National Towel Day

National Towel Day
*salutes Douglas Adams*

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Oh...kay...

So it's Diverse position SciFi week! Wasn't sure what it all entailed but after spending some time to read a few of the short stories on the resources site, I...still don't know. It's completely gone over my head. I suppose it entails those stories that didn't quite cut it into other genres or that take a different sort of route from traditional science fiction, but after reading Bloodchild I simply wasn't all that sure. That story, of the three I read, would be one that I would have identified as science fiction. As for I Live with You, that just seems like more of a mystery than anything else and it might cut into science fiction with some push. Then there was the story known as What I Didn't See which I would have never identified and still have trouble identifying as a science fiction story. This one is certainly more of a mystery than anything else. I'll get into each of them with more depth in a moment.

When I get a chance, I certainly want to watch all of Brother from Another Planet, simply because the first fifteen minutes we saw in class were rather intriguing, but I digress.

Alright, so first I'll go over Bloodchild. I didn't re-read it because the story was strong enough to be remembered without further provocation. It's a story about a preserve in which human families are kept, likely being farmed as hosts for an insectoid alien species, and the issue of trust and cooperation between both species. It isn't a black or white situation in my opinion. The aliens, which I believe are called the Tlic, took in the humans after a craft fleeing from oppression had crash-landed onto their planet. The Tlic were supposedly a dying race at the time, but somehow a system was established that trapped many if not all the humans on a special preserve. Here, female Tlics lay eggs in human bodies and their offspring are later ripped out of the human hosts and transferred into animal carcasses for feeding. A child, being prepared for his future as a host, witnesses the act of cutting that is normally kept from sight. It raises questions as to whether he should trust this system or revolt against it. Eventually, he accepts his role to save a sibling from the burden and puts his trust in the alien creature his family had been living with.

Come to think of it, I might be able to see what all these stories do have in common. All of them leave you thinking about life. They leave you thinking about what is right and what is wrong and the gray morality-level choices we are dealt with. In Bloodchild, would it truly be right to deny the aliens their hosts and leave the species to struggle once more? The humans /are/ being well cared for, for the most part. There is no sign of hostility from the Tlics amidst all this. T'Gatoi attempted to save Lomas and if humans are so easy to farm and control they could have just as well discarded him or left him to rot. As for human right, do they truly have a choice? Has the main character refused to be a host, would the Tlics have done away with him?

I'm sure I Live with You was supposed to remain open about who 'I' is. At first I assumed that the narrator was a ghost--a poltergeist maybe. It started to seem less so when she was well capable of charging Nora's credit card for things and interact with limitation with the living. I came away from the story seeing her as a psychological part of Nora, like an alter ego. I found this story interesting from its beginning as I attempted to determine what she truly was, but I'm settling on that. My guess is that Nora, the woman the main character is obsessively following, was leading a very boring existence. The narrator then decides to try and change all this and spice it up a little. Everything she does is in Nora's best interest, so she says. She doesn't steal, as repeated, but takes the steps necessary to accelerate Nora's life towards something less drab and dead. If anything, Nora's more of a ghost than the narrator. Maybe she is a ghost. I don't think so, but there you go. That's how automatic she is. The narrator ends up bringing some old guy over, and things seem to be going well with the narrator's help, but then she steps away for one moment and suddenly the guy's running off. The narrator simply gets fed up and leaves, wearing Nora's old clothes yet still claiming she isn't stealing anything.

Here we're dealing with the inner struggle against change. We all have been there once. Life ends up coming to a brief halt and it takes some motivation for us to change for the better. You could choose not to and remain in a static and dull safe zone or you can take your chances and perhaps end up with something better. Nora doesn't seem like the woman who would ever try to take any risks. The narrator, on the other hand, claims to be just like Nora but she wants to add spice to things. She dances to television and radio while trying to match her 'roommate' up with men.

Finally, there's What I Didn't See. Ironically enough, I didn't see how this could be science fiction. This story was more of a mystery than anything else. There were no extraterrestrials, no monsters or ghosts, no futuristic technologies, and no other such scientific non-existent things. It's a story about a woman who ventures to Africa with her husband to collect spiders with some gorilla hunters and while the main character stays behind, a friend of hers ends up disappearing and her whereabouts remain unknown. This all takes place in the jungle. Anything could have happened and any of that could have been perfectly normal. Maybe she was abducted by those cannibals. Maybe she got lost in the jungle and passed out somewhere distant. There are several dozen ways to die or get lost here. Meanwhile, the main character's husband comes back from one hunting trip completely dazed yet he reveals it was due to their killing of gorillas. That's terrible and all, but what does it have to do with science fiction? The closest I could think to get would be to assume that the lost woman became some female Tarzan and the main character's husband had to shoot a bunch aliens cleverly disguised as gorillas. The moral? Don't just shoot a bunch of gorillas or you'll be traumatized...or something. It wasn't a bad story or anything, but I didn't see why it would have been included in the science fiction genre. I could see anyone reading this story interpreting it as anything but. Maybe I missed an element somewhere. Maybe science fiction is more than just what I had mentioned above. But nothing was peculiar about this story. All that we're left with is a mystery about a disappearing woman and a hunting trip. We're given no clues to supernatural type events.

It wasn't hard to read through these stories though, and I would have given the fourth story a look if I wasn't pressed for time.

-Peace out.

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