Blog Post #4

When people think of the small issues in their lives, they manifest into much bigger anxieties and can cause us to lose sight of the important things in life. We think the fact that we weren't able to pick up milk after work and having to drive home in traffic on the way home from their is an abomination against humanity and, oh the trauma...That kind of over thinking about the small stuff is exactly what H.G Wells' story 'The Star' tries to express, except he uses an asteroid altering much of the earth's ecosystem and environment to make them realize that the little stuff isn't important at all. These kinds of stories about asteroids heading straight for earth with the possibility of immediate annihilation are frequently used to constantly purvey the feeling as if you are about to die, and that all the small, minor arguments and struggles seem stupid in the first place and that we need to come together as humans on earth to thwart the imposing threat. I would say that this story much more elegantly handles such a topic better than schlock-miester Michael Bay or Roland Emrich would be able to express within one of their scripts about impending doom, but it lacks the personal touch seeming as we don't get to really connect to any one particular character or how they deal with the struggle, which would have added more desire for me to read more, but overall it's a solid sci-fi story that set the standard for ages...

Ahhhh...Don't you love the sound of your own voice sometimes? Especially when you were asked by someone you find very interesting and unique a question that pertain to one of your favorite interests and you had trouble shutting up for hours and hours and hours and hours and...you see where I am going with this yet? The ability to speak is one of the few things as humans I believe we should never take for granted. Their are many issues in the world today with violence over freedom of speech and to think that acts of terrorism would be the thing to rid these rights is a scary, yet not unrealistic thought. In the story "Speech Sounds," a lot of what Octavia Butler is trying to express deals with how humans deal with trauma and loss through a world riddled with a mass pandemic, loss of most communication abilities, as well as no societal structure for people to rely on to survive. None of what I just mentioned isn't prevalent in our lives, which is why this story is very effective in evoking themes from my life in my head that I can relate to the main character. If I was one of the few people that could talk, and one of the few men that seemed trustworthy was one of the first to speak to her as well as help her avoid dangerous territory, I would be very tempted to have sex with them in that immediate moment, just due to the fact that life feels much more on a time limit when in constant danger than when you don't have to worry as much about your safety. I don't only see myself within the main character, but I see tidbits of our struggles in the real world inside her story, and I find that to be a little disconcerting...