Brown Girl in the Ring

Brown Girl in the Ring. I thought it was great. Perfectly strange and an easy read; one of the easiest reads of the semester as far as language goes. 

            I think there are a few morals tucked inside the writing (bravery, making one’s own choices, maybe trusting in the spirits) but the plot is more central to the novel than the ideas. I think this is the exception rather than the norm for the course readings; most of the short stories were idea-driven, with the plot taking a back seat. Of course this may be the case because of the form; maybe short stories are a better medium for idea-based writing than novels. But then again there are books like Utopia, Brave New World, etc.

In an article at http://www.bookslut.com/specfic_floozy/2005_07_005954.php the site author talks about the difficulty of writing a good sf novel that explores the implications of a ‘Big Idea’ while also developing a satisfying story with complex characters. Though there are novels that mesh both goals effectively, it is probably rather more common that one facet shines at the expense of the other. This isn’t necessarily a problem though; not all authors are setting out to do both. I would say Hopkinson was just trying to spin a good yarn, and I say she did it well. With only 247 pages she was able to flesh out the 4 main characters (Ti-Jeanne, Mami, Tony, and Rudy) fairly well. She also managed to weave a lot of crazy supernatural elements into it; I especially liked Jab-Jab. One lament about the plot though: it was interesting to read it unfolding, but it was almost as predictable as a mid-summer romantic comedy. The exception was the relations between the characters; those were neat surprises. But as for the street kids saving them in the subway, the spirits saving her at the end in the CN tower, those climax and mini-climax moments, those were less than shocking un-furlings. Nevertheless, great story.

The street-kids reminded me of Lord of the Flies, which might be considered magical realism like this book I guess. They were my favorite characters. I think they exhibited the good qualities that all the adults were working towards: perseverance, solidarity and co-operation, self sacrifice. They were great characters.

                       

 

Suzette Haden Elgin

Language/Soft SF

The unifying element in this week’s stories was a focus on language, but each dealt with entirely different aspects of it: Phyllis Gottlieb’s Tauf Aleph revolvs around religious language, specifically regarding Judaism’s relation to Hebrew; Suzette Haden Elgin’s For the Sake of Grace builds a world in which Poetry is exalted above all other professions; and Octavia E. Butler’s Speech Sounds examines what the world might look like if we lost our language capabilities.

            Though the treatment of language in each is superficially quite different, in all of the stories it serves first as dividing force (via religious exclusivity in TA, sexism in FTSOG, and between all humans in SS) but in the end becomes a way of bonding or connecting (Zohar with the Cnidari, Jacinth with her aunt Grace and on a larger scale with her family and society, and Rye with the two children). Both of these are at play in life in several different ways; language both unites and divides through its close ties to culture, through jargon and specialized vocabularies (in a given sport, profession, etc), the variations in vocabulary and manner of speaking we employ in engaging a close friend vs. a parent vs. a teacher or boss, and so on.

            In Speech Sounds, Rye’s thoughts imply that what separates us from animals is language; she thinks she doesn’t want to adopt “…children who would grow up to be hairless chimps.” (p.523) Ever since Darwin’s unfortunate postulations, we’ve felt the need to justify and explain our seat at the head of the table, and language capacity has been one of the ways we’ve tried to do so. Though it may have been fashionable for awhile, it is a near-completely discredited idea now; studies in the past few decades of animals from birds to dolphins to apes have revealed that animals have surprisingly complex languages: individuals have unique ways of speaking, localized groups have specific dialects, and many if not most “higher” animals use auditory communication in every situation imaginable. They don’t write poetry or philosophy, but some of them sure can sing.

            For the Sake of Grace seems to be representative of Elgin’s works as a whole. She often writes about feminism and language, and both are central issues in the story. I don’t really understand the reasoning behind why females are permitted to take the poetry exams but none of the others. It seems a bit of a leap to me. They can either be slaves, basically, or be among the most exalted citizens in the land. As is said in the story, there are essentially no women who do successfully become poets, but it still doesn’t make sense to me.

            I liked Tauf Aleph. All of the characters were endearing, even Zohar when he was raging. I found it a light-hearted read, even though there were fairly serious (but not really somber) religious undertones.

Of Tauf Aleph, Gottlieb said that it was her most unusually written one, in the sense that she usually spends large amounts of time writing a story, but this one was written quickly, and has ended up being the most often anthologized and translated.

            Here are some translations of the Hebrew words that appear in the story: (from http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/science_fiction/norton.html#gotlieb)

-     Tauf is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph is the first. (Similarity to     Alpha/Omega, first and last letters of the Greek alphabet)

-         Sol means sun, so Solthree is the third planet from the sun, Earth.

-         The Talmud is a vast, many-volumed commentary on the Jewish scriptures

-         “Pardes” means “orchard,” but also “paradise.” It is often used to refer to the Garden of Eden in the Bible.

-         The Zohar is a Medieval mystical Jewish work, part of the Kabbalah.

-         “Shalom” is “peace,” often used as a greeting in Hebrew

-         The medieval legend of the golem tells how a brilliant rabbi created this monster to take vengeance on the Christians for the sufferings they had caused the Jews. It ran amuck, however, and had to be destroyed by its creator.

-         Kaddish is the ritual prayer said for the dead

-         Baal was a Middle Eastern god, according to the Bible, to whom were sometimes offered children as ritual sacrifices. This practice is identified as among the worst of all sins in some passages.

-         “Clean” foods allowed to Jews are kosher, “unclean,” forbidden foods are tref.

-         A tallith katan is a fringed prayer shawl.

-         The Shema is the central statement of the Jewish faith. It occurs at Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and begins, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.”

-         Mishna is commentary on the Jewish law.

           I’m not sure I fully grasp the meaning of this story. On the surface it seems to be saying that religion is in decline, and is not valued in our culture anymore “we ought to have some old machine good enough for last rights.” (p427) and that robots are going to save religion. Fairly unlikely that this was her message. Maybe she doesn’t have a message.

           While I was thinking about the stories, I noticed that Butler wrote speech sounds in 1983, and I think that is significant. I was thinking about what would happen if today we were to lose our ability to communicate. With computers and video equipment, I think we could stave off the complete destruction of our species. Instead of people writing technical manuals for barbeques and transmissions, we would just transmit everything through images and video recordings. Although it might be difficult to program computers with pictures…

            I noticed before I started reading that all the authors for the week were female. Since the language and soft sci-fi were listed as themes for the week, I did a bit of googling to see if there was any connection between soft sci-fi (apparently its more of a pole or a tendency than a sub-genre) and female authors, but I couldn’t find anything. Though certainly one need not be a scientist to write (hard) sci-fi, I thought the imbalance of professional male scientists have an impact in the realm of writing, but I could find nothing to support that.

Phyllis Gottlieb

Some Brief background info on Phyllis Gottlieb.

 She is a Canadian writer, born 05/1926. Her earliest writings were poetry. According to Fantastic Fiction (website), she is considered by many to be the mother of Canadian science fiction. She was an only child of an owner of movie houses in downtown Toronto. She won the Governor General’s award in 1970 for Ordinary Moving, a book of poetry. Her first novel Sunburst, 1962, was well received, and lent its name to an annual award for a speculative fiction novel, or a novel-length collection of short stories (Nalo Hopkinson won this award in 2003 for her short story collection Skin Folk). Her Starcats series has also been popular, with the first of the series, A Judgment of Dragons, winning the Aurora Award in 1982, and the third, The Kingdom of the Cats being nominated for one. Her 1973 work Son of the Morning was nominated in 1973 for the Nebula award for Best Novella.

            A lot of her books make use of telepathy; “I hope it’s clear that telepathy in my writing is shorthand for understanding and communication.”

            In an interview at http://www.challengingdestiny.com/interviews/gotlieb.htm she was asked if she thought “that the imbalance of men versus women authors at the time impacted [her] at all?.” She replied no. This is the only story of the week that doesn’t involve any element of female oppression, so I found this quote relevant.

           

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/g/phyllis-gotlieb/

http://pages.interlog.com/~ccg/   P.G’s homepage

Comments

I just learned how to approve the comments on my posts…heh….I guess I’m a bit slow on the uptake here.

Hope no one thought I was being a blog-snub;  I’m just incompetent 

Cyberpunk

My favorite aspect of the stories this week was the environments. Aside from Learning about Machine Sex, none of the stories focused much on characters or complex plots; much of the text in each story was devoted to creating nuanced environments. As far as that goes, I think Rat did it best; I liked most of the stories, but Rat was easily my favorite of the week.

Machine Sex was my least favorite. It was terribly depressing. Her cynicism about all sexual relationships being exploitative and cruel doesn’t make for uplifting reading. Writing doesn’t have to infuse us with gilded rays of sunshine, I understand, but there should be some tradeoff in growth or development or some such thing for the hope and dreams that the piece wrenches from our hearts and mangles irreparably. In this case, Candace Jane Dorsey left an enormous gash in my soul, which will forever leak romantic dreams and cinnamon hearts.

I thought 2064 was a mix between hilarity and profound melancholy. The rambling artist dream seemed a little ludicrous, and I can just picture the compound smiling, inside its compound-mind, a wry compound smirk at the nutty vagrabond. But before that, the artist seems, as the narrator comments, heavily burdened. He has devoted himself to finding/creating the great image, but his toiling has been in vain, and he knows his time is slipping away, so there is a deeply sorrowful coloring to his character. When seen through the eyes of the stronghold however, there is a break, a lack of connection, and this sort of empathy feels impossible. This story also did a swell job of environment building.

Machines

The Handler

Though machinery certainly plays a role in this story, it seems to be peripheral, used to illustrate the more central ideas of superficiality, and possibly alter egos. The fact that the crowd prefers to talk with Pete than with Harry, despite being aware that the former is merely a shell for the latter, suggests that, overall, the truth of an exchange is of less value than the façade overlaying it. This ties into a secondary theme, one quite contemporarily relevant – that of technology providing a supplementary recourse to social engagement. The proliferation of instant messaging and internet-based communication systems, as well as the foreseeable extensions of these things, are likely to become increasingly central elements of our social world.  

Alpha Ralpha Boulevard

The main thing I took from this story is a sort of discourse between faith and existential issues. The people move from being mechanistic beings to having, though arguably simulated, a degree of freedom. Virginia then decides that she wants to love Paul, but only if it is of her own free will, and doesn’t want it to be something programmed. The irony of course is that she bases her decision to love him or not on the readout of a machine.  

Good News From The Vatican

In this one, technology seems to play a more central role thematically, though I can’t really figure what is being said. Maybe a commentary on the broadening of those we accept as human/equals, which is relevant to today if thought of in terms of the softening of exclusionary criteria that defined and delimited certain groups for so long. Grasping, maybe?  I liked the story, but I liked the others more.   

Gaxton Falls

I loved this one. I’ve been to several places that have been terribly stained by an influx of tourism and industry related to it, and it is, in many cases, deeply troubling and saddening. The landscape can be completely ravaged and perverted, and the people who live in the areas affected by the transformation sometimes form a sharp contrast with the comparatively affluent tourists, and this is among the saddest things I’ve ever seen.
            The transformation of the tourist into the android/host was a beautiful way to finish the story.

Cheers,
Korey

Women as Aliens v2.0

 I really enjoyed reading this block of stories, though I don’t think I have much of value to say about them. Just a few observations.

I thought there was an interesting contrast between the way the interrelationship of the sexes was portayed in The Women Men Don’t See as compared to Interlocking Pieces. The first seems to me to take the stance that women are very much subordinate to men, and would fare better without being forever under their tyrannical, stubby thumbs. The other story though, in which, essentially, part of a male’s brain was to serve to replace the failing counterpart in a female’s brain, thus making a whole or fully functional brain, seems to speak of complementarity, that men and women need each other for balance (it happens to be the cerebellum being transplanted if I recall, which is the area of the brain responsible for mediating balance) and completeness. I find the latter to be a more hopeful message, though I doubt that it was meant to be as laden with meaning or as colored as the former. I do have to say that reading through the Tiptree story was somewhat disconcerting, because of the “blur” concept that runs through the male characters inner monologue – that certain women are non-descript non-persons is a sad sentiment. It was, presumably, used as the thematic scaffolding of the story because it was an aspect of poignant element of the author’s experience, and thus having a degree of truth or presence in life outside the story.

 Tiptree Jr.’s story is also linked thematically to A Few Things I Know About Whileaway, through concord in this instance. Both of them make use of an imaginary world devoid of human men. Though neither of these are presented as Utopian exactly, they both seem to radiate hopefullness and equality.

As for Midnight News, it seemed to me to be centered more around the age of the woman than her gender, the idea that as people age they slowly fade from view and dwindle in usefulness or importance. Another depressing image, indeed. On the bright side, she saves the world. Always preferable to being vaporized or enslaved by aliens.

Cheers

The Chrysalids

The Chrysalids.

 I have to say before writing anything, that I’ve read some of the entries that you girls and guys have written, and there were some great ideas I came across that I hadn’t thought of myself. So, if it seems I’m trying to steal your thunder, I might be, but at least I’ve written a disclaimer so that you can’t sue me for plagiarism.

I loved the book. I don’t think it was particularly life changing, that it will redirect the trajectory of my life significantly, but the story was interesting. I love novels which take weird spins on the situation on the planet, like 1984 or Brave New World. It is always interesting to me when I find an eerie level of prescience within a piece of fiction. For example, in Orwell’s 1984, technological infringement on personal privacy was a major theme – a half-century later, the issues Orwell was exploring are no longer in the realm of science fiction. In Wyndham’s novel, the idea of biological purity or uniformity, resistance to adaptation, whatever you want to call it, is a simplified form of the conflict in modern genetics: much of the general population, and part of the scientific community, is steadfastly opposed to geneticists “playing God”, whereas advocates of the technology may view it as a logical progression along the evolutionary path of human intelligence and technology. Cool stuff I say.

So that’s one pro, and for the sake of balance, one con: the ending. As Simon has been adamantly arguing, the ending is pretty poor. Since the moral or logical elements of the ending have been discussed already, I’ll just criticize it for using a (sort of) deus ex machina ending. The arrival of the Zealanders, which completely arrests the conflict, is kind of cheating. Though David’s dreams and Petra’s communications bring Zealand into the story before the final scene, it’s a very weak connection. None of the conflicts arising from the village setting really resolved themselves from within, it was all wrapped up by the spaceship.

Anyway, its not even 6 am, and I haven’t had my coffee yet, so I’m going to stop writing. Looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts later today!

Women as Aliens

How Beautiful with Banners

The element of this story that is ‘alienized’ seems to be sexuality and intimacy, and since the only character in the story, or at least human character, is a woman, it might be more specifically female sexuality and intimacy. The relationship between Ulla’s suit and herself, and the presence of the flying cloak are used to illustrate things such as jealousy, pleasure, the opacity and distance of ‘other’, and the place of rationality in romance. Examples from the text that led me to this conclusion include:

• The first adjective in the story is ‘naked’ (133)
• Her reference that the flying cloak was probably ‘as nearly as alive’ as the virus space bubble creates a distance between the two entities, which we later learn to be complementary in the way that males and females are. (133)
• She says of the suit that much of the time the suit “did not really seem to be there”. (133)
• She says ‘this ultimate loneliness’ and ‘a good many suppressed impulses’, that it was ‘too late from tremblors’, and finally that ‘ the phantom embrace of the virus suit was perhaps less satisfying…but it was much more reliable” on page 134
• ‘A profound, ambiguous emotional blow’ when the cloak hits her.
• She recalls her sexual episode as a ‘sordid little encounter’, and also said it had not been important. She considered it a “test of the joys of impulse which any woman is entitled to have in her history.”
• She says of science as a career: ‘One awakened fitfully to find one’s self in the body of a stranger. It had given her no pride, no self-love, no defenses of any sort, only a queer sort of virgin numbness’
• In reflecting on the encounter, she says that ‘all her life… she had been repeatedly seduced by the inconsequential.’
• The line ‘A thought told her… we have done, but never felt.’ A sort of disembodied commentary on herself.
• ‘Ulla felt the virus bubble snuggling closer to her blind skin’ and had a ‘shock of recognition … of something she had never felt herself’ and then she pushes the ‘cozy bubble’ away from her breasts.
• There is a control box on her hip that allows the bubble suit to be ‘modulated against more special environments than the bubble itself could cope with alone’, suggesting an interdependence.
• All the time that the cloak is enmeshed with her bubble suit, she is unable to see, an image of clouded vision due to the union.
• She says of the bubble suits and cloaks, that ‘it was almost as though the one were a wild species of the other.’
• The cloak/bubble ‘seemed to have blended into a melange with was neither one nor the other, but a sort of coarse burlesque of both’, which happened to be more ill-fitting and less responsive to her needs. Suggests the loss of individuality and loss of freedom with union.
• She references the shirt of Nessus, which is an example of a wife destroying her husband, albeit inadvertently.
• The line “degraded at the foot of the cross” indicates sacrifice and suffering associated with love.
• I’m not entirely certain what to make of the reference to Psyche, Eros and Venus. She seems to think that her presence is defiling the union between the cloak and bubble, and she had ‘the impression, of an eerie tempest going on just slightly outside any possibility of understanding” hinting both that she is not fit to be a part of love or sex, and also that these things are inherently incomprehensible using reason or rationality. Also, the reference to the gods could be highlighting the uncontrollable nature of love, and also its divine/transcendent elements.
• ‘A Sabbat of specifically erotic memories, images, notions, analogies, myths, symbols, and frank physical sensations’, and then, she is saying she might have to accept that ‘ a season of love can fall due in the heaviest weather – and never mind what terrors flow in with it or what deep damnations.’ For the most part this is pretty clear, but I find it interesting that the word Sabbat was used, given its deeply dark connotations -witches worshipping the devil with a side of orgiastic ritual – not an image typically connected to love or sex.
• Her non-recognition that her acts gave birth to a 60-million year chain of evolution. We cannot grasp the full range of implications of our actions.
• Really uncertain about the meaning of the title, but if I had to guess, I’d say this: taking banner to mean an emblematic representation of something, together with the fact that the banners in the story are the rings of Saturn (rings being images of perfection and unity), I think the idea is that union is beautiful. I think there is more to it, but I’ve rambled on far too long about this story, so I’ll end it here.

And the Angels Sing

I didn’t get very much out of this story. It was an all right read, but I didn’t find anything particularly thought provoking or original. The only theme I could pick out was exploitation of things we don’t understand, but it was presented in a pretty standard way: someone wants to exploit an alien, someone else develops a sense of empathy or appreciation for it and decides to protect it. Not something that will stick with me I’m sure.

After the Days of Dead-Eye Dee

This is the other story of the week that I found rather bland. Nothing really happens. No great psychological insights, no intensely suspenseful scenes, no mind-twisters. I don’t really have anything to say about it. She shoots some creature in the yard with a shotgun.

Kyrie  &  The Start of the End of it All  &  When I was Miss Dow

These were my favourites this week. First Kyrie. I loved the language in the story, and I love the way the author played with the concept of time dilation in the end. It was spliced into an interesting reversal of Christian teachings; most obvious is the name Lucifer of course, but the way that he/it sacrifices himself for the sake of the human crew, and then the expected-to-be-eternal echoes of his pain quite closely parallel those of Jesus. A related use of Christian imagery in The Start of… was in the reference to Resurrection Day, which I took to be the intended climax of the aliens’ agenda of purifying and perfecting the planet. I thought it was quite a comical story, with the cats and the half-lucid half-deranged thoughts of the narrator, and also the slimy fish resulting from the promiscuity of the alien gentlemen. There is some similarity in the foreign-ish way love is treated in The Start of… and the way its mentioned in When I was Miss Dow; the sort of polyamorous, free-love concept held by the males (the aliens in The Start of… and the Warden in When I was Miss Dow) as opposed to the desire for pair-bonding held by the two female narrators.

            Another shared concept that runs through When I was Miss Dow, and to a lesser degree, The Start of… is that of malleability or adaptability. Clearly the narrator/Miss Dow undergoes profound adaptation, reaching the point that she does not want to revert to her previous form, and in The Start of… the narrator becomes accustomed to working out of the kitchen for the aliens and remaining holed up in her house for long periods on end, and then to caring for her fish offspring in a motherly fashion. This softens any boundaries between those things human and those alien. That people can, with relatively little trouble, take on an entirely new paradigm for life attests to both our enormous capacity for change and adaptation, and also to highlight that many differences, possibly between cultures or religions or whatever, may be less profound and run less deep than is normally thought. As a corollary, maybe a statement that nothing is absolute or unchanging.