“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.