Passengers by Robert Silverberg, was quite interesting. The terms he uses for the alien species, makes you think of a person riding a horse or a fly catching a ride on a car. The ability of the aliens to take your memory and only leave you with what they choose, sounds like the human condition of alzheimers. A brain disease that takes all you memories and leaves you with pieces and not all the time the same pieces. How the main character, Charles, attempts to make a relationship work with a woman that he supposedly remembers while he was "ridden" and how she fights it. Makes you think they are teen-agers in lust with one another. The world they live in is driven by computers, so much like the world we live in now. So many of our jobs are computer driven, our cars have computers in them, our phones have become pocket sized computers. There are homes that can talk to you, and turn things on and off. The ability for these aliens to take your body and noone will watch you being taken over or when the "ride" is done, is so like the human condition. We ignore people who act strange on the streets, giving them a wide gearth so as not to get what they have, as people lay in the streets coming down from their highs, we ignore them but talk about them as we walk past. Our society is so based on the self-preservation thing. Even the aliens have tendencies that we as a society today think are unacceptable. If aliens have no problem with it why should we?
Out of All Them Bright Stars by Nancy Kress was way to short. So much more could have been added in for detail. This short really reminds me of how our society can't accept something that is not "normal", if you are a different color, a different race, a different religion, everyone has something negative to say about it. Enough negative things that are said can be influential on others, and the pressure to "fit" in starts to hit. John is different, and Charlie has so much negativity to say, he can't stand him, doesn't want him around his place of buisness, afraid he will run off the customers. The old saying, "don't judge a book by its cover" comes to mind for this short. Our society is so quick to judge every book it sees, and so much hatred exists today because of it.
Not much of a blogger on books, I hope to improve with each blog :)
Updates:
After discussing both of these shorts, there really isn't much to add. There were some really interesting points of view brought up, for Passengers, I really didn't think about it in the mental illness perspective, which is pretty interesting.
I love the way you related the aspects of "Passengers" to real life situations. I think the way the people in "Passengers" utilized computers can be seen very similarly to the way that we use them today. I also thought your comparison of being ridden to the disease of Alzheimer's was brilliant. I didn't think of it that way it adds a whole new depth to the way the story can be interpreted. And I totally agree that "Out of All Them Bright Stars" was way too short! Very anticlimactic.
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