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Science Fictions (CONTROL (Kindred by Octavia Butler (Topics (novel is not…

- - - - Future perfect tense of the life of Louise's daughter: Louise talks about her daughter in the tense that implies that her daughter has not been born yet. This is an incredibly interesting technique used by Chaing, and its meaning is only understood when Louise's relationship with time is understood.
      - Free Will
        
        The Book of Ages: The book that tells what the future will be is impossible unless no one is able to read it
        
        The existence of free will means that the future cannot be known. We determine our own futures, and knowing what that will be eliminates our ability control anything
        
        Louise knows the future and that her daughter will die in a rock climbing accident, but she chooses to not prevent it. Is this because she can't change it or because she understands the bigger picture and that it needs to happen that way?
    - - The film Arrival is based on Chaing's short story
      - The Word for World is Forest: There is a "gift exchange" in the story between the humans and the Heptapods. Once Louise understands time in this new way, she cannot go back to her old sequential understanding.
  - - - In comparison with Chaing's short story, the movie is much less focused on the differences between the Heptapod written language and the spoken language
      - Time/free will factor
        
        The movie decides to change the death of Louise's daughter from a rock climbing accident to a disease.
        
        This eliminates the issue of whether or not Louise had the free will to stop the death from happening and why she wouldn't prevent it.
        
        This reduces Louise's control to just being a question of whether or not she should've still had the child, not whether or not she had the free will to prevent her death.
      - The movie is much more focused on international conflict
      - In the movie, the Heptapods tell the humans that in 3000 years, they will need the help of the humans. In the short story, and explanation for their "arrival" is not given,
  - - - Actual violence vs. screen violence: seeing violence in person makes it so much more real. You have to truly experience violence in order to understand the horror of it
      - Agency: control over one's actions/body/life. Dana lacks agency throughout the story, being transported through time with no control over the situation
      - Dependency: we are all connected to our past. Dana depends on the rape of her ancestor in order to exist
    - - The text focuses on the connections between race in the past and in the future. Although the extreme violence of the past is no longer an issue, the novel argues that racism is still a major issue in 1976 in work place and social interactions
      - Interracial relationships (Kevin and Dana) creates tension with families and coworkers, even in 1976
    - - "Story of Your Life:" The topic of agency. Kindred deals with how Dana has no control over the time travel in her life, in a similar way to how Louise in "Story of Your Life" seems to not have control over the fate of her daughter.
      - The Time Machine: Both texts are centered around time travel, although The Time Machine is more focused on the logistics of time travel and the future and Kindred focuses more on the events and the past.
  - - - "There Will Come Soft Rains:" Both this episode and the short story carry the message that humans are perfectly capable of wiping themselves out. In this episode, the people of Maple Street go crazy and destroy themselves. Although Bradbury's short story is much less humorous and more eerie, it has a similar message that humans will wipe themselves out, but in the form of a nuclear bomb.
- - - - Human creations becoming more intelligent than humans: the dangers of advanced technology. The Cylons decide to destroy their own creators
      - Immortality: the idea of knowledge being transferred to another body. The Cylons aren't afraid to die because their "brains" will just be passed to another Cylon model if they are destroyed. Because of this, humans can never really destroy the Cylons
      - BIBLICAL CONNECTION: ADAM AND EVE
        
        Gaias Baltar and #6.
        
        Gaias is seduced by 6 which allows the Cylons to gain access to the human defense system
        
        This closely resembles the story of Adam and Eve, where Adam is seduced by Eve and eats fruit from the forbidden tree, causing the downfall of man
    - - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: The television mini series is based on this novel. Both explore the idea of technology becoming too advanced and rebelling against their creators
      - Ex Machina: "sexy lady robots." Both the movie and this television series explore the ability for human-like female robots to be able to use sexual appearance to convince men that they are human or can have true emotion and affection
  - - - SUMMARY: In a complex intertwining of lives and time, the novel moves back and forth between the time before the outbreak of the Georgia Flu and after when 99.99% of the population is dead. Kristin Raymonde is a young woman twenty years after the flu broke out, but she remembers small pieces of the old world. She lives on the move with a group of performers called the traveling symphony that value sharing art above safety and comfort. It is discovered that one piece of art unites all the major characters in the book, past and present.
      - CONNECTIONS
        
        Never Let Me Go: Art is highly valued to the characters in both stories. The ability to produce art and be creative are what makes people human
        
        "Survival is insufficient"
        
        Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: Religion plays an important part in both novels. Mercerism is a religion (cult) that drives the actions of characters in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and the Prophet is a major character in Station Eleven that gathers followers to his cult.
      - The importance of Art: the traveling symphony believes in keeping art alive after the apocalypse. They believe that art is what makes a person human
      - Time
        
        The novel resists linearity and easy causality
        
        Networks
        
        The novel can be viewed as a series of short stories that can be independent, but they all come together
        
        All of the stories and characters regardless of time form an extremely complicated web
        
        The novel goes back and forth between focusing on networks as a whole and the individual people that make them up. It elevates the world over any individual character, but the world can only be understood through the individual stores of sever different people.
    - - SUMMARY: Three children named Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy grow up at a boarding school called Hailsham in the English countryside. The students are special from the very beginning, and it is later discovered that they are all clones and are being raised to remove their vital organs. As the three of them grow up, they have to face the fact that their life path is chosen for them and that they will die very young.
      - Narration
        
        Very matter of fact: Kathy knows that she is going to die, but it is unsettling how calm she is about the concept
        
        The Hailsham students have a very childlike feel to them. They identify themselves by first name and last initial (e.g. Kathy H.)
      - The Importance of Art
        
        We learn from the beginning of the novel, we learn that art has great importance at Hailsham
        
        Some of the clones get the idea of this thing called a deferral, which would push back the donations a few years if two people were truly in love
        
        Tommy's theory: the art at Hailsham was collected in order to determine if two people's souls matched up, which would determine if they really were in love.
        
        Tommy and Kathy go to see Madame to ask about a deferral, and they find Miss Emily there too. They find out that there is no such thing as a deferral, and there is no hope for them
        
        "You said it was because your art would reveal what you were like. What you were like inside. That's what you said, wasn't it? Well, you weren't far wrong about that. We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all." -Miss Emily
      - Are they human?
        
        By showing the humanity of these clones from the beginning, the ethics of the whole situation are extremely flawed. The clones are humans and do not deserve the death that is waiting for them
        
        The clones are artistic. They feel, they love, and they dream about the future. They are human beings, just with paths already decided for them
      - CONNECTIONS
        
        Station Eleven: art is extremely important to the concept of being human
  - - - Never Let Me Go: In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Rick reflects on how even though the androids might not be human by human definition, it might not be right to kill them off. He believes that these androids can make valuable contributions to society, which is evident in his reaction after Luba Luft's death. This relates to Never Let me Go because in that novel, the difference between the "humans" and the "clones" is so small, and the ethics of killing them when they could have valuable contributions to society is explored.
        
        “’I’m getting out of this business…I can’t anymore; I’ve had enough. She was a wonderful singer. This planet could have used her. This is insane.’”
    - - The novel touches on the dependency on technology and how this can be dangerous. The humans had technology so advanced with these androids that the intelligence of their creations began to surpass them, and they rebelled.
      - Can these androids actually think and feel, or are they programmed to act like they can? Some are even programmed to not know that they're androids.
    - - Mercerism: The character of Mercer is a Christ figure in the novel
      - Mercer walks up a hill while he is being stoned, and through empathy boxes, his followers can feel his pain with him.
      - Mercer is defrauded by Buster Friendly, but the religion is still a prominent part of the novel. Almost all characters in the story rely on Mercer and the empathy boxes to feel something
  - - - Nathan, the CEO, tries to play God and develops and incredibly intelligent human-like robot. Eva knows that Nathan will eventually "kill" her and replace her with a better model, so she decides to try to break out, and deceives Caleb in order to do it
      - This is a warning against the dangers of technology that becomes too advanced to control. Eva had the ability to hack into Nathan's entire system, which allowed her to escape.
      - CONNECTIONS
        
        Battlestar Gallactica and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: All three stories are warnings against technology becoming too advanced and the danger of letting technology seduce humans into taking it too far.
- - - - SUMMARY: The humans invade the planet Athshe and take over the Athshean people, forcing them to do their manual labor and using the women for sex. After the destruction of their home and extreme oppression, led by Selver the Athsheans finally retaliate against the humans, which goes completely against their peaceful nature. Although they are successful at driving off the invaders, this violence that has been introduced into their lives destroys the humanity and peaceful foundation of society.
      - LOSS OF INNOCENCE
        
        "There is no pretending now, that we do not know how to kill one another."
        
        "You gave me a gift, the killing of one's kind, murder. Now, as well as I can, I give you my people's gift, which is not killing."
        
        The murder culture of the humans and the peaceful culture of the Athsheans are referred to as "gifts" in the novel. The gift of the humans is a bad one that will forever destroy the foundation of Athshean humanity
        
        Once the Athsheans decide to kill their human oppressors, they have a new knowledge and understanding of what they are capable of. Once they lose their innocence and introduce the idea of killing into their society, it is something that cannot be removed.
        
        The Garden of Eden story found in Genesis:
        
        The first sin leads to the fall of man
        
        Adam and Eve have the knowledge of sin and what it is, and once they have it they can never return back to their original state of innocence.
        
        Once the Athsheans acquire this knowledge about killing, it will forever be a part of their society no matter how badly they want it to return to normal
  - - - The Word for World is Forest: It is essentially the same story about humans invading a planet and oppressing the people and destroying their home. They have to adapt and experience great loss in order to protect their society, but they will never be the same again.
  - - - SUMMARY: The short story takes place August of 2026 after an atomic bomb has killed everyone. A "smart house" continues to function despite the fact that its residents are no longer alive to need its programming. The whole story is incredibly eerie, with the voice of the house talking to its inhabitants that are no longer alive.
      - "...And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done. Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, If mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn Would scarcely know that we were gone." -"There Will Come Soft Rains " by Sara Teasdale
        
        The Sara Teasdale poem that the short story is named after supports the message that Bradbury is trying to convey. If mankind ceased to exist, nature would move on without it and humans would not be missed.
      - CONNECTIONS
        
        The Time Machine: Humans are responsible for their own downfall because they become too advanced. Technology becomes too powerful and leads to the downfall of humanity. In the case of The Time Machine, humans rely on technology and advancement so much that they lose their intelligence. In "There Will Come Soft Rains, the use of this technology is what destroys all human life.
    - - SUMMARY: A man referred to as "The Time Traveller" at a dinner party tells the story of how he travelled through time to the distant future using the time machine that he built. While in the future, he discovers two races known as the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi are peaceful and unintelligent vegetarian creatures while the Morlocks are smarter and carnivorous. He manages to narrowly escape the Morlocks and finds his time machine, and he decides to go farther into the future to find nothing but giant crabs and a dying sun. He returns to his dinner party to tell his story and then leaves again, never to return.
      - THOUGHTS ON HUMAN INTELLECT: The Time Traveller makes the claim in the novel that human intellect has "committed suicide." He argues that challenges are what allow intelligence to exist, and when comfort is reached and adaptation is no longer required, intelligence will deteriorate.
        
        ELOI VS MORLOCKS: The novel makes it clear that the Morlocks are much more intelligent than the Eloi. The Eloi in the story are the "upper class" that did not have to work or struggle for survival. Because of this satisfied and comfortable state, they ended up losing their intelligence. The Morlocks were the working class that had to struggle to survive, so they retained much more intelligence than the Eloi. Wells is critiquing society in this way
      - DEGENERATION THEORY: As the Time Traveller moves further and further into the future, the world becomes much darker and life deteriorates until it dies out. The degeneration theory is the idea that evolution is reversible, and after it peaks it will regress. This is a very pessimistic and eerie view of the future.
      - CONNECTIONS
        
        *Word For World is Forest: The Eloi closely resemble the Athshean people. Both are stagnant and live in comfortable harmony with each other, with no clear power structures. They are essentially helpless against their oppressors because they live a life of too much comfort and don't know how to defend themselves.
        
        "There Will Come Soft Rains;" Both stories have a very pessimistic outlook for the future. They tell us that humans are going to die out as a result of their own doing.
- - - - Future
        
        "Eons from even our own moon, we'll drift In the haze of space, which will be, once And for all, scrutable and safe."
        
        "The oldest among us will recognize that glow–but the word sun will have been re-assigned"
      - Past
        
        "The dinosaurs gave way to mounds and mounds of ice"
  - - - "We are the characters who have invaded the moon"
      - Science Fiction is no longer Science Fiction as we know it
        
        "The genre is dead. Invent something new. Invent a man and a woman, naked in a garden..."
        
        The world at it's beginning, before all of the scientific advancements, is what is now Science Fiction. Simplicity is what seems unreachable and implausible to us now.
      - "We are the gods who can unmake the world in seven days"