The Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang

            In Ted Chiang’s The Story of Your Life, an alien species known as heptapods speak in a very peculiar language. When our protagonist finally understands their written form of communication, known as Heptapod B, she begins to see her life memories all at once. Her memories no longer appear chronologically, as they would for a normal human being. Instead, they appear as they would to a heptapod, all at once, with no chronological ordering or significance. However, even though her memories are affected by her immersion into the heptapod language, her string of consciousness flows like that of a human. As she explains, “Even though I am proficient with Heptapod B, I know I don’t experience reality the way a heptapod does. My mind was cast in the mold of human, sequential languages, and no amount of immersion in an alien language can completely reshape it. My worldview is an amalgam of human and heptapod” (Chiang 173). So, while her memories, both those in the past, and those that have yet to occur, come to her simultaneously, she continues to experience events throughout her life one at a time, as it is in the present moment. There are times when she can think like a heptapod, and see and experience everything all at once, past, present and future. But this is only temporarily. She is, as a whole, caught in between to forms of existence—or, at least, forms of experiencing one’s existence. What was interesting was, at the end, when she explains to her unborn daughter, “From the beginning I knew my destination, and I chose my route accordingly” (Chiang 178). This poses the question about whether our fate is predetermined or shaped by choice. Seeing her future memories influenced the protagonist to make decisions that would comply with them. However, if she hadn’t already known what lay in store for her, could she have chosen otherwise? Was she bound to make all the same choices unwittingly, or could she have easily changed her fate by choosing differently? Perhaps her fate was sealed the minute she learned Heptapod B, and began to go through life partially bound, in a way, to a language and culture that sees everything in a predetermined way. Perhaps, if she’d merely lived her life knowing only human languages, she would have had the ability to influence her own future, something that many humans believe in. It could be that, once the protagonist immerses herself in the heptapod language, she begins to live out her life the way other heptapods do, with both the past and the future set and immovable. Perhaps the immersion caused her fate to be set and immovable. As for the rest of us who live and speak through sequential languages, we live our lives in a way where one event leads to another, just like our sentence structures. In this way, our language affects us, and possibly changes us, as much as we affect and change it. It speaks to the power of language itself, which can easily change how we see the world and ourselves, whether it is through a book, a conversation, or immersion into a whole new linguistic and cultural perspective.        

Another Earth

In “Another Earth,” young Rhoda Williams has a decision to make: if she wins the contest, and is awarded the chance to visit Earth II, where alternate versions of everyone on Earth live alternate lives, should she go? Should she travel to this alternative world, to meet her alternative self? What would she say? Would her alternative self be living a different life, better than the one Rhoda lives now? Or would this other Rhoda be exactly the same, with the same blood on her hands and guilt in her heart? This is a huge debate throughout the entire movie. As Rhoda tries to figure out how to cope with this guilt and amend the situation of the victims, news analysts and scientists speculate about the benefits and consequences of coming face to face with what could have been. Earth II is, in a way, a manifestation of the possibility of what could have been. What would happen, one commentator asks, if you were to meet this other you, and realize that the other you was better than what you are now? Could you cope with that? Everyone goes through life wondering about the possibilities, of what could have been, if their life had taken a different coarse. What would happen if you land on Earth II and find that your alternative life is just like the one you lead? You’d have to wake up to the reality that, no matter how rough or unbearable your situation is, it was meant to be. Your hopes of a better life, the very possibility of another, better existence, would be destroyed. You’d have to wake up and realize that there is no better way. And even if you do find that another you leads a better life, what then? Either way, you still live in the life you lead now. Nothing changes. You are not your alternative self. That alternative life is not yours. You must follow through in your own coarse. Only now, you must do so with the knowledge that there is something better, but that something better is not attainable for you. It belongs to another you. You are left with the lower end of the bargain. What good would that do? Nothing changes, and you’d have to suffer with that idea for the rest of your life. This very fear is projected in the old cleaning man, Purdeep, who blinded himself and destroyed his hearing with bleach because he couldn’t bear to see himself anymore, to see what his life had become, and what it could have been. It does not help to dwell on what could have been, to imagine you could blink you eyes and redo your entire life, because you can’t. You must plow through and make the best of what you have. That doesn’t mean that one must not dream. Dreaming can help make things bearable in rough times. But it is dangerous to allow your fantasies of another life to take over the one you are living in now. You must clear your mind. Focus on your own life, on reality. Dreams have a place, but do not let your life be consumed by dreams. The only way you can change your life is if you change it, by looking at your life for what it is now, and how you can make it better. You can make your own life be the better alternative, but the only way you can do that is if you start by facing the reality of where you are now. You are not your alternative self, so you cannot take the alternative’s life, both its past and present. But you do have control of your own future. So to dwell on an alternative past and present is meaningless. Those won’t change. But you can change your future, by first accepting your own past and present.     

Bridesicle by Will McIntosh

“Bridesicle” tells the story of a young woman named Mira who, after dying in a car crash, is frozen and maintained in the vault of a futuristic dating and mixer center where men go to pick out brides. These brides, like Mira, are all women frozen after death, waiting to be chosen and married to a man who will then pay to have her fully revived. The women are kept dead until a customer animates her in order to converse with her in sessions known as “dates.” She is then put under again and placed back into hibernation until someone else comes along to animate her.

            Being revived isn’t the only way to return from death. People can also choose to be “hitched” by having their psyche preserved and maintained within the mind of a host, who is usually a relative or a loved one. Mira herself, before her own death, was hitched by her mother, who constantly gave her grief and made her miserable, not only for loving a woman, but also in other aspects of her life. In order to escape her mother, Mira intentionally crashed her car on the hopes of muting her mother’s voice within her own head forever.

            I think this story has a lot to say about family relationships, and the pressures that come with those ties. In the story, Mira must go through life with her mother in her head, literally watching everything she does. There was nothing she could do without hearing her mother’s opinions and disapproval of her sexuality echoing in her own mind. Thus, her mother’s disapproval followed her everywhere, becoming part of her life, and so omnipresent and unbearable that she ended up killing herself in order to escape. Even after she woke up in the center, she noticed that all she could think about was the loss of her mother’s voice. It had been such an overbearing presence in her life that she couldn’t help but ponder about its absence. Similarly, when Neas showed up, the influence of his hitched wife’s opinions over with whom she wanted her husband to marry and raise a child conflicted with his grandfather Lycan’s favorable perception of Mira as a candidate. Neas doesn’t even begin questioning Mira until both the voices of his dead wife and grandfather come to a consensus, for he needs their opinion first in order to start considering her, even though, in the end, he’s the one who has to live with Mira and have a child with her. In the end, Mira was able to break free of her mother’s voice in the end, and instead, after Neas and his hitched family agree to revive her, decides to hitch her lover, Jeanette, who was also frozen in the vaults. She does this because, even though the pressures of omnipresent family ties can be tough to take at times, they can also be a good thing: to know that you are never alone and always have loved ones with you. As Neas explains, “Hitching has been a very powerful experience for us. Oona and I never dreamed we could be this close, and we’re happy to have dad and grandfather and great-grandmother as companions. I know I wouldn’t trade it for anything” (Bridesicle 10). Keeping your loved ones with you brings you closer to them, and being able to go through life sharing your experiences with the ones you love is a powerful and happy thing. That’s why Mira chose to hitch Jeanette. While her relationship with her mother was emotionally destructive, her relationship with Jeanette is both loving and caring, the kind of relationship that Mira needs, and would like to carry with her for the rest of her life.   

HIjab Scene #7 by Mohja Kahf

            One way that Mohja Kahf expresses how the stereotypes she faces repress her is in the following four lines in the middle of her poem: “What else do you need to know/ relevant to my buying insurance,/ opening a bank account,/ reserving a seat on a flight?” These actions that Kahf has listed, such as buying insurance and opening a bank account, are rights that every citizen his naturally entitled to in America. However, whenever Kahf tries to exercise that right, she is bombarded with prejudice and stereotypical questions that even question her citizenship based on the fact that she wears a hijab, making the assumption that she must be an expatriate from the Middle East. These assumptions, therefore, in doubting her American citizenship, also doubt her right to such rights as opening a bank account or buying insurance. Therefore, people making these assumptions and doubting her citizenship are, whether intentionally or not, doubting her rights as a citizen, and are therefore repressing her in a more subtle way. Plus, the fact that these stereotypical questions and assumptions bombard her and follow her wherever she goes, even during irrelevant occasions such as booking a flight and opening a bank account, shows that the stereotypes imposed on her by others will not leave her in peace to go about her day and live freely and normally, as is the right of every citizen living in the U.S. Thus, they prevent her from living peacefully, and repress her right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.     

Bloodchild by Octavia Butler

In Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild, a population of humans have settled on a new planet run by an insect-like race known as the Tlic. At first, the Tlic enslaved the humans and treated them as animals, penning them up and using them as hosts to hatch their eggs inside them. The grubs, as they called their young, would then hatch inside the humans and eat them from the inside out, endangering the life of the human in the process. As generations passed, however, the Tlic began to rethink their relationship with humans, and began to form a mutual, more loving bond with them. Humans were still distributed to the Tlic, but they were treated with far more dignity and care. The hatching of the grubs became a partnership, where the human had the final word on whether or not he or she was willing to carry a Tlic’s eggs inside him or her. When the grubs hatched, the Tlic mother would then take them out and place them in an animal carcass so as not to endanger the human host. The Tlic mother would then take care of her human partner as she raised her grubs.

In class, many people have wondered whether Bloodchild helps to represent the way people treat each other, or the way people treat animals. To answer this, let’s examine a quote from the story:

“The animals we once used began killing most of our eggs after implantation long before your ancestors arrived,” she said softly. “You know these things, Gan. Because your people arrived, we are relearning what it means to be a healthy, thriving people. And your ancestors, fleeing from their homeworld, from their own kind who would have killed or enslaved them—they survived because of us. We saw them as people and gave them the Preserve when they still tried to kill us as worms” (25).   

The trick word to note here is Butler’s use of the term “people.” I believe this shows that Butler was representing the relationship between different groups of people. She was trying to expose how people tend to treat each other as if they were from a different species, like the way the Tlic treated the human population on their planet. Even though the lives of Tlic and humans may be equal, despite their differences, the Tlic enslaved the humans, holding the live of their grubs above the lives of their human hosts. They treated them like animals, breeding them, selling them, and using them for their own means as an inferior race. Even now, as the cruelty and enslavement appears to be lifting and the relationship between Tlic and humankind is improving, humans are still asked to risk their lives so that the Tlic may use them for reproduction, even, as it seems, manipulating humans and convincing them that the act of hosting a grub for the sake of the Tlic is a positive and beautiful thing. So thinks our protagonist, Gan. It isn’t until he is faced with the gruesome reality of the dangerous and painful procedure of removing the grubs from a screaming host that he realizes the risk he is taking in agreeing to undertake the task. It is because the ugly truth behind hosting grubs is disguised for humans as something beautiful that we realize that Gan and all the other humans are manipulated into willingly risking their lives for a procedure that could easily be done on other species, and not necessarily on humans. It is the way the Tlic manipulate the humans by only feeding them the positive side of Tlic-human reproductive partnership, the way the Tlic even now distribute humans as necessary commodities, the way Gan and his family are restricted to living freely on their own within the Preserve’s limits, all seems to mirror the way we in the real world have treated each other, with some groups, like the Tlic, enslaving others, and using them to their own advantage. Let’s reexamine Butler’s use of the word “people.” Both the Tlic and the humans are different races of people, implying that they are, theoretically, considered as equal—different, but equal. However, even though both groups are equal, the Tlic still enslaved and mistreated the humans. Even though relationships between the Tlic and the humans are improving, there is still a disparity in rights and privileges, and the humans are still distributed and asked to risk their lives for the Tlic to reproduce. What’s more, just as we’ve seen throughout history, the inferior race that is humankind is lead to believe that they have finally achieved equality, yet, at the same time, Gan and his family cannot venture freely outside of the Preserve without a Tlic accompanying them, nor can they protect themselves with guns. Meanwhile, they are fed eggs to keep them calm, happy, and satisfied.

            While I believe Butler meant her story to represent the relationship between humans, it can also be interpreted as representing humans’ mistreatment of animals. That, in itself, shows how humans can sometimes mistreat each other as animals.      

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin continued

I find it interesting how Haber is trying to use Orr’s reality-altering dreams to try and recreate a better world for humanity. As his first attempt, he tries to use Orr’s dreams to solve the problem of overpopulation. Unfortunately, the solution Orr dreams up is a plague that kills billions of people, and, consequentially, wipes 6 billion people out of existence altogether. Haber appears—or at least tries—to convince himself that it’s for the best, but Orr seems to consider it as mass murder. Next, Haber attempts to end the war in the East. The war ends, alright, but only because all the world powers had to join their forces in order to stave off a global invasion from aliens created from Orr’s subconscious. Every time Haber tries to fix one of mankind’s problems by altering reality, it ends up making things worse. At one point, in the reality before which the novel takes place in, humanity’s situation had escalated to a point where Orr had to suddenly dream up a whole new world in order to escape death himself. Who knows if, in that past life, somebody else had tried to do the same thing Haber is doing right now, if somebody else had tried to use Orr’s dreams to manipulate reality, and ended up destroying it. I fear what will happen if Haber continues to change reality like this, to control the world’s problems. At this rate, this reality could possibly end up the same way the last one had, that things could become so bad that Orr will end up having to rewrite the world’s history in order to save it. One cannot solve humanity’s problems by simply changing reality. Our problems are more complicated than that, beyond a simple solution. Changing reality won’t solve them. Every time Orr changes reality, things always get worse. Because reality isn’t the problem. It’s humanity. Humanity is the one who create the problems in the first place, within any given reality. If overpopulation and lack of resources is no longer a problem, then they focus their energy on Isragypt and the war in the East. If its not one issue, then there is always another. It never ends. Unless we can change ourselves, change this reckless pattern we set for ourselves, things will always inevitably grow worse, until they can no longer get any worse.       

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

Written during the 1970’s, The Lathe of Heaven takes place during the near future in Portland. Overpopulation has caused serious overcrowding and lack of resources around the globe for mankind as diseases and violence grow within city communities. Global warming doesn’t help, as the Green House Effect has caused the polar ice to melt and major flooding to occur, including constant rainfall and the dangerous encroachment of oceanic waters onto continental shores. Beside these things, people seem to have grown desensitized due to the harsh conditions from overcrowding, as Le Guin’s characters take on systematic approaches to both solving problems and explaining them. For example, when George first meets Dr. Haber, Haber explains that he is a doctor who specializes in dreams, describing how dreams are important for the brain and how one both enters and exits the dream state, which scientists have named the “d-state.” Everything about dreams is systematic, organized, and even controlled. Haber even uses a machine to both record what a person is dreaming as well to influence what they dream about. One would think that dreams, the inner workings of our subconscious mind, would be spontaneous and private, beyond the control and manipulation of others—that, of all things, the mind was the one thing that could not be controlled, by people or institutions. The characters themselves describe them as being “incoherent, selfish, irrational” even “immoral”(pg. 14), impulsive and beyond understanding. So it strikes me as odd that there is a whole specialized field dedicated to studying, recording, and even controlling such dreams. In this rigid, futuristic world, even a person’s dreams—their subconscious—are systematic and regulated. With so many people in this overcrowded world, there is very little wiggle room for individualism, even in the mind.