I studied a lot of dystopian novels in middle and high school, and as a young adult, dystopian novels were generally a literary trend. However, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake was the first dystopian novel to actually make me feel scared. The alarming thing is not the actual events that take place during the course of the novel, but perhaps how closely they mirror the current state of the world. Indeed, when I read the novel, I was alarmed at the prophetic nature of Oryx and Crake. Oryx and Crake came out the same year I was born, and since then, the world has only resembled the world of the novel more. The earth, while perhaps not commercialized to the extent of branded living camps, is certainly beginning to lean in that direction. More violent and exploitative content can be accessed now than ever, and the nature of the internet is that parents are less and less able to regulate how quickly their children get exposed to those things. Seventeen years after the publicatio...
When I read Joanna Russ’s The Female Man , the feeling that I felt most was confusion. There was a lot of jumping around and new characters being introduced all the time, so I’m afraid I didn’t quite understand the plot of the book, so all that I was left with was the ideas that were raised A problem I had with this book was that Janet does initiate a sexual relationship with a teenage girl. There’s something to be said about how portraying gay relationships in fiction as unhealthy and inherently predatory is a damaging idea that’s led to a lot of harmful stereotypes. The language of The Female Man was fascinating to me. It was really interesting to see the way that women could explore the ideas of feminism before there was a real vocabulary for that sort of thing. Even the very title of the book brings up the very modern distinction between sex and gender. But it was interesting to me that the actual symbol of power, the ideal form of womankind in The Female Man, if they were t...
Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was an extremely funny, extremely british part of my late middle/early high school experience. It was the first science fiction book I’d ever read that was actually funny, but it never felt condescending or rude. It celebrated the tropes and norms of science fiction. It was laughing with science fiction fans instead of at them. Later in high school I’d discovered the magic of podcasts and audio dramas. It was nice to have some way to access stories without having to be focused with my eyes, it left me time to do things like cooking, exercise, or laundry while still enjoying excellent storytelling. As a fan of both podcasts and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , learning that there was an audio drama version of it was a wonderful revelation, and listening to it was like experiencing it for the first time all over again. When I listened to it, I set the playback speed to 2x speed. Most of the dialogue played out like a fu...
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