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The Historical Notes

The Historical Notes at the end of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale add a significant amount of context to the novel. While reading Offred’s story, there is a lot of information that Offred herself and therefore the reader is never given as well as pre-Gilead events that are not explained but just implied. For example, what environmental aspects lead to the extremely low birthrates in the United States? The historical notes explain that it was “linked to the various nuclear-plant accidents, shutdowns, and incidents of sabotage that characterized the period, as well to leakages from chemical- and biological-warfare stockpiles and toxic-waste disposal sites… both legal and illegal… and to the uncontrolled use of chemical insecticides, herbicides, and other sprays.” The notes also put the entirety of Offred’s tale in a new context: cassette tapes; which is a very interesting development for the reader but also explains the development of Offred’s story telling througho
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The Belonging Kind by John Shirley and William Gibson

The reality in The Belonging Kind seems similar to our own, it even includes bar hoppers who just also happen to be chameleons on crack. I really enjoyed reading this short story. I was ridiculously curious as to what was going to happen next the entire time, and even now I'm still curious. These strange creatures that the narrator encounters are really fascinating. Their transformations sound haunting to the narrator but go unnoticed to everybody else around them. There are so many questions unanswered and yet the narrator just accepts their way of life easily. He was so starved for acceptance and just being able to fit in that all the terrifying aspects of these creatures was easily overlooked. I am particularly curious as to how these humanoids are able to transform the way they do. The descriptions of how the dress fell off and dissolved like foam, and they could pull money out of gills in their skin sounds too organic to be a technological body modification. Since these tra
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Orphan Black's use of clones to discuss issues in society (major spoilers)

I would like to preface this blog post with Orphan Black is, actually, the greatest television show to have ever aired, and this post does contain spoilers. So if you would like everything in this show to remain a surprise, please ignore this post. Orphan Black is a sci-fi thriller television series created by Graeme Manson and John Fawcett starring Tatiana Maslany (as 10+ different characters) that ran from March 2013 to August 2017. This show used a massive, government funded cloning experiment to talk current issues in our society. There were two lines of clones: Castor and Leda. The Leda clones, played by Tatiana Maslany, were a pretty amazing group of female characters. Their line of clones was developed out of love... sort of. While it started as a way for an infertile couple to get a child they could love and care for, it ended up with thousands of women actually being genetic property.  Even their children could be property of a corporation. At the time of this airing, the t
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Song in a Minor Key's similarities to H.P. Lovecraft

Song in a Minor Key is a short story by C.L. Moore that is classified as Space Opera, but reminded me a lot of the H.P. Lovecraft short stories I read for the New Weird. Song in a Minor Key  and What the Moon Brings  are both very quick reads that leave the reader generally uneasy. Both short stories provide great amounts of detail of the moment you're currently reading, but lack any detail of context. What the Moon Brings creates a strange version of our Earth where the low tide brings out not sandbars or tide pools, but a giant beast. There was absolutely no context provided by Lovecraft on how the beast or the narrator got there, but there was beautiful language describing the scenery, the lighting, and the mood of the world where the beast and narrator existed. I found that Moore did a similar thing in Song in a Minor Key . While there was little context on what the time period was, it was clear that the universe we were in was a very peaceful Earth and advanced space travel
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Coming of Age and Education in The Night Circus

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern follows the life of Celia and Marco, bound to each other and competitors in a game before they even knew the other existed, and how their game affected the lives of everyone around them. Every character in this novel, Celia, Marco, the twins, their friend Bailey, had magic thrust upon them. I believe that magic here is supposed to represent life and the education that comes with it. It is unavoidable and how someone is educated as a child, greatly affects their adulthood. Focusing on Celia and Marco, I thought they were both abused as children through their education. Celia's father was extremely "hands-on" with his teaching. He pushed Celia to the point of breaking both physically and emotionally. All teaching was done through trial and error, resulting in scars and the death of a pigeon. While this did develop the magic she was born with into amazing skills, it didn't focus on ways to "work smarter" and left Celia an o
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The Hobbit and the Classic Hero's Journey

The Hobbit is an excellent example of the Hero's Journey. According to Tolkien, hobbits are "a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded Dwarves. Hobbits have no beards. There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly ... They are inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow); wear no shoes, because their feet grow natural leathery soles and thick warm brown hair like the stuff on their heads (which is curly); have long clever brown fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it)." This is what makes me begin to question: is Bilbo Baggins a traditional or non traditional hero? Baggins in his hobbit-hole in The Hill, living a quiet life, eating doubles of meals (which I am incredibly jealous of) is his "Innocent World of Childhood"
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The Witches in Aunt Maria and Women with Power

A stereotype is defined as " a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing" versus an archetype which is defined as " a very typical example of a certain person or thing." By these definitions, I find that the witches featured in Aunt Maria by Diana Wynne Jones are archetypes of witches. Aunt Maria fits the nasty old woman witch, Zoe Greene fits the archetype of a crazy woman with magical powers, Elaine is the harsh, cold, and always-wearing-black witch, and Naomi (the daughter of Aunt Maria, not main character Mig) is the young girl rebelling against her mother witch.  Interestingly enough, all these archetypes could also describe female characters in power. Even "young girl rebelling against mother", as that is typically the background of a female character in power.  I think that this similar archetype-ing came about as a way to demonize women with power, whether it be magical or business. But recentl
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