Novel Responses

    The Belonging Kind is a discussion of what makes us human. The man who thinks of himself as out of place in every scenario- who's clothes are always wrong and off putting stalks a normal woman. She is clearly not human, she does not need to eat, does nothing but go to bars and clubs, and can change form. Even though the main character sees her as the most normal person, she is in constant change. The obvious thing to take from this piece is that she is the opposite of human and as the main character fits in more and more into her world-becomes more natural and more human- he physically becomes less human. To  make this accomplishment he must entirely abandon his old job and way of living. Everything about him literally changes to appear  human.         What I find so interesting about this cyberpunk piece is that it is set in a modern- or at least very average everyday world. Where the things that go wrong are overlooked or avoided or accepted as a

     James Tipree Jr's And I Awoke and found me here not he Hill's side takes place in a loading/unloading area with a bar in it- in a future where the universe is riddles with all different and communicated Aliens and Alien planets. The older man in the story appears to be an older version of the main character. They discuss the amount of work it takes only to get this far out into space. How much education, money, work, and degrees it takes only to clean and do maintenance in a relatively close section of space. It seems humans in this world put all this effort and money and time into these degrees to get these jobs just so they can see aliens. It almost seems as a drug or an addiction- as if someone could be addicted to something without ever having even seen it before. They talk about humanities need to capture everything different and yet the argument is that its too much. That all of the aliens are so different that its overwhelming. That humans no longer have anything s

      What I find so intriguing in the Witchcraft comics is the all powerful woman goddess rebels against some stereotypes and society-derived attributes of women, and some they claim to inhabit. At one point the three who are one appear in a building or home that seems to be their’s. Whether imagined or not, the room they appear in is a kitchen. They are their coven are of medicines and foods and beauty. While there may be an argument for medicine, as long ago herbalists and naturalist feminine doctors were seen as mystical and powerful, and therefore evil and dangerous. The field itself considered risky. While now, medicine interpreted as doctors and scientists is widely dominated and controlled by men, has no negative connotation whatsoever. However, all three of these, medicine, food making, and beauty are not so naturally feminine icons, as much as they are things expected of women. I found it interesting that the goddess embodied and embraced these realistic attributes and no ot

         Whats interesting is this initial concept of having left earth to escape enslavement from their own species. A clear symbolism for slavery, Blood Child discusses forced, expected, and socially normal families and marriages of humans to aliens. The discussion is if you are a slave but your master is a loving benevolent one, is it any better? Through the piece the family is easy and comfortable around t'choi but it is clear through their constant re-stating that it is only because they were raised with her there and were told that this is the norm. It is a system of being born into something and never knowing or experiencing the other side. They are still in a preserve and treated and traded like rare animals. They may  be loved but their purpose- the only reason they are protected in their little cage, is to breed for the aliens. They have little to no free will and if one of the aliens wished them to do something they would have no choice but to do it. The mother of the ma

Octavia Butler's 'Kindred' and Science Fiction    In a sense you can say science fiction struggles with representation (specifically accurate representation) but I feel that we see diversity having more to do with the writers than the genre as a whole. Which isn't to say science fiction as a whole does or has not changed over time, but its not so simple as the same old writers simple changing their minds. Its a common thought that writing feels more real when it comes from first hand personal experiences or emotions.  In the case of Kindred, this was not a white person making the conscious choice to research and write about a woman of color. This was a woman of color writing about a clearly, very emotional journey of her own. The discussion of race covers drawn out socially acceptable abuse toward a specific group and how it cultivates a culture of silent victims. The main character sees herself become subdued and compliant as she is forced to spend more time on a th

   The two main characters of The Night Circus are extremely interesting cases of very different childhoods resulting in a similar adulthood. Celia Bowen, after having being dubbed a girl of the devil by her mother is crudely taught magic by her father and paraded around until she is no longer young and cute. After she is older her father stops teaching her so regularly and commonly abandons or forgets her in different places that they stay in. He demands that she use magic for every mundane or simple test -no matter how small- so that she can keep up her magic. In order to teach her healing magic he slices her finger tips over and even breaks her hand. He forces her to work at a job she doesn't like and is continuously judging her performance and actions regarding her "game" with Marco. Marco, on the other hand, was an orphan who was adopted by a magician specifically for the purpose of training him so he can compete in and win this "game" with Celia. Marco is