Book Review: These Memories Do Not Belong to Us, by Yiming Ma
Memory is a subject that has long been of interest to science fiction writers, but naturally it is becoming much more topical with artificial memory extensions available via data files (notes and recordings) and the Internet. We’re not at the stage yet where actual memories can be preserved, transmitted, or uploaded, but those processes do seem likely to arise eventually. However, at that point, all sorts of moral and societal questions arise, such as, who gets control over those memories? In much of North America and Europe, the answer would likely be a combination of corporations and government. In Yiming Ma’s 2025 novel, These Memories Do Not Belong to Us, the Party that rules Qin (and apparently most of the world) decides what memories are appropriate for upload to the network of everyone’s Mindbanks, and what memories should be deleted, with their holders destined for punitive re-education; however, quite a few people hold onto memories that they suspect may be borderline, and some choose defiance, however ephemeral. These Memories Do Not Belong to Us is structured as a set of short stories, framed with interstitial messages from one such rebel, who found a trove of unauthorized memories upon his mother’s death, experienced them, and decided to share them with the world despite the punishment he’s sure he’ll face. They’re not all his mother’s memories, not even most of them, but rather memories she somehow gathered from other sources throughout history, from what seems to be the past or present, to a near-future war, to shortly after the war, to a far future.
