Would mental health issues exist in Utopia?

Chana Porter’s new sci-fi novel The Seep explores who is welcome in Utopia — and who gets left behind

Trina Goldberg-Oneka is fifty-years-old when The Seep arrives. She throws a dinner party with her soon-to-be wife, Deeba, as the world braces themselves for The End. The guests carried on with their evening, unaware that The Seep had already entered their water supply. It enveloped them all, filling them with the overwhelming understanding that everything was going to be OK.

This gentle alien invasion was welcomed by Trina and Deeba, alongside everyone else who was high on The Seep. They felt joy, love, peace. Those left behind lounged in panic, despair, anger.

In this opening chapter, Chana introduces the consistent theme of her book; the complexity of human condition. We are asked to think, at the opening of Chapter 2 “…but were humans still humans without their worries?”.

Are they? What would life look like without worry? Would it be paradise — or would we feel incomplete without our history, our story, our identity that shapes who we are? Early on, Trina reflects on the failure of the Utopian experiment: “The Seep did love us, it wanted to create a perfect world… and this destroyed life as we know it.” As we accompany Trina…