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 weird thing in a weird world. Ignored by those who want to ignore them. The Penumbra Podcast in similar in this way. Though it takes place on Mars- nothing else about the placement of the story is strange. In a grundy old city riddled with corruption and crime- the only clear differences are that guns are lasers and you can't go outside the living area unless you want to be fried. Here each martian seems to blame their city or the people of mars for the turn out of the city. Main Character, private detective Juno Steel appears at first as a cliche Film Noir detective but it becomes obvious with the brilliant characterization of the characters, that he's just another person living in the city. The world and its problems feel so familiar that when a small, subtle interruption is thrown into it we as the reader notice it immediately and direct all of our attention to it. A crime in penumbra may start with apartment tenants suddenly being charged more and evicted of their homes, or corrupt police working with gangs in the area but sometimes not all crimes are what they seem. The long dead ancient martian race seems to have left some things behind and there seems to only be one person who knows what any of it is for- if only she’d stop stealing it all for herself.Both stories hold some interesting portrayals of an average person living in a city and the seemingly normal to very very wrong occurrences and people that they meet and even sometimes become.
We see new weird unabashedly taking on current and controversial issues. We look at China Mieville's "Polynia" which discusses the early like of a boy growing up in London after something extraordinary happens. Enormous and very real ice bergs float over London on a horizontal plane in the sky. Though they tend to make the ground colder wherever they pass over, they seem to face no threat other than dropping the occasional small piece of ice on the land below. Enormous pieces break off but continue to float on their horizontal suspension. Through the boy's research we learn that all over the world other things are happening. In Brazil coral thought to be extinct now grows out of water on all of the government buildings. In Japan the undergrowth of the rainforest takes over and destroys factories. All over the world it seems that countries who have destroyed enormous natural creations are now being plagued by their reoccurring presence. Another of Mieville’s “Covehith
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