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Science Fictions (Aliens and others (Word for World is Forest ("…

- - - - "The Word for World is Forest" examines colonialism with its conflict between the humans and an alien race of noble savages. Eventually to prevent their own doom these aliens must corrupt themselves and become more human like to fight back. This can also be seen as an example of how hierarchies force us to change to climb them.
        
        Classifying another group as "other" or inferior is used in both books as justification for mistreatment. Separation is used to raise the self or in-group above the other.
        
        The native species must change the story they tell about themselves to be able to fight off the more savage humans. Illustrating how societies affect the things they tell of one another.
        
        "You cannot take things that exist in the world and drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity. What is, is. There is no use pretending , now that we do not know how to kill one another" (189)
      - Kindred uses time travel to examine how past injustice affects the present, but also to how hierarchies shift and change those caught in them as Diana finds herself giving into the expectations of her in the pre-civil war south as a black women and with each trip back loses more power over the boy she rescues as the society he is in changes him more and more.
        
        Even in oppressive societies and structures people still give in to the story that society is telling. How Rufus and Diana are shaped by the times and societies they inhabit.
  - - - Perhaps the ability to see the future would lead us to wish to create it. We seek to create the story that fate lays out for us.
        
        Language has story telling power and depending on how it is conceived it can tell stories in different manners. Chronologically or perhaps as a web showing all events inter-related both in past in present.
  - - - The others in this space opera represent various people and ideas outside of his understanding as he hasn't managed to mature enough to understand him. From his housekeeper an alien agent representative of adolescence to a robot intended to represent his older brother he is trying to live up to.
        
        "Fooly Cooly" explores the idea of using aliens and AI to reflect back on ourselves in new interesting ways as the unknown in space becomes the unknown in our lives and perhaps the unknown in our lives is even scarier. A coming of age story where girls are alien both metaphorically and literally.
  - - - Positive exploration of scientific progress and the positive aspects of sci-fi
- - - - Androids are a threat to humanity existentially or physically. Used as a tool to examine human short coming in the present. A superior other.
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      - Androids bring into question if humans are special. Our ability to empathize allows us to be part of Mercerism. The androids are purely materialistic beings and disprove Mercerism literally, but also force us to question because of how much they seem like real people. Are we really special.
        
        Androids with free will and dreams brings into question the story humans tell about themselves as special and meaningful as beings capable of empathy who can partake in Mercer's struggle.
        
        Androids, Cylon, and Humans all tell stories and assign value to things to determine how we move through the universe. # #
        
        We know modern AI needs a value system to know how to direct itself and move through the world. AI needs stories just like humans.
  - - - The people of the Galactica also eventually do this without realizing it. After their loss to the Androids they find themselves thrown into chaos and their captains creates a story by making up a fictional planet carrying a lost tribe of their race "Earth"
        
        This is a new story to drive them forward after the end of their previous ones. Ultimately leading to a conflict between the two forces as both androids and Cylons tell stories about themselves that are in conflict.
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  - - - These stories help keep the clones under control. They never attempt to escape as it is easier to simply follow these stories than question the underpinnings of their lives. Illustrating how the stories commonly held in our societies can control and affect us.
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- - - - This net of human relations and short stories reflects that the story's characters are telling these stories about themselves not as narrators, but as people. "Station Eleven" is ultimately a book about the stories we tell about ourselves. #
        
        "The bullet would sever his spinal cord still 25 years away but already approaching: A woman giving birth to a child who will someday pull the trigger on a gun, a designer sketching a weapon or its precursor, a dictator making a decision that will spark in a fullness of time into the conflagration that Frank will go overseas to cover for Reuters," (191)
        
        "Station Eleven" illustrates how these stories we tell ourselves ultimately shape our lives and also our society. The destruction of the most of the human race illustrates this as society collapses as soon as some of those stories disappear.
      - Arts, theatre, and acting play a large role in "Station Eleven" as art is required by humanity as we need inspiration for the stories we tell ourselves. In a world in chaos these stories give us structure.
  - - - We as people must be careful about the stories we tell about ourselves, our countries, and our ideologies as they can move us to destruction and violence.
  - - - Every member of the crew of the Bebop is in someway attempting to make sense of their past. All the members have had some great tragedy occur in their past that has destroyed the narrative they were telling about themselves and now they must find closure with their past and redefine their purpose as to begin a new narrative. #
        
        This is why the shows science fiction setting is important as the crew often find themselves aimlessly drifting through space. A physical comparison to their mental states as the search for new purpose.
        
        Finally at the shows conclusion Spike risks his life to get closure about his past despite stating himself he does not want to. While at first appearing honor bound it is more likely it was a way for him to finally reach a real ending for the story in his past that was ended to soon by tragedy.
- - - - Science fiction is used to speculate about the consequences of present injustice, but also to highlight past injustices affect on the present.