The short story “Creative Surgery” (“Chirurgia creativa”) by Clelia Farris was published for the first time in 2015. It was translated into English by Jennifer Delare.
Kieser follows a job announcement by Vi, who practices Creative Surgery, and manages to become her assistant. Vi’s face is marked by the lack of sleep and other imperfections but that’s nothing compared to the results of some of her works because the repulsive is the new charming.
“Creative surgery” is a short story that in a limited number of pages brings together elements that at least apparently are uneven building a story surprising and thought-provoking. At the base there’s the idea of Creative Surgery, a practice that takes advantage of very advanced biotechnologies but is practiced as if the jobs were carried out in a place that mixes a car workshop and a dressmaker’s shop.
The possibility of recombining parts of different animals also adding non-organic parts with the most grotesque effects is used by Clelia Farris to develop first of all the aesthetic theme. The projection into the future of trends existing today in a society in which aesthetics can be an unhealthy obsession shows a mass composed of people who adopted physical modifications that make it difficult to distinguish an individuality.
In such a society, standing out from the crowd is the highest possible act of rebellion. Vi shows signs of imperfections and of her long hours of work on her face, while Kieser wants only to be himself and doesn’t want to look like anybody. The physical aspect, however, represents only the person’s surface, it’s the psychic side that represents the deepest part where there can be real problems, not immediately visible but much more difficult to correct.
In that – not too far – future, animals become a sort of relief to show something original. In the past there have been unhealthy fashions based on mutilations of dogs, in that future those abuses become a form of grotesque art in which cutting and stitching allows to obtain strange hybrids. For this reason, Creative Surgery practitioners are far closer to Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Moreau than to a veterinarian.
Studying the secrets of animals is simple only for students from wealthy families because there are a lot of people who want to pursue that kind of career. Students who can’t afford to pay for participation in classes can purchase their recordings. In general, they can trust in Fortune, elevated to a deity because over time even religion has become a parody.
The simple plot of “Creative Surgery” hides its contents’ complexity passing through surreal moments and strong images impossible to forget and a must-read. This short story is available as part of the anthology “Future Fiction: New Dimensions in International Science Fiction”.
