“The Star”

H.G Wells

1897

The one thing that has always consistently grabbed our attention as beings that think for ourselves is the idea of the unknown. Age and culture are irrelevant because curiosity exists all over the globe, in every household, city, village, and country you can find it. The only thing that differs is the reaction. Some may fear what’s foreign while others embrace it. I think that’s why the unknown object threatening mankind, “As we know it” will always remain a popular topic within the science fiction world.  Reading H.G Wells “The Star” was a little tough to get through, it was slow moving but once I read it again after I knew the ending I could appreciate his style more and noticed how he designed each of his characters to react. I thought it was extremely interesting that based on the era of the story not everyone was educated about space and the planets itself so when they started noticing changes in the sky they often used religion as an explanation, for example he states, "And where science has not been reached, men stared and feared, telling one another of the wars and pestilences that are foreshadowed by these fiery signs from the Heavens." They feared the wrath of the gods because those were the most powerful beings they knew about so if they weren’t doing this than who could? Those who weren’t religious and believed in science didn’t have the comfort of the gods. They considered that this new planet was going to collide with Neptune and cause the entire solar system to go out of whack. The city was in shambles, trying to understand. I personally can’t imagine how scared some of the citizens were, as the unexplained object got “Nearer and nearer”. As Wells continued to move his focus around the world it showed different reactions to the mysterious object and not all were negative. In South Africa the married couple embraced the madness, claiming the sky was happy for the union, and lit up just for them. The couple called it “Their star” and appreciated the closeness rather than fear it. I enjoyed how Wells showed the varied perspectives across the sphere and how each person handled the unknown. 

“Speech Sounds”

Octavia Butler

1983

I really enjoyed Butler’s writing style, I loved how without any verbal communication she still could create conversation throughout the entire story, whether it was open and “small talk” or intimate and personal. Two things that really stood out to me that I can already see in our society is the fact that we rarely speak to each other verbally and we rarely, almost never see or use physical maps. Our generation is one filled with technology, which is the prominent reason we don’t have as many in person conversations, we’d rather spend our time on our phone playing games, social networking, or texting than making friends or talking to those around us. In “Speech Sounds” they lacked the technology but everyone who could speak hid that they could and making friends with those around you wasn’t a common practice. Every man was for himself. Traveling from place to place with solely a map is practically unheard of in this day and age, since we have the GPS we don’t really need to know where we are going, we just have to listen and we’ll get there. This can lead to problems because we might not be as aware of our surroundings as we could be and we might not always have the GPS to aid us. When Rye and Obsidian meet everything changes, Rye begins to have hope. First she is jealous of his literacy but than she realizes that he lacks the ability to speaks and concludes that the illness takes away what each person valued most, including family. The whole story has so much intense content fit into such a short time span and I think that represents life accurately. We can have long periods of the same thing and one day unexpectedly your life will never be the same. She loved and lost all in one day but also gained. The two children Rye adopts that were left behind are Rye’s hope, they indicate that life isn’t over and the world can have a new beginning if we just try.

War, Conflict and Denial

The stories “That Only a Mother” by Judith Merril and “We See Things Differently” by Bruce Sterling are both centered around denial and the settings are both in the future surrounding the possibilities of what could be in store for us as Americans and even just human kind because of all previous wars or the threat of war found around the world.

      Merril’s world takes place after there was a nuclear bomb and human kind is living with the radiation defects. Throughout the story the main character Margaret is writing to her husband, Hank who is away as a lieutenant in the army. When the story begins she is almost nine months pregnant and ready to give birth, telling herself daily that her baby will be fine, even though her husband had been around the radiation his entire life, she refuses to acknowledge the fact that anything could be wrong with her child. Finally she gives birth. Within the story the author continues to inform readers about other issues in the mutants, how common it is for infants to have defects and how different countries are treating it. She states how the Japanese’s are punishing mutants and all the main character states is “Not my infant, my baby’s normal”. Shortly after the baby is born Maggie’s friend notices the baby is making sounds, and can actually talk as if she is a grown adult. It’s her mutation. Margret is so thankful she has a talented baby and cannot wait for her husband to come home. She’s keeping Hank fully updated on their child; she constantly informs him on how “normal” the baby is. How the baby’s a little late on the crawling but the Doctor says it’s normal, but she can sing and wiggle on her belly. Finally it’s time for Hank to come home and meet his baby. Margret has been planning this day for the last 18 months. She has picked out her outfit, and the baby’s outfit. When Hank arrives home Margret states how it all feels natural and normal, they go upstairs to wake their child and Hank is amazed and in love with his talking baby. They place the baby on her tummy so she can show Daddy how she crawls, Hank insists on taking her arms and legs out to make it easier and the realizes his baby has no limbs.  This entire story is based around denial; I think it’s ironic because most parents do face denial whenever there could be something drastically “wrong” with their child.  Children born with mental illnesses who show the signs are often not even tested because the parents cannot imagine anything wrong with their creations. Throughout the story Maggie consistently uses “normal” because it’s what she is so desperately trying to convince herself.

      “We See Things Differently” also shows signs of denial. The main character, Sayyid Qutb travels from the Middle East to the United States to interview a famous Rock Star whose anthems are powerful to the American people and political system. In this time period the United States is in the slumps, there are numerous unemployed and the author describes that once blistering city of Miami as dead, dirty, and beat down. Whenever Sayyid meets someone they always have a reaction to his race, whether it’s good or bad because the American’s feel like the Arabs are the cause of the American downfall.  Sayyid comes on his trip with nice clothes, money, and seems well off indicating those in the middle east are doing far better than in North America. This makes some of the people he encounters upset but he keeps his options on the Americans to himself. He is a traditionalist and continues to follow his prayer times and faith while on the trip minus a few broken rules. He drank wine and did cocaine with the rock star, Tom Boston.  Sayyid’s thinking towards the American’s often implies that he finds his race superior. He states that American’s are ignorant and shallow minded, believing anything they here. He always discusses how American woman believe that woman of the veil are being subjected to dress for men but American woman dress in a way that will create sexual lust within a men so isn’t that basically the same thing? I think he had an interesting point there but I do not completely agree. At the end of the essay Sayyid respects Tom Boston but still believes Americans are close-minded and that his faith and beliefs are the ones everyone should comply with, which is ironic because now he sounds close minded.

UPDATE: Hearing from the point of view of my fellow classmates I've realized i missed somethings while reading the story. In "That Only a Mother" I didn't realize that the husband is very likely to kill his baby and that might be why the mother didn't mention it but I still believe she was in denial and somewhat delusional. In "We See Things Differently" It makes sense that Tom Boston is the president and they used rock music to bring the country together, pump them up for change, and that's why he was such a threat to other nations.