I don't do this extra credit

After class yesterday, I realized that a lot of discomfort with Cyteen's universe comes from the fact that individuals' futures, to some degree, seem to be determined by forces outside their power. This outside force appears in the form of tape, genetic manipulation, and environmental manipulation, as with Ari. However, despite this level of control, and despite the disturbing subservience of the azi, the technology of tape and genetic manipulation doesn't really scare me on principle. What scares me in this is the culturally developed belief that behavior is deterministic.

One of the strangest aspects of Samuel Delany’s “Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand” was the notion of proportion. Certainly, the title is a powerful contributor to this theme. Comparing stars, massive balls of matter whose energy and size are beyond the comprehension of the human mind, to the matter which causes the lining of pockets to be uncomfortable, conveys the basic disconnect in the perception of proportion in the book. The descriptions continuously challenge the reader to conceptualize reality on a different scale than daily life promotes.

I'm having some trouble understanding a lot of this book. One problem is I don't really know what the Cultural Fugue is. Is it some sort of disease. Is it access to a certain type of weapon? My most educated guess, at this point, is that it is condition of society, like revolution, which ultimately leads to the destruction of all life on a planet. However, I don't really know what the condition involves. If anyone could point out certain passages for me, with regard to the Fugue, I would be very grateful.

I just realized why Octavia Butler wrote Imago in the first person. It is ridiculously hard to write a compelling sentence about Jodahs, when you constantly have to refer to it as "it".

So I just finished the book, and I've just got to voice my first emotion.

WHAT THE HELL??

Octavia Butler’s “Lilith’s Brood”, among other things, is an extremely thorough exploration of morality. Firstly, it challenges the emotional connection to morality by creating a situation where standard sympathy for characters doesn’t necessarily reflect who has the moral high-ground. A lot of books use sympathy for the characters to give an impression of the moral situation. However, in this book, it’s nearly impossible to determine whether events are ethical, because the characters that those events affect are both human and alien.

I noticed that there is a divergence in opinion in our last class about the roll of gender vs environment in the qualities of the planet winter. I just wanted to give a little bit of input about that subject.

I'm using my pass on this response

Whenever I read anything which portrays a world in which there has been a severe decline in standards, I think to myself, "is this possible." Atwood's tale is compelling and thoughtful in its own conditions, but I wonder if those conditions are reasonable. I wonder if it is really possible to take so much away from most people, and still maintain order. Part of gives me confidence in my future my perception that most americans espouse the notion of justice and freedom, and that any serious violation wouldn't be tolerated. But, events since 2001 have challenged that perception.