Skip to main content

"The Fiction of Ideas," or How Changing One Part of the Human Race Changes The World

“The Fiction of Ideas” is an interesting topic; change one thing about the human race, and an entirely new world is created. Such a wide variety of stories can come from this subgenre, each taking wildly different paths. Two short stories I read that fall under this broad category are “The Drowned Giant” by J. G. Ballard and “Come To Venus Melancholy” by Thomas M. Disch (I read a third story, “And I Awoke And Found Me Here On The Cold Hill,” that falls under this genre which is discussed in the previous blog post).

“The Drowned Giant” is quite short, but in its few pages it tells a unique story. In this tale, we see what happens when a group of miniature humans find a drowned man washed upon the shore. The townspeople proceed to not only examine the giant body but crawl over it, kids using the nose as a rock to climb and the arms as stairs. The casualness with which the people treat the body is almost disconcerting, as if it’s just a large collection of rocks. Then, the scientists take the body apart for examination and supplies. It makes sense, as if the body were that of a beached whale, but hearing about the main character coming back and seeing the body disassembled is such an odd, unsettling visual. It’s a cavalier attitude never usually associated with a corpse, and it really just makes you stop and think. The body loses its humanity as its taken apart and decomposes, and soon it no longer is a spectacle.

On the other end of the spectrum, Come To Venus Melancholy is a short story by Thomas M. Disch about transferring one’s consciousness to a machine. It involves a machine-transferred woman talking to the reader, never really sure of the reader’s presence but too desperate for company to doubt it. We go from a large, beached body to no body at all. This short story was written like a one-sided conversation, which made it very interesting to read. I wanted to reply, to give the poor machine woman confirmation that she was indeed talking to someone. Her husband smashed her “eyes,” and now she exists blind and immortal. It’s a sad life, living in never-ending uncertainty. If humans ever obtain the ability to transfer a human conscious to a machine, how would we adapt to that? How long would a human live as a machine? Would it be like immortality?

Both of these short stories were well-written and interesting to read, enjoyable and thought-provoking. They were the perfect length, too. The reader is given a clear understanding of the world it takes place in, and nothing is left to be desired by these “Fiction of Ideas” short stories.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Ocean at the End of the Lane- An Urban Fantasy

The Ocean at the End of the Lane , by Neil Gaiman, is an urban fantasy about a man coming back to his childhood home and remembering a long forgotten otherworldly experience from his childhood. As a seven year old, his life changes for the weirder when an opal miner,  who had been renting out a room in the boy’s house, commits suicide in their family car. The death opens a door for a mischevious cloth-like spirit to start messing with the locals’ lives in twisted ways of giving them what they want. The boy meets the Hempstocks, an immortal family of three who live at the end of the lane, and accompanies the youngest, Lettie Hempstock, on a journey to bound the spirit. However, the spirit latches on to the boy and uses him as its gateway between worlds. Parading as a nanny named Ursula Monkton, the demon torments the boy through herself and his father. It’s up to the boy and the Hempstocks to send the demon away and restore reality. Gaiman’s imagination makes the book take fligh...

"Bloodchild" Assessment

"Bloodchild" by Octavia Butler My first reaction to Octavia Butler’s   Bloodchild is a mix of interest and disgust. Using humans as a subservient society to the Tlic rather than having humans assert power over the aliens is a fresh twist on the usual sci-fi story. I’ve never read or watched a story that had humans as powerless as they are here- there’s no way for them to fight back, really. The human race has been completely taken over, and they’re generally okay with it, which is unsettling. It was an interesting read, that's for sure. Such a unique story gets the mind wondering about a world where humans aren't the superior species and don’t come out on top after an invasion, a concept far less explored in the sci-fi genre. The disgust I felt is, of course, for the humans’ role in the Tlics’ lives. Parasites are a big fear of mine personally, so reading a story where humans exist solely to be hosts to the worm-like children of the Tlic is absolutely terrif...

The Next 50 Years

Ever since the turn of the century, technological advancement has skyrocketed. Even in my own short 19 years of life, I have seen technology go from the simplest cellphone sans touchscreen and chunky computers to face recognition on Iphones and Virtual Reality as an available college major. If we continue at this pace, the next 50 years are sure to be full of giant technological leaps for mankind. I predict that by 2028, holographic imaging will have changed exponentially. Rather than using a touchscreen to communicate, holograms and VR-like screens will be used a la Tony Stark’s tech. We’re about to break the mold of the IPhone already. Google Glass will have been adapted into a more practical form, but no matter what I think it’ll become mainstream. Entertainment will be venturing deep into VR. By 2038, robots will have most likely taken over the workforce, causing a crisis for employment. This will effect the topics of films, books, and social media as people scramble to decide...