Week Nine: The Final Frontier


   


    When I was in high school I made it my goal to read something from Jules Verne and HG Wells because I watched a dvd commentary on Atlantis: The Lost Empire and the creators aimed the movie to feel like one from a Verne/Wells novel. So I read “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and “The Time Machine”. I quickly realized why they used the books for inspiration as both authors are very good at doing unexplored worlds within our normal world. Both books are speculative but feel grounded with plausibility.
     “The Time Machine” became my favorite because of it’s speculation of where humanity as species will go if we continue with our classism issue. The divide has gotten so great that different lifestyles have created different human species, the helpless Eloi and the predatory Morlocks. “The Time Machine” suggests that the lower class will be driven underground and will become nocturnal hunters of the upper class who have become small and weak because of a cushy lifestyle. This makes sense when you consider H.G. Wells lived during late Victorian England, and so would see a huge difference in lifestyles between the rich living decadently and the poor being negatively affected by their environment. I think Wells’ critique of society has it’s place here now more than ever with how much we know and have researched about the effects of living in poverty to one’s health.
     Despite these books talking about new frontiers and unexplored areas, they used these things to say something about the condition of humanity.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week Twelve: Afro-Futurism and Diverse Position Science Fiction

Image
     For this week I read “Tan-Tan and the Rolling Calf”. First off, big fan of ankylosaurids. Secondly what I noticed most in this story is the power of words and oral presentation. The piece is also written in a dialect, like a mix between how Patois is written and english, it’s written how people talk. I don’t think this is by mistake. Dialects associated with African or Caribbean people are often looked down upon and not even recognized as a real dialect or language. That the heroine ends her persecution by telling her story through oral prose empathizes the importance of words, so the dialect being chosen is a very direct choice.      There are also themes of childhood being taken away. Tan-Tan herself lost her home at a young age, and as she grew older lost her father through the abuse he did to her. She hangs out with a Douen, Abitefa. In mythology a douen is a wandering spirit of a child who hadn’t been christened or bapti...
Read more

Week Eleven: Cyberpunk and Steampunk

Image
“Case fell into the prison of his own flesh.”      I think it is a common feeling among those with chronic pain and physical disabilities, to feel contempt for one’s own body. At least I do. The bigger sting than the physical pain is that it prevents you from doing what you love. It is not surprising that depression is co-morbid. We see this in the main character of Neuromancer as he struggles with not being able to jump into the matrix due to damage to his nervous system. He is described as “living for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace” and when this is taken away we see him turn to drugs, trying to chase a similar high to cyberspace, to not feel his body. Without cyberspace, we see that he is reckless and mostly uncaring about himself as he is passively trying to die through his bad decisions      There is something inherently desirable to be free from one’s own body People have always used inventions and technology to do ...
Read more

Week One: Frankenstein

Image
Elizabeth’s story always struck me as a very weird part. When simplified it reads as thus: Victor’s family goes to Italy and at Lake Como his mother visits the poor and among them finds a child who looks different from the rest, appearing of “different stock”. The child is an orphan with a foster family. Victor’s mother decides she wants to adopt the child to be her son’s wife which she admits on her death bead, ““My children,” she said, “my firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union. This expectation will now be the consolation of your father. Elizabeth, my love, you must supply my place to my younger children.”” And here is my main problem with Elizabeth in the text, which is that her whole life is planned out by adults around her so how does she have a choice? There is a weird grooming aspect to it all that makes you wonder if she ever had a chance at a choice. In the same quote we see Elizabeth immediately given the responsibility of the matria...
Read more