Week 14: Douglas Adams - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Sci-Fi Satire

No matter how many times I’ve read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and it has been MANY times now, it never fails in inducing endless laughter, joy and nostalgia. To me, it was a childhood staple.  Before I was even old enough to read I was quoting this book, though I didn't didn't know that that was what I was doing, because my Uncle David was always going around saying things like, "Don't forget your towel" or "Don't panic" or "There's a frood who knows where his towel is at". Beneath the surface of utter hilarity, Adams used sarcasm and wit to make some rather poignant statements about life and the manner in which we are going about living it. This is one reason the book is so appropriate for multiple readings. You will understand things you did not the first time around because of the author’s subtle, ideas and approach to writing. One brilliant thing that Adams does is to step away from the action every so often to present interesting facts about the universe as recorded in the Hitchhiker's Guide; here we learn about Vogon poetry, the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, Trans Galactic Gargle Blasters, and other intriguing pieces about life in the wild universe Adams created. He even gives the reader the ultimate answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything in between. I love Douglas Adams' writing style. The sort of heavy handed, matter-of-factly way that he describes things, and can go off in tangents to describe something in detail is very interesting. I don't know of another author who would so abruptly interrupt the story of the two main protagonists stuck in an alien spaceship to describe in full detail the mechanization and theory of the fish they put in their ears to understand alien language.

Week 13: Margaret Atwood - Oryx andCrake

Literary Speculation

The novel takes place in the distant future, where global warming has changed the Earth as we knew it. The concept of the world as we know it ending and starting a new seems so plausible and like it could happen at any moment. The way this book is set up was very intriguing. By starting in the middle of the story and working in back story and leading up to where they started kept it interesting. Throughout the whole book I was kept on the edge of my seat wondering how things got this way. I really felt like I was there with Jimmy experiencing what he was experiencing, trying to work through and understand what is happening and trying to understand how it all relates to his past. What I found most important was how introspective I became while reading about the human race and the damage that we have done to our planet. I find the different concepts and studies of humans as a whole and the problems with our species to be very interesting and this book definitely highlighted many concepts and ideas that I have thought about in the past and presented them in new ways.  I found that Oryx and Crake really pushes one to think about how how own futures could be. I thought that Oryx and Crake was an amazing read and a great look at a post-apocalyptic future.

Week 12: Octavia Butler - Lillith's Brood

Diverse Position Science Fiction

The novel deals with the idea of being an alien in the sense that it tries to determine what makes a species that “other” group of people, meaning what is it that causes that dividing line of us and them.  To do so the novel has to explore the idea behind what it means to be human and what it means to be alien.

The novel also explores the relationship between humans and aliens with the consensus being that their relationship is one of a slave and master relationship. I found this to be an interesting point within the story because it reflects typical human-to-human interactions as well. For extended periods of time within our own history humanity has treated “others” or people that are different in a subservient manner. We see this parallel time and time again in the case of Native Americans and also with the enslavement of native African peoples. So reading this part in the novel I found this to be an interesting connection because that seems to be a trend in the way “otherness” is dealt with.  

Another important thing to note in this series is that Oankali alien race has taken over the human race deeming them unfit to rule themselves after they almost massacred themselves in an all out nuclear war. The Oankali are essentially genetic manipulators and when they “adopted” the human race they began to reconstruct their genetic code to reflect that of their captives, the idea being that soon they would create a new species that was uniquely Oankali and human and thereby destroy the human race all together. This aspect of the novel reminds me yet again of historical concepts, this one being the idea behind Manifest Destiny,the once wide spread belief that it is America’s right to expand their territorial holds and shape the world within their image. This series reminds me of this particular aspect of history in that the alien race felt the need to take over the struggling earth and rather than just help them rebuild their planet restructures them in their own image quite literally. While that may not be the underlining theme of the series, colonization is the one that sticks out to me the most as an apparent theme, intentional or otherwise. I think having a historical basis that the audience can identify helps ground this book in reality and gives the reader a tangible notion by which to base the book.

Week 11: Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash

Cyberpunk & Steampunk

My first impression of this book is that it reads like something a teenager would write about his kooky adventures as an unsung hero. I don’t mean that in a negative way, by any means, because I think it was intended to be read sort of like that. I think it gives off that vibe because of the severe lack of pronouns and also the fact that the protagonist of the story, “the deliverator” is amped up to be this superb hero despite the fact that pizza delivery boy isn’t the best of job descriptions. I think the fact that it’s written like that made the book all the more interesting to me. For one, it was grounded in a reality. I semi understood it and it was mildly humorous so it caught my attention, whereas most sci-fi novels don’t typically do that for me.  I enjoyed traipsing through this new found world and exploring the decline of cultures and societies and seeing how they rebuilt themselves, for instance Kong bucks because the inflation of the dollar was so profound, which kind of reminds me of the Bitcoin of today. I think it was an interesting take on the world if businesses were allowed to be on the same footing as government. All in all I would say it was a very clever novelization.