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Science Fictions (CONTROL (Kindred by Octavia Butler (Topics (novel is not…
Science Fictions
CONTROL
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Arrival 
SUMMARY: A linguist named Louise attempts to learn the language of aliens that have landed on earth in order to understand their purpose. Their "voices" are very different from humans and the sounds cannot be replicated. Louise discovers that the aliens have a written language and a spoken language, but they are not related to each other. The extremely complicated written language has incredible detail and lacks direction of order, so it is almost impossible to understand. Louise comes to believe that the Heptapods have a different understanding of time than humans do, and that they can see time simultaneously. The film keeps jumping back to Louise's daughter's life and eventual death from a disease. 
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Kindred by Octavia Butler 
SUMMARY: In 1976, a black woman named Dana is transported to the antebellum south, with no control of the situation. While there, she saves the white son of a plantation owner named Rufus. She ends up going back to 1976 and then into the past again several times, with each trip becoming longer and more dangerous. She discovers that Rufus is the father of one of her ancestors, and she must make sure Rufus is safe to ensure her own existence.
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Race
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
CONNECTIONS
"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.
The Twilight Zone, "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" 
Summary: The people living on Maple Street lose power, and the whole town panics as everything begins to start malfunctioning, A young boy puts the idea in the heads of the people that aliens are among them, and the street ends up paranoid and begins to destroy itself. It turns out that aliens were behind it all along, but all they had to do was cause paranoia and the people of Maple Street took themselves out
This episode primarily focuses on how humans take things too far all on their own, and they don't need someone else to wipe them out because they are capable of it themselves
CONNECTIONS
"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.
WHAT MAKES US HUMAN?
Battlestar Gallactica 
SUMMARY: the two part 2003 mini series is about a futuristic world in which humans have created incredibly realistic robots called Cylons to be their workers, but they have become so advanced that you can't distinguish them from humans. The Cylons decide to come back to incorporate themselves into human life in order to gain access to their defense systems. A war breaks out between the humans and the Cylons that are trying to destroy them. The problem is that anyone can be a Cylon. The ship Battlestar Gallactica is the only ship without networking, so it the the only one that is not under Cylon control.
TOPICS
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 
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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
CONNECTIONS
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
ART
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel 
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
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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
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Networks
The novel can be viewed as a series of short stories that can be independent, but they all come together
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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.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 
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
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick 
SUMMARY: In the year 2021, a world war has wiped out most species and made many humans leave the planet. Real animals are highly valued, but if the remaining people on Earth can't afford one, they buy electronic animals instead. In addition to animals, the emigrants on Mars built incredibly realistic androids that became so sophisticated that they couldn't be distinguished from real humans. The bounty hunter Rick Deckard has to track down several androids, and in the process questions his own beliefs about contributions to society and what makes someone human.
CONNECTIONS
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.’”
Technology
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.
Religion
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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
Ex Machina 
SUMMARY: Caleb is a programmer at an internet company that wins a contest that gives him the opportunity to spend a week at the estate of his company's brilliant CEO. When he gets there, he finds out that he has been selected to be a part of a test that determines the capabilities and consciousness of a beautiful robot named Ava. Caleb begins to develop emotions for Ava, and neither men realize just how smart and deceptive Ava really is.
Technology
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.
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"Science Fiction is 'What If Literature' because it shows things not as they are but as they might be, and for this 'might be' the author must offer a rational, serious consistent explanation, one that does not (in Samuel Delany's phrase) offend against what is known to be known." -Joanna Russ
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