Seems like it’ll start being a semester update. I really do need to clean up my writing and write from the personal more. I took a science fiction class (or “speculative fiction”, as the prof likes to call it) and it was exhilarating and  eye opening. It had less to do with fantastical worlds of make-believe and more about the disturbing similarities between our present world and the not so unbelievable dystopian novels . I’m inspired by the attention to detail, the little efforts people place into their creations, to flesh out their characters and situation to a vivid reality. The diligent reader will notice these details. And we do all of these things, writings, art, photography for our own well being and maybe to snap the public out of a state of disavowal. We are nothing without our creations, and our creations are nothing without us. (Lifted shamelessly from Children of Men).

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“Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene form midair. In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature- or more like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organisms. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city’s moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding.”

With that, we are quietly submerged into the hours “after dark” in a sketchy amusement district in Japan. We follow the paths of Mari, Takahashi, Eri, and various other people who come awake in the night time. As night settles into its rhythmic slumber, these strangers meet and disperse, coming together to unburden their dark secrets onto each other. Family problems, youthful discontent with the world, a sister who won’t wake up, a brutally assaulted prostitute. Along with the dark secrets of the past that float to the surface and the angsty tension of young adults, there are witty banters and thoughtful dialogues. Between these exchanges are the grotesque happenings of Eri’s slumber as she slips alternately between reality and the trappings of television. Only under these circumstances do these people from various backgrounds come together and when light arrives, the memories of the night fade along with the shadows. Murakami is subtle, rhythmic, and absolutely mesmerizing in his writing, painting a dark wondrous portrait of the night.

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The Island of Dr. Moreau


 “And even it seemed that I, too, was not a reasonable creature, but only an animal tormented with some strange disorder in its brain, that sent it to wander alone…” 

The Island of Dr. Moreau displays the Victorian fear of vivisection as the burgeoning of the science of biology began in this time period (mid 1800s). As theories ideas of man as the top of the evolutionary ladder begin to crumble, Wells explores the horrifying experiments conducted by Moreau to “speed up” evolution by attempting to turn beasts into men. The island is a feeble attempt to create a society of beasts turned into men, and flimsy rules are created to keep the beastmen from reverting back to their primal selves. Perhaps it is a critique on no matter how much humans believe themselves above the instinctual nature of beasts, we still create laws to keep us from falling into these very desires. In Dr. Moreau’s attempt to create men, he has shown that we are all beasts at the core.

R.U.R

A three part play by Czechoslovakian author Karel Capek, this is the play that coined the word “robot”. R.U.R, standing for “Rossum’s Universal Robots” illustrates the human desire to create human replacements in the labor force. Domin’s belief is that in creating robots to do our work, all humans can live in a state of aristocracy and leisure. But we all know that all aristocracies fall. Domin’s girl, Helene, takes pity on the emotionless robots and convinces an engineer to give robots a soul. With the soul robots essentially become more effective humans, angry that they have been made into slaves. As the last people on earth, Domin, Helen and a few others are kept alive only to give the robots the secret of creating more of their own. R.U.R is an anti-utopian play that shows the faulty and devastating belief in creating an entire population to serve as slaves.  R.U.R. is a fast and interesting read.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

 The book that inspired Blade Runner, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  questions what  ”human” really means and whether or not it can be quantified. In an alternate world in which WWIII has demolished Earth and most humans have recolonized on Mars, only a few humans still remain on earth: the police force to “retire” androids who have escaped from their slavery on Mars, and humans deemed too affected by the radioactive dust to be allowed on Mars. Rick Deckard, the premier officer who retires androids, uses an empathy test to determine who is android and who is human. The binary between human and machine is dispelled as Philip Dick explores the nebulous grey space between human and android and shows us how our “humanity” is truly irreducible.

The Parable of the Sower

Octavia Butler, the first African American womyn writer in science fiction, deserves a little recognition. The Parable of the Sower is a dystopian novel written about another end-of-the-world scenario. Unlike other dystopian novels in which the world ends in a fiery of apocalypse, the setting of this novel is brought about in a steady, slow decline of society. In a state of environmental disaster and economic catastrophe the people of the suburbs have created a giant gated wall to keep out others who raid, murder, and steal from gated communities like theirs. Lauren, our main protagonist, suffers from a condition called “hyper empathy”, in which she experiences another perceived person’s feelings, good or bad. She writhes in arousal when she senses her friends having sex and feels the pain of her friends’ gunshot wounds. Her weakness gives her the awareness and extra caution needed to survive the destruction of her community as she creates her own travelling group of friends, heading North to rumored safer areas. The novel documents her travels and her navigation through the destroyed earth, constantly on guard of her belongings and the safety of her companions. What keeps her going is her idea of “Earthseed” and the hope that she can one day plant this idea and recolonize on Mars since Earth is so irreversibly destroyed by humanity.

     Butler writes simply and honestly, creating a compelling story and a critique we can’t ignore, a hypocrisy in which keeping ourselves safe while keeping others out only puts us in greater danger. It serves as a projection of our future state if  we continue our exclusionary practices to only serve ourselves. Lauren’s “condition” is something we could all use as humans, a much needed trait for our increasingly apathetic and selfish world.

Perdido Street Station

I write this totally unbiased review based not on China Mieville’s stunningly bad boy looks and totally rad political stance (Marxist) but in full appreciation of the novel he has written. In a bold redefinition of “fantasy”, this steampunk novel is prominently anti-Tolkien. What does that mean? It means the destruction of the easily categorized good and evil in a nostalgic world of Tolkien in which we can discern the good from the bad by the color of their clothes. Rather than using the traditional fantastical setting of medieval times, placing hobbits and elves in beautiful rolling hills of the Shire and Sauron far far away in some volcano, good and evil are mixed in the dirty world of Bas-Lag. Grime and corruption is physically evident in the city of New Crobuzon, where crime and the government are intricately interconnected. As punishment for crimes, the government enforces the reconstruction of humans and animals, creating a whole host of grotesque creatures that extend beyond our imaginations. In a crime for a woman murdering her baby, her baby’s arms are grafted on her face so she will never forget her actions. Prostitutes are remade for the full pleasure of clientele, and any fetish and perverse desire can be materialized in the red light district. In a city with no sense of origin or solidarity, citizens live in fear of the government and the thugs. With this dark, dreary milieu in mind, imagine the unleashing of conscience eating, multi-dimensional flying monsters called “slake moths” into the city. The city wants to recapture them to continue making a profitable illegal drug called “dreamshit” but our noble protagonist wants to destroy them. Not for any sort of inspirational reason of saving the citizens of New Crobuzon, but because one of those monsters is specifically after him. This sets the pace for the book as our protagonist and his motley crew attempt to bring down these monsters for their own sake.

    Along with this thrilling chase, there are undercurrent themes of the detrimental affects of unregulated capitalism and the commodification of body parts. As people’s body parts can be taken apart and remade, there is no longer a sense of origin or purity in the “whole”. There are only three true humans in the entirety of the story: his girlfriend is half bug and half human, his client is half bird and half human, his lackeys are wrymen, and his assassins are half frogs. Perhaps the creation of all these different creatures and the hierarchy created mirrors the  institutional racism evident in our society. At one point in the novel, the half frogs decide to go on strike and are brutally squashed by the army using tear gas. That sounds way too familiar to our own history to be brushed off as an innocuous event in a fantasy book. China Mieville creates a vibrant tapestry of fascinating characters and interweaves all types of problems present in our society today, exploring new depths in the intersection of the fantasy/horror/sci-fi genre. Instead of getting lost in fantastical escapism in the gritty world of Bas-Lag, we uncomfortably see the injustices in Bas-Lag paralleled in our own world.

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