What If...

Brown Girl in the Ring

2008-03-30T21:52:00.005-03:00

FYI: Brown Girl in the Ring is a Jamaican children's ring game said to be a "precursor to courtship," where the girl goes in the middle, does her best dance move, then points to a partner.

I don't know if it's just the fact that I can into novels more or what, but this and The Chrysalids were the two favourite things we read this term. I read this book over the Xmas holiday and absolutely loved it. It was much stranger to me than The Chrysalids, but I loved it. I loved the strong female characters and the power they held, from Ti-Jeanne to her Mami and the fact that Ti-Jeanne got to have the ultimate revenge against Rudy. The twist of Rudy being her grandfather blew me away, and the fact that Crazy Betty turned out to be her mother!?!? I also liked how the gang of ruffians metamorphosed throughout the story.

This story was amazing - the character twists, voodoo-future-organ stealin'-evil-duppy madness of it all made it a great read. It didn't feel science-fiction-y to me, I must say, other than it was set in the future somewhat.

Also on the random side:
Here's the "Brown Girl in the Ring" song by Boney M in 1978...

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Invaders

2008-03-28T20:27:00.004-03:00

I had too much on my mind when I sat down to read this one. I got the whole bit about three stories in one, invasion back in the Inca times, and more modern times (and on an NFL field no less) but it didn't really do much for me. I'll leave you with this John Kessel Site and this all important How To Prepare for an Alien Invasion (maybe THAT's what has happened at the Legislature...that would explain a lot.) Sorry folks, but that's about all for this one.

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Aunt Parnetta's Electric Blisters

2008-03-26T22:52:00.002-03:00

Favourite lines:
"Even that ferge's whate" p. 818

"Hawly gizard" p. 817

Interesting they made the "whate" ferge a "hog" to Parnetta, that white pig in her kitchen was the symbol for the white man I'm guessing and she couldn't be living under the same roof as that.

We See Things Differently

2008-03-26T17:37:00.002-03:00

This one didn't do too much for me, really. Like several of the other stories we've read this term, I don't get the "Sci-Fi" aspect of it, just that it might be in the future or some other sort of alternate reality where the US "gets what it deserves" as many would say. I thought it was kind of interesting how the author set the story up with Sayyid (aka religious zealot dude) up as a reporter from his part of the world coming to America, where right now, it is the opposite, so many reporters from the West are going "over there" to report on what is happening. I think maybe I'm just having a hard time with these last three stories because my mind is in an alternate reality right now, one I'd rather not be contemplating.

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Kirinyaga

2008-03-24T19:49:00.003-03:00

I always struggle with the decision of whether or not I should read any type of story review before I read these stories. I'm glad I did this time, though, as the reviewer explained what he thought about the habitat, which left me free to just read the story without getting hung up on the details of what the habitat actually was. This is what reviewer Steven Silver has to say about Resnick's Kirinyaga habitat:

One aspect of the habitat which Resnick never explained was what, exactly, it was. Kirinyaga (and similar habitats) seem to have been terraformed asteroids, although at other times they almost seemed like the interior of a large space station. In point of fact, the exact physicality of the habitat doesn't matter. It, along with the zebras, lions and antelopes which populate it are simply the background of the fables of modern culture Resnick is portraying. One thing the habitat definitely is, is a European construction. The entire time Koriba is teaching his people the ways of the Kikuyu and to shun the European, they are living on an European artifact. Koriba is relying on his Oxbridge education and using an European computer. When these contradictions are pointed out to Koriba, he replies that the Kikuyu as a whole must be shielded. Koriba, therefore, comes across as something of an hypocrite. He has been contaminated by the Europeans, so he must make sure the other Kikuyu are not contaminated, whether or not they see their interaction in those terms.

This was an extreme story about a people who wanted to retain their own culture/way of life in, what appears to be, a reconstruction of the place from where they originated. It's interesting that they seem to be controlled by the Maintenance yet fiercely independent in preserving their own culture. It seems like Koriba was going too far, with the whole infanticide issue but if their goal was to totally maintain the Kirinyaga way of life, it seemed like it was something that had to have been done, no matter how gruesome the rest of the world made it. I don't know if the Maintenance people were the ones who originally invaded their orginial Kirinyaga and Euro-ized it then felt guilty and created the new pseudo-Kirinyaga to compensate or what. It was hard to decipher Kirinyaga's origins (the new Kirinyaga).

I think this story really spoke to the desperation of people attempting to keep their culture when it is being lost. I enjoyed this one as well.

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America

2008-03-24T10:37:00.004-03:00

Hardened Anamari had an opinion about all of the Norteamericanos, until Sam showed up, actually wanting to help her and her people. It actually irritated her that he wanted to help after so many didn't care about them. Quite an interesting twist that he ended up giving her the "gift" that would not only save, but empower her people. I really liked how this story turned out with the native peoples becoming the Americans and the colonisers the Europeans (here is some info on the Quetzalcoatl, or feathered serpent).

I'm guessing this one falls into more of the "alternate reality" or "alternate histories" categories because I didn't notice many other sci-fi elements in this story. So far, it's a really great week; I've enjoyed both stories.

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Here's a little background info on the author...

The New Atlantis

2008-03-24T08:33:00.005-03:00

In an almost complete subversion of everything the world is today, an illegally married couple, Belle and Simon, try to preserve some of what life was before things changed. I immediately took to Belle and Simon, the epitomic "opposites attract" couple, she, a left-brained artist, and he a right-brained mathematician, two illegally married rebels. It was kind of sad that Simon got taken to the "Federal Hospital" near the end, only having twelve days with Belle and with his friends as they tried to come up with a way to harness sun energy. Their discovery was hope for them in their dark world, though likely futile considering what they were up against. I read the ending as Belle going off to die, with nothing to live for after Simon had been taken again. It felt like it was the only thing she was able to make a choice about and therefore, decided to make it.

I don't remember the "Earth" issues being as prevalent back in the 70s when this story was written, though I know they existed and people were working on them and talking about them, but it just wasn't as "in your face" as it is today. People weren't as aware of the damage to the Earth and weren't as involved in trying to preserve it. I'm guessing Le Guin must've had a particular interest in this area to be able to write a reality like this in the 70s, to be able to imagine that which, unfortunately, is quite a bit closer to reality now in our day and age. You can only rape the Earth for so long.

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Speech Sounds

2008-03-16T19:55:00.008-03:00

In this video, Octavia Butler talks about her writing. Did you know a bad movie was the impetus for her to begin writing sf???

Here is a fan site with quite a bit of information, including video and audio clips about Octavia.

Octavia Butler: The outsider who changed science fiction. By Tyler Cowen

Interesting concept for a story, a world where nobody speaks. There's no overt dialogue between characters, just the thoughts of Rye, the main character. The characters communicate gesturally, and not in a sign language type way, either. There's meaning in their crude gestures but no apparent syntax, as is the case with sign language. Everything is very visual, this world would be a nightmare for someone who was visually impaired. From the first page, one wonders why nobody speaks - have they lost the physical ability, have they forgotten how, lost their language, became so violent that they regressed to a caveman-like existence?

The caveman like scenario seems to fit with the thugs on the bus starting the fight, but isn't the case with Rye and her caring for the people coming off the bus. There seems to be a weird barbarism among the more "impaired" as the author describes it and those "less-impaired" seem to be those who have somewhat of a level head left on their shoulders. Then we learn of the illness, that seems to attack Broca and/or Wernicke's area and go on from there, robbing everyone of their ability to speak, understand language, or the written word. It seems like a very dark, bleak, violent world where people have degenerated and the best option most days seems like suicide, which Rye herself has contemplated numerous times.

We run the gamut of emotions as we learn through symbols, more about Rye. We feel grief as she tells her new-found protector Obsidian how her children have died, through Rye we feel her intense anger and jealousy when she discovers Obsidian has some language skill left, we are happy for her when she seems to find some sort of connection with Obsidian, then the shock and horror when Obisidian is murdered so soon after she has found him. All seems so hopeless and dark in this speechless world until she decides to go back and bury Obsidian, then hope and speech return to Valerie Rye and she has a new purpose in life.

This was definitely one of my favourite stories from this course. Suprisingly, I really liked some of the hard sf from last week, but I can say that I definitely like the soft sf much more, the focus being more "human" with some sf elements and less about showing how much scientific jargon one can shell out. I think the hard sf is the way to go for a select group of folks who are hard-core scientific folks but I think the soft is a lot more accessible to a wider range of readers.

Tauf Aleph

2008-03-16T18:23:00.005-03:00

A short review of the story

This web site asks some questions about the story:

1. What is your first impression of Og? How does this impression change? Is Og a person in any sense of the word?

My first impression of Og is that it is a rusted, old, forgotten machine, gathering dust in a corner. It's kind of sad, really. It seems that back in the day, it was quite a useful machine. This changes as the people renew Og, and it goes to the library, reads up on all of the Jewish information (oy, to have THAT capability!) and again as it is so protective of the Cnidori when it gets to Tau Ceti IV. This machine seems quite human, always seeming to "do the right thing." It seems to genuinely care about doing the best for Zohar and the Cnidori. I think Og is person-like, but almost too "perfect" - almost too good to be true. It was an interesting character, we actually got to know a little bit about it, which isn't usually the case in many of the sf stories (or short stories in general most times). I kind of liked Og/ O/G5/842 / Golem. I sensed it had a bit of an identity issue, though, because it just accepted whatever new name it was labeled with immediately.

2. What is your first impression of the Cnidori? How does it change? Are the Cnidori persons?

My first impression of the Cnidori was that they were kind of a salamanderish version of the Jawas or Ewoks from Star Wars. Cute, but needing guidance/help/a leader. I didn't really feel that my impression of them changed too much because they were always wanting more, from Zohar, then Og after Zohar died. A needy litle bunch they were. Regarding the whole "persons" debate, I think that, depending on how you want to define "person," you could consider any one/thing a "person" within the realm of its race or group. If you're talking about purely homo-sapienism, then no, the Cnidori aren't "persons" - although they do have human like qualities.

3. If you call the Cnidori people, do you have to change your definition of personhood?

They kind of became a "people" in the group sense, they had common beliefs, etc but I don't think that really changes my definition of personhood. My last name isn't Webster so I'm not really too sticky about definitions; I'm pretty open with my definition, based on its application and the surrounding context.

4. Why is Zohar so resistant to Og's suggestions that the Cnidori be made Jews?

I think it's because Zohar thinks it might be blasphemy to make the Cnidori Jews and also, he doesn't want to believe that he really is the last Jew.

5. Why does Zohar declare that "God doesn't need any more Jews"? (435)

Maybe he feels that enough Jews have suffered and died in the name of "god" - this is a tough question to tackle, to be inside the mind of a character created by the mind of another.

6. What does Og mean when he deduces that Zohar is "doing battle with the common human evil in his own spirit" ? (436)

I think perhaps Og is referring to the internal war that Zohar is having with himself over wanting to have these Cnidori to become Jews so that he is not the last one left and so that his culture and religion will not die with him but at the same time wondering if he should subject more people to the plight of the Jews of the past and whether the whole thing is blasphemy.

7. Og cleans, nurses, and acts as a go-between for ths stiff-necked father and his children. What happens to the story if you interpret Og as a woman?

Who cares??? All I know is that if Og was available for hire, I'd grab he/she/it in a nanosecond. Think of what I could accomplish with that around the house.

8. Comment on the last sentence of the story: "Only the descendents of the original inhabitants, once called Cnidori, jealously guard for themselves the privilege of the name b'nei Zohar and they are considered by the others to be snobbish, clannish, and stiff-necked" (444).

I think it refers to the fact that the original inhabitants' descendents were very much like their deceased "father" Zohar, who was similar to that description. Those beyond that generation only knew him second-hand so couldn't have the right to called b'nei Zohar.

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This was kind of a bizarre little story, but I liked it. I just wonder what Jewish people would think of it?

For the Sake of Grace

2008-03-16T10:29:00.006-03:00

I could certainly see why this story is considered "soft" sf, perhaps that's why reading it, I considered it one of the most accessible to me, as someone with little previous sf experience. The way I read it, the author made everything seem very "middle east" from the names (ban instead of bin, for example, but close enough) to the treatment and view of women (mother 'disobeying' her male child, discouraging "foolish young girls from creating difficulties for their households" 219, the "Women's Discipline Unit," etc...). This made it all very easy to visualize, even though we are on another planet at a different time.

There are sf elements (space travel, farming on Earth for another planet, their "com" systems, e.g.), but they are not the focus in this story and the whole Poetry, scribes, costumes, speaking in couplets, observation of ritual business made it almost seem like a really old story, not necessarily futuristic. The author focused more on familial relations, the dynamics between husband & wife, father & daughter, father & sons, brother & sister, aunt & niece. She also obviously focused on the treatment of women throughout and especially with the ending of Jacinth becoming a Seventh Level Poet, so far above her brothers and well above her father, who couldn't even get past the first part of the test. It really showed how ridiculous it is to lump all members of a gender into a certain category because they are one gender or the other and how silly it was that Khadilh was running the household and supreme master of all around him with probably the lowest IQ. I also thought Jacinth's request at the end was very fitting, with nary a word directed to her father but in the form of a command to ensure Grace understands what she has accomplished. That's about all that he deserved; after all, she could've been anyone in there speaking, he didn't know her from a hole in the ground.

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More from the Periodic Table

2008-03-06T07:58:00.013-04:00

Na: Shakespeare and Woolf compared to tortured pickles. Again, this one will be filed under the category of things I never thought I'd be reading about.

Mg: Was the Bush administration responsible for this?

Al: fnewiu9opsr dgnfae uio sorry...trouble seeing...from all this foil...

Si: The Dow Jones on her stomach? I can think of about a zillion other more interesting things to be displaying on that screen.

P: So that's how Shakespeare came up with all of his stuff!

S: This will mean nothing to any of you but I actually used to read a blog for many years, of a man called the "Acidman" - he inspired me to start my own first blog back in 2002. He worked in an acid plant for many years, thus the name, but his "electronic pen" could've been the one described in this story. He passed away in 2006; this story reminded me of him (if you changed the last word of the story to "Georgia"). His blog's description was: "Humorous Observations, Vitriolic Rants, and a Ceaseless Quest For Adoration From People Who Don't Know Me."

Cl: Okay, this periodic table is cracking me up - this just may be my favourite thing I've read out of the whole course: "Victorian Lingerie Tuesdays" - HILARIOUS. Those scum were just getting a little too big for themselves.

Ar: This is why boys shouldn't be allowed to hunt.

K: Hairy breasts? Nah, I'll keep searching for the fountain of youth.

Ca: Religious zealots wipe out the Earth. Nothing too far-fetched here, I'd say.

Sc: Stupid greedy man with gun, woman gets rich. I like it.

Ti: This says a lot about comic writers. It reminds me of my sons when they were about 9 & 7.

V: I think Vanadium needs to get off its keester and get motivated. Damn lazy element!

Cr: I think that car needed a little Prozac mixed in with the unleaded.

Mn: Sam's Bumwartian art must've been quite a site to behold!

Fe: Motorcycles + upheaval...this one didn't tickle my fancy quite so much.

Co: Merfolk teamsters...interesting...

Ni: Capitalists' worst nightmare

Cu: Poor Hubert...this'd be funnier even still if he'd been named Schmucker instead of Smucker.

Zn: Cliffhanger...no fair!

Ga: What is it with the whole AI/Catholicism thing???

Ge: A feminist element, learn somethingn new every day.

As: SF Necrophilia, again, this would be on my list of things I never dreamed I'd be doing/reading about in University.

Se: HG Wells getting ripped off and quitting writing, hmmm.

Br: hoping we are more than negligble specks...

Kr: Who'd have thunk Superman would be comittment-phobic?

Rb: Octopedialians know the meaning of life, lucky multi-legged buggers... The War Captain seems about as intelligent as the war-mongers we see around this day and age.

Sr: I guess I have atomic bomb testing to thank for Spiderman.

Y: It might be a bizarre story with many its in it.

Zr: Play baseball on it all you want, just don't try to slip it on my finger, thank you very much.

Nb: I would agree people like Niobe need a bitch slap every now and then but this was a little cruel, IMHO.

Mo: We could all use a friend like Chuck, even if he is 'weird.'

Tc: Monogamous female artificial entity who is super rich - you go girl!

Ru: This reminded me of the end of the Whileaway story we read by Joanna Russ.

Rh: Seems he got what he deserved...

Pa/Pd: "ripped through Earth's ecosphere like a slum kid who abruptly finds himself transported to a finishing school for pantywaists" Best. Simile. Ever. *snort*

Finished the rest of these with similar results and not enough time to blog them all. Some I liked, some made me literally *LOL* and some were just so-so.

PS - I never took a chem class but I was pretty sure some of those "UU's" were not real...so I checked and I was right. Silly Swanwick...

PPS - Funny how some of the stars of this week's show (Schrodinger & Curie, e.g.) showed up in Swanny's table...

PPPS - If he ever wins a Nobel prize, I'm taping the show.

Michael Amuses Me - 7 More

2008-03-05T21:47:00.003-04:00

I know I said I wasn't going to blog on these, but they are short and they do amuse me.

Be: Ritz Beryllium: Sounds like my house around midterms or exam time, except I don't work nearly as hard as the maids do for the dustbunnies to appear. I think I want Whileaway and Gem Planet to merge, people would like to come to a dusty house and appreciate the lady of the house with the big behind!

B: Maybe Republicans and Democrats will be friends in the next life! (or not)

C: Humans are dense. (also, Graeme fails me as he does not automatically know who Terry Bisson is.)

N: Bad high school memories of copying out notes similar to this one.

O: Wonder if I should purr now...

F: Those damn aliens - they wipe out tooth decay and keep a bonehead like Bush in office.

Ne: Again, amusing. I will never look at a neon sign in the same way. God is depressed and Satan is enjoying himself way too much in Las Vegas. Maybe they should hook up and even each other out a bit.

Lithium

2008-03-05T21:34:00.003-04:00

I am SO laughing my head off right now.

That is all.

PS - Read hydrogen & helium out loud to Graeme - got the whole hydrogen bit, but helium didn't mean much to me, so G proceeded to give me a lesson about Edgar Rice Burroughs, early pulp novels, etc...and told me to go Google Tarzan. I love living with an encyclopedia.

March 13 Readings

2008-03-05T16:41:00.011-04:00

"Exposures" by Gregory Benford
I'm going to do a play by play as I read this one again because, from the looks of the first page and a half, I think I'm going to need the breaks.

445-446: It's going to be a LOOOONG reading week if all the stories are like this. "Hard" sf may not be for me. Let's just say Graeme had to help me just a tad on those pages to even have half a clue what was going on. Man looking at pictures of a planet with an alphanumeric code name and red and blue jets. That's about all I can decipher from that blather. I wondered if there is something to his remembering the "plates from breakfast past" as he looked at the NGC 1097 plates.

Semi-redemption in the paragraph talking about his son and his son's smell on p. 446. I can so relate, there's something about snuffing your babies' heads. I am a snuffer, have been for all three of my babies. It surprises me to no end that I can relate to anything this man writes after the first two pages. It amuses me that he is telling his son how to go about reading something difficult (maybe the son is reading his daddy's writing???).
Okay, opening mind and preparing for a couple more pages...

Empathising with his attempt to figure out whatever it is he's trying to figure out with his plates and develop hypotheses; I am doing the same with the story thus far.

More science-y stuff - mysterious Sagittarius pictures amongst his NGC business...

"decidedly untheological daydreams" while doing altar duty - okay, I might be able to like this guy, that was a great line.

Reading about Open House at son's school: not surprised son wins first prize for the moon mock-up, hearing Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle" song in my head.

I'm sure there's some great and deep metaphor buried in amongst the father's inability to decipher his work problems and his son's reading problems but there would be about a zillion different ways I would rather read about it.

PS - even a bit of research did nothing to enlighten me or make me like this one any better.

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"Schrödinger’s Plague" by Greg Bear

Okay, this one was COOL...freaky and cool and even though I didn't understand the quantum physics of it, I could ENJOY it and it's a hell of a big WHAT IF. Even with the big open ending, I liked it.

Also - AMEN to Marty! - I agree with his "if the best mankind can do is come up with an infuriating theory like this...we should be willing to live or die by our belief in the theory." - blame physics for this whole damn mess in my opinion. Marty was driven made by people who had nothing better to do with their time than worry about cats and men in boxes. Stick a wireless monitor on them and then you'll know if they're dead or alive in the bloody box. I can't say I blame Marty, I felt like that reading the last story. This one made up for it. Maybe hard sf will not be as bad as I initially thought.

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"...The World, As We Know 'T," or "Hell on Earth" by Howard Waldrop
Bunch of guys from the Lunatick Society (I'm thinking/guessing some sort of Alternate history?...or maybe people really were that whacked in our known history now that I think of it...) fighting over some scientific stuff, French people get dissed on p. 488, Curwell appears to be a bigot, un-organized laboratory, poaching, experiments and Hitchcockian pigeons, poacher Bumppo and the Great Experiment, bang! (and they talk about the damage WE do to the ozone), New Chemistry appears to suck as bad as New Math and now the Earth is gone.

Confusing blog post for confusing story. Possibly a warning about too much science/experimentation but, like the first story, there's a lot of different ways I'd rather read about that.

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"Schwarzschild Radius" by Connie Willis

(and yes, that IS Schwarzchild!) I didn't dislike this story, I didn't love this story. The whole story seemed based on the phenomena of the Schwarzschild Radius and similar to Bear's characters in "Schrödinger’s Plague," the characters are (seemingly) living out the theory. This must be a popular theme in hard sf stories. I'm not sure if the old guy is living out the theory in his mind (some sort of psychosis, where he is stuck in his mind back in the war) or whether they are all really in the radius. After all, this IS SF we're talking.

I'm just wondering why the old guy was hesitant to share the info with Travers.

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"Half-Life" by Paul Preuss

Lots of metaphor in the first couple paragraphs, and hey, if you're losing your soul, let's throw in a simile about butterflies to make it sound nicer.

Okay, I've done a bit of research, and a lot of this story seems like non-fiction. I'm not really sure exactly where the sf comes in, the "hard" science is there, in the story of Curie's discovery, I guess I'm just a little perplexed as to the sf-ish-ness?

I think I liked this one because it seemed almost like a biography of Curie & her death experience (which may be the sf part but I don't know, it's been a confusing week for me).
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Michael Swanwick's
Periodic Table of Science Fiction

As much as I always strive to do the best I can do with my school work, I shan't be blogging on each of the 118 stories of the Periodic Table. I will dutifully read them and may do a general blog post on them overall but that's about all I can do for this week!

(Learning About) Machine Sex

2008-02-23T12:22:00.004-04:00

Poor, jaded, Angel, she was figuratively and literally screwed. A woman with more brains than the men in her industry and she still was "beneath" them. I think her revenge was designing a program so unbelievably complex and that would be so utterly addictive to the men she was selling it to they could never hope to do anything to it and it would drive them to insanity because she took off. Nice revenge.

Angel really seems to fit into the typical protagonist cyberpunk role - female hacker fighting against the old boys club corporation that bought and made money off of her work. The whole conflict with megacorporations plot is also clearly evident in this story. Interestingly, she chooses to take off to quiet, small-town Rocky Mountain House, which appears to be atypical in terms of settings for cyberpunk.

I don't know a lot currently about cyberpunk but it's definitely a subgenre I think I could enjoy if I read more of it based on what I've read so far. I can also look back at different movies, things I've seen before that would definitely fall into this category. From this list of cyberpunk movies, I notice I've seen a fair number, including: Bladerunner, Johnny Mnemonic, Terminator, Total Recall, The Matrix, The Fifth Element, Gattaca etc - I enjoy all of these types of movies, so I think I would most likely enjoy reading these types of stories as well. I also wonder why movies like "Hackers" and "The Net" weren't included as they seem to fit the prototype as well (also enjoyed both of these).

Overall, this site seems to have a good chunk of info about the sub-genre.

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Rat

2008-02-23T11:57:00.003-04:00

Wow. Quite a freaky story. Interesting that the author chose a rat, one of the most vile and loathesome animals to humans to control so many humans, including the strung-out Fed addicted to the dope. I think it's how most people see human drug dealers anyway, so it was a good choice of animal to use for the part. I read on Wikipedia that the protagonists in cyberpunk are usually hacker-types who fight against injustice. I didn't see that in the rat, his character, or what he was doing. Then again, it WAS Wikipedia so not a totally comprehensive source by any means.

Brians mentions the siginificance of the rat eating a page out of Walt Whitman's book Leaves of Grass, which Brians relates is an "epic celebration of American life." I think the world the author painted for the reader is the antithesis of any type of glorified American life. Brians also asks what a "Bahamian laundry loop" is and I'm guessing it's a money-laundering ring as that is where rat puts the change from his costly cab ride.

I'm thinking this story is a warning about greed, the dangers of drugs and how they will corrupt America to the point where it is normal to talk to rats, pick them up in cabs, rent parts of your buildings out to them and so on. Charming.

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The Gernsback Continuum

2008-02-23T10:54:00.005-04:00

I'll start by sharing what Paul Brians had to say about "The Gernsback Continuum":

William Gibson: "The Gernsback Continuum" p. 457

Gibson originated cyberpunk in Neuromancer, but he cannot be pigeonholed in any one genre. However, this story displays one fairly constant aspect of his style: a dense allusiveness which demands a good deal of general knowledge, particularly of popular culture. Hugo Gernsback was the founder of the first science fiction magazines and in some ways the inventor of the modern concept of SF. The annual award for the year's best writing is called the "Hugo" in his honor. His main era of activity was the 20s and 30s, and this story is an affectionate look at the "alternate future" described in the pages of and depicted on the covers of his magazines. A common concept in SF is the notion of parallel worlds. For various reasons it is argued that an infinite number of variations on our universe may exist side by side, so that every sort of world that could exist, does exist. None of the scientific speculations about this theory involve being able to pass from one parallel universe to another, but that is of course the main point of interest in SF treatments of the theme. Gibson takes for granted that his audience is familiar with the concept, and then begins to play with it. The version of the world dominated by " American Streamlined Moderne" will be more entertaining if you are familiar with the style, which was especially prominent in the thirties and forties, promoted as futuristic, but now looking hopelessly though charmingly dated. If you' ve ever seen the old black and white movie serials of Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon you'll have some idea, but better sources are the two films mentioned in the story: Fritz Lang's silent Metropolis and Things to Come, based on a book and introduced by H. G. Wells. Ming the Merciless was, of course, the cruel ruler of the Planet Mongo and Flash Gordon's greatest enemy. How have modern times prevented the young girl from Virginia from being identified as a witch? What does the narrator's last speech mean?

I think what Brians wrote may explain my confusion in this story, I'm sure it would have been more interesting if I knew about the style, but that wasn't the case. I'm guessing the author was talking about a man in the 80s taking pictures for a woman obsessed with 30s-40s American culture, who then "sees" things from "The Dream" of the future people from back in the 30s-40s had. These things he saw may or may not have been there. Kihn advises that bad television/media will erase the "Art-Deco fruitoids" from his head and his visions, which amused me.

Definitely not my favourite story but I do have a favourite few lines from the first page of the story:
"my vision is naroowing to a single wavelength of probability. I've worked hard for that. Television helped a lot."

Sounds like my Dad, back in the day, lecturing us on watching too much of that damned "idiot box."

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2064, or Thereabouts

2008-02-23T10:34:00.000-04:00

Who Am I?

Why Am I Here?

I read this as a post-apocalyptic type of world, where men are made "better" or to last longer by being infused wrth machine parts. Even though they were made into part-machines, however, there still remained the insufferable search for meaning that most humans go through at some point in their lives, or for some, their entire lives.

It's kind of interesting that I read this story today, after having caught the last few minutes of Oprah yesterday, where she was talking about this new A New Earth book by Eckhart Tolle that seems to be the latest craze in people's search for meaning. I'm also reading Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl at the moment as my I-know-I-have-a-zillion-things-to-read-for-school-but-I'm-still-reading-at-least-ONE-book-that-I-want-this-term book and the author talks about how telling it is about our world that his little book about search for meaning has sold as many copies as it has.

I think the author is trying to say that even though we might be able to make things better with artifical hearts, joints, and other assorted parts, we will all still have that internal very human desire to search for our own personal meaning in life and it will be no less difficult than it was when our bodies were fully human.

I thought the ending was quite sad...you spend your life searching, think you've finally found "it," discover you were wrong, then you (mockingly, I thought) get obliterated into a clown-faced ballooned sky. I read it as a real "life sucks and then you die" moment.

Damn.

I think I need a happy pill now.

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Frozen Journey or Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar

2008-02-17T09:37:00.000-04:00

As I read through this story, I kept thinking how Freud would've just eaten this guy and his neuroses up, so I was amused when, on page 398, Victor mentioned psychoanalysis and having been in his own unconscious mind longer than any other human. The whole "birds and bees" reference, the mother issues, I can just see a flashing neon sign saying, "Oedipal Complex Patients Please Enter Here." It was interesting to me that the story had so many psychoanalytic elements when it was written in 1980, when psychology was well into its cognitive revolution.

It was a pretty sad ending for me, when Victor couldn't separate reality from the ten years he lived in semi-conscious psychosis. He actually did have a chance with Martine but couldn't accept that she (or anything else at that point) was real, finally. All in all, I thought it was a pretty cool story (pun intended).

I read a lot of these stories this week as warnings as to what would happen if we let machines control us, or if we explored to far into areas unknown in space. This surprises me. I figured that the SF writers would be into all of that and trying to encourage more exploration, more technological development. I suspect that they actually were and this is just SF/Horror-style. Either way, I liked the stories this week, I liked how they were written, the intersting twists, the characters; they were all enjoyable reads. Yay for another great week!

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The Shortest Story with the Longest Title

2008-02-16T23:25:00.000-04:00

Bastille Day on Mars in Gaxton Falls, a very carnivalesque place to be from the sounds of things, much to the chagrin of Jack.

Damn that Betsy and her penchant for falling for Venusian barker's invitations. Now Jack is an overweight know-it-all.

Great twist ending, I was not expecting that.

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Robo-Pope

2008-02-16T23:00:00.000-04:00

The machines are taking over the Vatican! I wonder if Arnold Schwarzenegger will play Robopope in the movie version?

I LOVED this story; I expected to find more religious undertones in some of the stories, especially after The Chrysalids, but a robot pope? That takes the cake for me. I almost choked on my drink when Kenneth, opponent of the whole idea of having a robo-pope declares, "In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Automaton." That was great.

They seemed to dwell on the physical properties of the robo-pope, about his eyes and his wheels, are they not thinking of all the advantages? No more gassing up the pope-mobile, just send Johnny-Five-Pope out all charged up. Heck, robo-pope is probably even going to be better for the environment!

I found it amusing when Bishop FitzPatrick mourns about the three weeks they have been without a "Holy Father," I'm just wondering how they know robo-pope will be a man? When they were discussing all those parts of the robo-pope, I didn't hear any phallic mentionings.

Bringing people of "synthetic origin" to the church - I loved that description, much nicer language than "robot" - the PC crowd would be pleased.

I don't know if this story was a criticism or a warning of what might happen if we get too involved with machines/computers/electronics or whether Silverberg just wanted to write a really amusing, neat story. I think one could read it as a warning or even a warning about the dwindling numbers of people involved in organized religion faithfully. I know I'm not a religious person but I think seeing robo-pope jet off that balcony would be pretty cool. I might even make a pilgrimmage to the Square of St. Peters to see that...

Silverberg's "Quasi-Official" Site

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Alpha Ralpha Boulevard

2008-02-16T22:39:00.000-04:00

When I first started reading this one, I wasn't sure about it, but I kept with it and ended up liking it despite the bizarreness that was going on. I followed most of it, was a little unsure of just what was going on near the end, and was still wondering what happened to ol' Macht but I think another re-read might clear up a few things.

A couple of questions I had with my first reading of this story:
1. I'm wondering if Macht was in there solely to kill the birds so that they could make the judgment about this new people or was there more to his role in the story.

2. What is Smith saying about the French in this story? I thought it kind of amusing that the last sentence of the second paragraph and the first of the third paragraph were: "Everywhere, men and women worked with a wild will to build a more imperfect world." and "I myself went into a hospital and came out French."

3. I'm wondering if the Wachowski Brothers ever read this...I was feeling a little Matrix-ish at times.

4 Was Smith saying that freedom and the possible perils that go along with an uncontrolled world was better, or that the safe, food-wherever-whenever-you-want, medical-robots-at-your-service but you're only a number world was better?

I'll definitely be re-reading that one. I liked it even if I didn't get it all 100%.

Cool web link: http://www.fourth-millennium.net/cordwainer-vr/earthport-tower.html

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The Handler...

2008-02-16T21:44:00.000-04:00

the speech-writer, the script-writer, the think-tankers, you know, the people behind the people. This story reminded me of the presidential race that's in our face now 24/7 - party supporters look to their front-running candidates with admiration for the wonderful work they do, the inspiring speeches they give, and so on. They do this without stopping to acknowledge the fact that everything their precious candidates do, everything they say, everything they wear, how they walk, how they talk, who they stop to talk to, etc, is all dictated to them by the people behind the scenes, those people who "get no respect" so to speak, to quote Rodney Dangerfield. Pete is the machine-like "candidate" in this story and Harry, the man who makes it all happen, gets no respect from the mindless drones at the bar who fawn over Pete. Makes me wonder who was more of a brainless machine, Pete, or his bonehead admirers?

PS: I wonder if that was a Republican bar?

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Midnight News

2008-02-11T21:26:00.000-04:00

So often, it is others who decide the fate of those living in nursing homes, those deemed senile, too old, incompetent, no longer of any use, so it was a nice twist that Goldstein had the aliens give the power to Helena to decide the ultimate fate of all humans. It was only when Helena had such power, was she delivered from the nursing home, it was only then that people paid attention to her, doted on her, properly treated her medical conditions, listened to her stories, or indulged her in any type of way. When they did take the time to listen, they still moaned and groaned about her being so boring; although Gorce (the female reporter) seemed to have some empathy for the woman, despite Stevens' (the male reporter) harsh and crude attitude toward Helena. Even at the minute of the biggest decision, Stevens was impatient with her.

I think that Goldstein's choices were telling: two women saved the world, those women were the ones who actually learned something, and those two were rewarded in the end. Unfortunately, I don't think Stevens learned a damn thing.

I liked this story (no frustrations this week - yay!). I liked its message and made me think: are we so different from the hypocrites in the story? Do we take the time to appreciate and absorb the knowledge and experiences of those who came before us? Do we give them the time they deserve or are they just an inconvenience to us? I wonder if it'll ever change or we'll always be too busy, too impatient, and too self-absorbed to truly treat people who are older with the respect they deserve. We'll all be there some day.

Interestingly, in this article, Lisa Goldstein is described as "one of the most critically-respected writers in speculative fiction today," yet this story is definitely what I would classify as "Science Fiction," with the alien action going on. I think I would be interested in reading some of her speculative fiction stories as well. I found this story very easy to follow, interesting, and well-written.

Yay for a great week of women writers!

Out of All Them Bright Stars

2008-02-11T20:52:00.000-04:00

It comes from the college. They are stupefied to the point of ignorance until Sally steps in. It is polite, whereas the couple who comes in "every Friday night" have never left her a tip. John-the-blue-alien-guy shows a genuine interest in Sally, an occurrence that I believe is all too rare for Sally. John appears to be the antithesis of Charlie, the epitome of a racist. John feels he makes little difference and says so to Sally as the government escorts him out the door. The fact, though, that he was able to show some bit of his kindness to Sally obviously made a huge difference to her.

I felt the ending was so sad: John, ironically as an alien, had given Sally a glimpse of what a decent human could be like but she knew she had to survive in the world of Charlies and Kathys and therefore had to bring herself down to their level somewhat in the end for her own survival, to puff Charlie up so that her life would not be as miserable as it could've been if she'd kept herself on the side of the alien. The fear and ignorance so prevalent here in our world is quite handily depicted in Kress' tale of the blue man named John and his attempt to befriend an "ordinary Earth person." Reading this, I could sadly picture people in my world like Charlie and Kathy, but hopefully, I could also picture a few Sallys and Johns.

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Interlocking Pieces

2008-02-11T19:51:00.000-04:00

I thought this was an enjoyable read. I loved how Gloss had the donor doing the puzzle, that which Teo could not do, and how the puzzle was a metaphor for the humans. They were also the interlocking pieces, each with a certain part not optimal, but by fitting them together, as would be the case with Dhavir and Teo, the puzzle of a fully functioning human would be complete.

I guess my only question is that I didn't pick up on anything overly Science Fiction in this story, other than the fact that it's in the future and they appear to transplant brains.

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A Few Things I Know About Whileaway

2008-02-11T18:41:00.000-04:00

Real-time reading/blogging...trying something different with this story, I am doing electronically what I usually do on paper (or in the margins) when reading a story: blogging my thoughts, questions, comments, things I find interesting, as I read it:

Before we begin, isn't it interesting what you can find searching for images???

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1
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Genetic surgeons, interesting.

Plague that attacked males only - thankful to have two x's thank you very much.

Loving the Lucysdaughter, Bernadettesdaughter play on the historical use of "son" as part of surnames.

Selenic League? Selene = Goddess of the Moon

"workwoman"

Little heavy first 2 pages on the scientific mumbo-jumbo

Whilewayan workweek: an "unprecedented length of sixteen hours." - a girl can dream...

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Interview
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Who is "MC?" Just the "emcee" shortened to MC or do the initials stand for something?

No men for eight centuries? Hope they have Fantasia parties on Whileaway...

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3
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"body-mother" and "other-mother" - this made me giggle. My 18 year old has a really close best friend, since they were about 8 or 9, they call each other "brother-from-another-mother." Just popped into my head reading this...

Bombs to obliterate instructors, I have had some less-than-great instructors over the years, but it has never gotten to the bomb stage.

Middle Dignity at puberty, Three-Quarters Dignity at seventeen, and twenty-two, Full Dignity.

Why can I not stop thinking "Warren-Jeffs-Lesbian-Style" when reading about their communes?

"Sedentary jobs are held by the old, who can use one-fiftieth of their brainpower for work whikle the other forty-nine parts riot in a freedom they haven't had since adolescence." - I like it, gives me something to look forward to.

Contrasts - the young are "priggish" about the old, unapproving, nobody works more than 3 hours consecutively, no monogamy, disengagement with the mother.

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4-11
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Where are the triads being learned? Is this Whileaway or somewhere else?

"the glaciated lakes of Old Dirtyskirts" - amusing.

The male genital/mathematical symbol for contradiction...interesting.

These random bits from 4-10 are, well, random. Very odd

Female "god" on Rabbit Island, even the gals have cooked up their own version of an Invisible Woman we must all obey...maybe I'll convert and become a believer! (but I doubt it...)

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12-14
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Gets a lot of praise on Whileaway for a big behind - that's it, I'm moving to Whileaway.

Bestiality: not something I thought I'd be reading about in University.

Trippy Bear story...

Old Philosopher - ew!

Okay - most bizarre story (and you all though ol' Fritzy was whacko...) so far for me. Although it didn't annoy me as there were several amusing parts. I definitely would be willing to bet large sums of money that there were drugs involved in the creation of this story.

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The Women Men Don't See, or Men are from Mars and Women are Opossums

2008-02-11T17:56:00.000-04:00

Things Don seems to be thinking/saying:

How can these women be so calm in the face of this?

How can she lie that close to me and not want a piece of this?

How could it be so bad here for this woman to actually want to leave of her own accord and take her daughter with her with these unknown things?

What if we really are that bad and all our opposums leave?

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Things Ruth seems to be thinking/saying:

How can this man possibly understand what it's like to live on a planet as the constantly oppressed sex?

I wonder if I'm a grandmother yet.

The unknown hell my daughter and I might encounter can't be worse than the hell we live in now.

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I liked this story - it made sense, it was plausible in that Ruth worked for the government, so she might have had access to confidential UFO/alien sightings and was in the area in Mexico for precisely that reason.

Also, based on the time when this story was written (1973), the story seems to fit nicely into what was happening in the world at that time, the second wave of the feminist movement was in full swing, women were no longer fighting against deliberate discrimination but for full social and economic equality, against systemic discrimination.

So, the questions for me are:

Was Tiptree trying to warn us, from Don's point of view, of what would happen if we allowed these whacko women like Ruth to become fully equal? Would all the "opossums" leave?
OR
Through Ruth's point of view, was he supporting women through her assertions that it really is just an old boys club and she and Althea would never truly live outside the "man's" world, so it'd be better to try another planet with another species than to live here with human males for the rest of their lives?

I wondered about the significance of the opossum reference, so I looked up some information about them and found this line (from Wikipedia):
"Their unspecialized biology, flexible diet and reproductive strategy make them successful colonizers and survivors in unsettled times."

Successful colonizers and survivors. Hmmmm. Makes a little more sense now.

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His Vegetable Wife

2008-02-07T21:21:00.000-04:00

This one made up for earlier annoyances - I loved the whole karma factor. Big tough farmer man taken out by his own produce. It's about time there was a desperate man in one of these stories...couldn't keep a "real" girl (surprise, surprise) so he had to grow one instead. Even before she was ready, she was turning him away...good for her/it.

Kyrie Elesion Indeed!

2008-02-03T15:14:00.000-04:00

< begin vent >
Okay. I don't want to sound disrespectful to the genre or its readers, but quite frankly, I think, after reading the first couple pages of "Kyrie" by Poul Anderson, I am discovering why I am not a Science Fiction fan. I really don't want to work this hard to figure out what the heck is going on when I'm reading. Call me small-minded but I have always enjoyed reading, it is a pleasurable activity for me. I think there are more enjoyable ways for me to receive a message from an author than this. I am one of those people who actually reads every text book assigned in University because I want to know more. I want to learn. That being said, needing to go back and re-read just about every single paragraph and thinking "what?" or "huh?" with some of these stories just tries my patience. It makes reading not enjoyable for me. I don't think Sci-Fi and I are meant to be, I may learn to appreciate it, but I don't think it will ever be on my top ten. It shouldn't be so exciting when I finally "get" one or enjoy one, and it isn't that I like everything to be easy, either; some of my favourite courses have been really difficult. I just do not get how anyone reading the first couple of pages of this story could find it an enjoyable experience. It really is beyond me. < /end vent >

I'm also sensing a theme about desperate women and being in love with various space "things" because they're too pathetic or lacking in self-esteem on Earth to have any type of relationship - like Ulla being in love with a virus bubble, and now we have the not-much-to-look-at, desperate, boring, librarian chick in love with some sort of demonic-named fire space entity.

Now after the first whole nuns-in-space introduction (I believe that's what it was) to the story of the people on the ship heading to explore the supernova, things got better (or worse, if you're Eloise or Lucifer). I began to be able to follow the story. I didn't, however, really get a point or a message from this story other than don't telepathically communicate with fiery space entities that are going to go diving into supernovas. I think Kyrie is probably referencing Eloise's eternal damnation at having to hear Lucifer's agony...

Yeah. Religion, nuns, obliterated Lucifers, god references, and confusion. Not a good one for me.

I'm waiting until tomorrow to read the next one.

*Completely irrelevant point regarding the whole "Nuns in Space" thing - if they were actually in space, were they? Anyway, remember that old bit on the Muppet Show with the echoed beginning..."Pigs In Space?" - all I could think about on page one was that echoed line with "nuns" replacing "pigs."

Just Another Two-Lobed Pack of Giggles...

2008-02-03T10:56:00.000-04:00

I liked this story, the female descriptions definitely cracked me up. I don't know if I would rather be a "joy baby" or a "two-lobed pack of giggles" - I think I'll take the two-lobed pack of giggles for $2000, Alex. Always good to go with the brains I figure.

*note to self: do not do image searches with Safe Search turned off for "Joy Baby"

Things that came into my head when reading "When I Was Miss Dow":

George Carlin. In his book, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? there's part in that book where he talks about us all starting out as the good thing but then some turn into the bad thing (males)...I'll dig out my book for a proper quote when I get home. Just the whole two-lobes versus one-lobe descriptions of the entities that were all male, it just brought ol' George's bit about females being the good thing to mind... Oh yes, and this quote of his: Here's all you have to know about men and women: Women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.

I felt that "When I Was Miss Dow" was quite reminiscent of Atwood's "Homelanding" last week with the non-human-pseudo-woman-scientist-assistant's human descriptions of Arnie, surroundings, the handball game he played, etc.

Amusing also were Arnie's misinterpretations of the non-human-pseudo-woman-scientist-assistant's crying, quivering, etc after it found out that its koota was out of luck for breeding. Of course Arnie felt like she was just a poor upset woman who needed consoling...and a little Arnie-action.

I think I was a little disappointed that the non-human-pseudo-woman-scientist-assistant became male again in the end...I guess there's no faking it permanently. I thought maybe he/she could go back to its group and enlighten them. I guess not. At least he got to be the "good thing" for a little while. Is the author trying to tell us that males couldn't possibly handle being female but that if they actually could, they might like it?

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Whoa...

2008-02-02T15:06:00.000-04:00

Trying to decipher what was happening with "How Beautiful with Banners" by James Blish was not an easy task.

My head hurts.

*note to self: stop trying to read this stuff without dictionary.com open in another window. oy.

Here's what I got from this one:
Dr. Ulla Hillstrøm was a pretty cold fish (literally and figuratively if you consider the ending but let's not go there quite yet). She was all about her science career, a gal self-described as someone who was cheered by the sound of her gear, "efficient," someone who has a "good many suppressed impulses," who had aborted her marriage, someone with no pride, no self-love, no defenses with a "queer kind of virgin numbness" (probably not your first choice for a hot date on Saturday night). It seems like the largest moon of Saturn at minus 316 degrees fahrenheit was more than an apt setting for Ulla.

Enter the virus bubble - Ulla's "companion" - I'm thinking she was probably closer to the bubble than she was to her husband when she was married. So the cloak guys come around and see a new piece of "skin" on their planet and got a little jungle fever...(only in Sci-Fi, I'm guessing, would you have someone's love/lust interest be a virus bubble). In the end, we discover that poor Ulla couldn't even manage to keep a virus bubble - it took off to greener pastures (or skies) with the cloaks.

I'm sure there are lots of deep dark meanings in this story that will be elucidated much better by other folks but what I got was the message that if you work too hard on everything else but yourself, you just may end up like ol' Ulla.

Questions:
What is with all the candy/sweet/frosted landscape/ wedding-cake soil descriptions?
Significance of all the mythological "gods?"

Description I liked best:
Saturn’s rings: “like the banners of a spectral army”

All in all, this may be some profound work of science fiction but I found it very disjointed and not enjoyable to read. Let's hope the next one is better.

More to come after the Advil kick in...
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The Cavern Person Speaks...

2008-01-26T21:34:00.000-04:00

"High Weir"
This is probably the one I liked the least this week, aside from its most excellent name. That being said, however, it was like "Winter Flies," I didn't hate it, it just left me with a lot of questions. It also left me with a sinking feeling that I just might not "get" any of these stories...is that the deal with Sci-Fi? Do you have to be wired a certain way to "get it?" - if so, I think I missed a turn on the assembly line and didn't get that particular wire installed. Either that, or I was built on a Friday and my Sci-Fi understanding component is just a lemon.

Anyway, back to the story...the first time I read it through, I thought there might have been some sort of romantic business going on between Rimkin and Jimmi when she called him, "Rimky," but then another character called him that so that kind of put the kibosh to that idea. I got the fact that Rimky lost it quite badly and thought he was a Martian. What I don't know is what it was about gawking at the split-open-petrified-Martian-eyeball-hologramic-images for six hours that sent him off the deep-end. I also didn't get the ending when he says, "how am I supposed to tell?" - tell what? to whom? does it "hurt so much" because he found out he's not a Martian? Graeme, who because he married me is subject to reading all of these stories when I'm finished, noted that it was interesting to see the analogy between the half alien eye and the blurred image that is viewed through it and the blurred image that comes with human memory, especially if the mind is also "slightly cracked," as was the case with Rimky.

This guy wrote a blurb about the story - I didn't realize Delany was black and didn't even pick up on the "jungle bunnies" line in the story until I read this guy's notes and went back and re-read the story. Definitely something to think about, why a black writer would have that in there. I also found this guy, who seems to have some interesting insights into the story, maybe we should search his site for some "Winter Flies" info...

Regarding the quote from Tractatus, which this guy mentioned above translates in his notes:

The German quotation is the last sentence from German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Philosophicus. The complete sentence is "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darumber muss man schweigen": "Whatever we cannot speak about we must remain silent about." Wittgenstein argued not only that language is our only vehicle of knowledge, but that we are trapped within it, unable to reach absolute truth. "Phobos" means "fear," "Demos" means "terror." These names were chosen for the Martian moons because they are natural accompaniments of war, the Roman god of which is Mars.

I found this point interesting, partly because I am taking my first Philosophy course. I went and reviewed my notes on Wittgenstein and what I have in my notes from Dr. Littlejohn is that Wittgenstein finished this book in a prison camp, thought he solved all the problems of philosophy went to become a teacher at a grammar school. People from all over came to see him. By 1929-30 he realized that his book was mistaken and spent the next years of his life undermining what he did in that book. So if he spent the next years of his life undermining what he did in that book, is the argument still valid if you're using information from a book that the author no longer admits is valid? Again, I am not an expert by any means in either this story or Philosophy so it's just a question I'm raising out of interest because I made a connection between two of my current courses.

One thing I found kind of interesting was when Jimmi talked about Sci-Fi in the story when she described the Martian on page 184: "Wouldn't you have guessed? Martians would turn out to look just like a nineteen-fifties s-f film." Does this make it a scifiroman?

Okay, I just wrote way more than I planned trying to figure this story out...

"Feather Tigers"

After reading this a couple of times and with the help of Graeme clarifying a few things for me, this is what I got out of this story:

Aliens trying to figure out the world/what happened to the people without any context or type of guide and they're not making the right assumptions for the reasons why things were, like trying to figure out why two places with the same name were not the same and that people in Texas should've been eating a diet low in protein (insert chuckle here).

Aliens had incomplete comprehension of the complexities of the places/people who inhabited them. One thing they seemed, however, to have a very good intellectual grasp on was the concept of "feather tigers" - a spiritual belief that the spirits of tigers could leave their bodies to go out and look for food. Quoquo went out to scientifically study the patterns of light/feather tigers and couldn't see anything, but when push came to shove and there really were tigers out gunning for him, he started shooting at feather tigers - he went from being totally masterful superior blue fuzzy bunny alien scientist to being the prey. He was scared, even with a blaster (and a psychology PhD).

The aliens were stepping back trying to figure out earth's existence without experience when the reality of being chased by the actual tiger gave him experience into feather tigers.

Direct quote from Graeme:
"Suddenly the paper tiger that was the feather tiger became a real tiger that spawned feather tigers."

This one was a bit more work for me to figure out, but I enjoyed it.

"The Mountains of Sunset, the Mountains of Dawn"
This one I enjoyed a lot. I felt like I understood this one. The loss that is felt when an elder dies is so much more than the loss of the physical "person" (or "being", in the case of this story), it is the loss of all they knew, what they had to share, the old ways, another piece of history lost. I loved that the old one got to experience the joy of flying once more, that she gave in to the youth's pursuit and assisted him with his 'passage' and that she got to go the way that she wanted to go, on her own terms. She wouldn't die on that ship, she knew it was coming and she wanted to have it her way. It was a fulfilling story for me; I think maybe it was because we had the opportunity to get to know her character a little bit. It also left me hopeful that all the elder had would not be lost because of the youth who had so much interest in her.

"Strange Wine"
Everything is relative. The grass isn't always greener. As bad as it seems now, it can always get worse. My confidence built up a bit more with this story as I felt like I could get what the author was trying to tell us. I liked this one, even though it was pretty melancholy on the whole. Life sucks no matter where you are so get over it.

I tried not to think too much about whether or not he really went back to the other world or not because, really, we can't know and because I think that type of reality-based thinking is what makes it difficult for me to 'get' Sci-Fi. I need to relax my mind more. I think my biggest challenges with sci-fi are a lack of background/experience with it and I think that Graeme might be right when he says that "if it isn't relative to your life you aren't really interested in it." So I think I will need to learn to appreciate Sci-Fi. I'll think of it as an acquired taste and fit it in with my goal of being more open to new things.

Oh yes...the title. The only thing I couldn't figure out with regards to this story was why it was called "Strange Wine" - might have been more aptly called "Strange Whine."

Homelanding
Obviously from the blogpost title, this story amused me. I read this one out loud to Graeme and the whole pronger/cavern thing cracked us up. Unlike some people, I thought this was a brilliant satire of humans.

Fritz Leiber Presentation

2008-01-24T14:29:00.000-04:00

If the pictures don't show - hit "F5" to refresh and all should be well...these Flickr shows can be "buggy"...

Winter Flies

2008-01-21T09:30:00.000-04:00

I've finished Leiber's "Winter Flies," which kind of left me feeling like I just took a bad hit of LSD (or maybe that was just me channeling Gott and Jane - aside from all the things they "saw" and "heard", who the heck names their kid "Heinie"???). From the research I've been doing about Fritz for the presentation Laura and I will make on Thursday afternoon, I'm thinking it is a pretty intense satire about the right-wingers and all their anti-communist suspicions. I think the prevalence of "blackness" throughout the story is a metaphor for what Leiber believes America will become if these people continue to be in power. I'm pretty sure though, that I wouldn't have made those connections had I not been researching Leiber for this presentation on Thursday.

I'm currently about a third of the way through Le Guin's introduction; it's interesting to read about the process of how they made their selections for the anthology. I cannot imagine a task so enormous and when you are so passionate about a certain genre, the heartache of leaving someone out who you admire greatly. I'm looking forward to the rest of the introduction to give me a better sense of the genre.

***UPDATE:
As I attempt to learn more about science-fiction, I have to say that, so far, my favourite line from the introduction to the anthology by Le Guin is:
"The reader can't take much for granted in a fiction where the scenery can eat the characters." (p. 31)

Picture Credit

The Chrysalids - Scattered Thoughts

2008-01-11T03:57:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in class, I would not have previously considered myself a science-fiction reader. That being said, I attempt to be open to new things and therefore wanted to give this course a try. To be honest though, I bought two of the books before the holiday break and still wondered if I would like the material we would be covering. I had horrible visions of struggling to get through a book full of bizarre elf names I never learned how to properly pronounce and failing to "get" what the author was talking about.

My apprehension, however, quickly faded as I read this book. My husband can attest to the fact (although he may not chose to do so here) that I kept saying, "is all Science Fiction like this? If it is, I think I may have been missing out all of these years." Needless to say, I really enjoyed the book. It might be due to my own personal beliefs (or lack thereof) and the seemingly pervasive criticism of the extreme form of religion depicted in the book, or perhaps, just maybe, it was just a really interesting story. Either way, this book (which I did not read in grade three) was a good "easing into the genre" for me.

There were a couple of things I wondered about after reading the book, the first of which was the choice of Canada as the setting for the novel. From what I've read here and there online about his other books, the settings for his other works tend to be in England. I wondered if he felt it would be the Canadians who caused the nuclear war, or if we would be the only ones hale and hearty enough to survive it (along with the Sealanders of course).

I also found interesting his use of capitalisation for Profound Words. It made me think about why he might have chosen to do that. Was it to denote more importance to those words? Was it to relay to the reader the immense significance of these words in the Waknuk culture? Maybe it was done sarcastically, in the same way someone who does not believe something uses the air finger quotes we see so often nowadays. Most of the capitalised words were related to the extreme religious beliefs of the Waknuk people and their thoughts on people who were different, their "god," whose word they followed in punishing those who were different, and also the names of the places to where the damned were banished.

My compulsion to makes lists of things led to this compilation of capitalisations in the book:

Old People

Tribulation

Definition of Man

Offence

Blasphemy

Deviations

Purity

Purity Laws

Wild Country

Fringes

Badlands

Norm

Mutant

Thy

His

Purification

Forces of Evil

Ethics

Devil

Race

Normalcy Certificate

Right Wing Church Party

Maker

True Line

True Image

Scheduled Deviations

the Flood

the Captivity

The book also spoke to me on another level; being the parent of a child with obvious physical differences, I wondered if the world could ever become so uncivilized and deteriorate to the way of life demonstrated in Waknuk. Thankfully, although discrimination and ignorance still exists and likely always will, we seem to be moving overall toward a more enlightened view of individuals with differences. Let us hope that we never experience a real-life Waknuk (although the mind-reading/communicating thing would be pretty cool).

I am looking forward to seeing the comments of others both here and on their own blogs.

Image Credit

Funky Cover Contest

2008-01-10T23:13:00.000-04:00

In response to Dr. Jones' cover challenge posted here, I respectfully (?) submit this entry:

with my answer to the author's question, "it depends on how long you've been married."

Even funnier? The URL name:
http://www.boingboing.net/cover.jpg.

Yes, you read that correctly. boingboing.

What If...

2008-01-10T17:40:00.001-04:00

What if...
you were taking a course in Speculative Fiction,
you had a professor who wasn't afraid of technology,
you had to start a blog to write your thoughts about the course?

Wouldn't it be amusing if...
you just gave up your main blog this year because you had no time for it?