Paul Taylor

Grid Paul Taylor

Grid is a sequel to a story and an essay by Tolkien: "Leaf by Niggle" and "On Fairy-Stories." It fuses a sci-fi story about a bio-engineered road that takes over the world with a lit-crit essay discussing ideas about language and perception from Tolkien, Thoreau, Kirk and Spock. Both essay and story focus on the nature of a possible future in which human beings are connected to the world in a way that would be explained today as technological but in such a way that it would be impossible to determine whether the world controls us or we control it. Two paths lead to that future: one dark in which the mechanism of control is magic, a quest for power and domination; and one light in which the mechanism of control is enchanted, equally present within us and it. Which evolutionary path will we take? In the survival of the fittest, we are what we read. Grid is a connect-the-dots game based on a deleted blog by an anonymous author debated by a defunct message board re-created by the reader.