）／村田沙耶香 "Vanishing World" (2015) by Sayaka Murata

George Orwell writes in "1984" that the Party wants to abolish the orgasm, because without the individual's existential desire, people become easier to control. In Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go", when a farmed individual becomes tools and objects of "higher" beings, one's notion of sex and reproduction becomes meaningless. Sayaka Murata performs a different thought experiment in "Vanishing World". The book describes a world in progress, where humanity has technologically reached a point where artificial insemination is the norm and culturally sex between married couples is considered incest. But society hasn't completely removed the innate desire and mechanism for sex, so suddenly "love" and "reproduction" are delineated and it's fashionable for married couples to look for lovers outside. Sex is just viewed as being old-fashioned like burial on ground. The commentary at the end of the Japanese edition calls this "a utopia for women and dystopia for men" based on Freudian psychology because power, desire and existence no longer stems from the phallus. In the last part of the book, the story takes place in a futuristic experimental city where even men and old people can carry an artificial womb to bear children. The children born are immediately taken from their parents and are raised collectively in a centre. Every adult is their "mother" and every "child" dresses, speaks, smiles and behaves almost identically without identity, and when people die, their ashes got poured on the same communal pile. Sexual desire is treated like excretion and dedicated toilet-like facilities are provided for "cleaning" purposes. The book concludes with an explosive "He loved Big Brother" ending that triggers a lot of Western readers but asks an important question - if sex becomes an obsolete activity, why are certain things immoral? This book provides much room for thought, but while the premise is very interesting, Murata has not fulfilled its full potential, leaving many areas yet to be explored (e.g. evolution of gender dynamics). It does has its quirky charm and is best enjoyed as a casual read. It is particularly suitable for people who like asking uncomfortable questions.