When I first started reading this story, I subconsciously assumed the narrator was a woman. When it turned out that this main character is a man, I was caught completely off guard. I hadn't even realized that almost all of the other stories have had women as main characters until this story. So it make me wonder, why are the modern science fiction writers basing their stories around women?
Another connection I made between this story and the others we have read thus far was the way they referred to "humans" as if they weren't humans themselves. When we read anything our mind just assumes that the beings talking are human. But this is science fiction. Why on earth (or any other planet of your choosing) would we assume that? Yet it still begs the question, if they aren't human, what are they? Aliens? Robots? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Autobots? I'll let you come to your own conclusions.
The story as a whole seemed to me that it could have been an episode on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Their discussions about who/what killed his son and where they came from and where they went just reminded me of Captain Kirk having a discussion with his crew as to how they were going to spend the remainder of the show. The setting I envisioned while reading looked remarkably similar to the control room of the Enterprise.
The only problem I had with the story was the way it ended. It was very abrupt and left everything up in the air. What do you all think happened?
2 comments:
When I read the story I thought the characters were humans. In my mind when they said "humans" they were referring to earlier forms of human beings, the same way that we refer to some of our ancestors as primordial humans, for example. I thought of the humans in the story as evolved forms of modern people, if that makes any sense. But the idea that they might be other creatures is interesting and changes how I read the story.
I for one would love to know what happened! Ugh, that was an annoying cliff-hanger haha. As for the idea about whether they were humans, I guess I hold with what Courtney said. Slightly evolved humans? Although it didn't seem to be that far into the future. Maybe in the story we humans had already evolved by this time. Or they were just humans and referred to themselves as such to clarify what they're talking about.
I liked all the poetry references. Quoting Tennyson and Kipling really grounded the story for me, I think. Like Sam wasn't so different from any of us. The same goes for the way they all interacted on the starship, bantering and manipulating. It just goes to show that humans will never change, I suppose.
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