Final

Yolanda Footman

Science Fiction

English 301 01

Final

Science fiction will many times explore the ‘what if factor’.  What if a disease infected human beings? What if the world as we know it is no more?  In science fiction a creator will look at how humans would handle their new reality.  What is the day to day life of a man (possible last man) surrounded by former humans trying to kill him?   And what is to be human?  “I Am Legend” is Sci-Fi because it explores these questions. 

Robert Neville is the character that must deal with the fact that he may be the last human on earth.  He is surrounded by vampires who in the nighttime try to get to him and his blood supply they mindlessly want. 

In the screen adaption the mindless humans want to kill and they have been affected by a mutated strain of a virus.  Neville has lost his wife and daughter to this virus that has turned people into vampires.  He even had to put a stake through the heart of his wife.  Both adaptions follow Neville who is a man alone on a planet with nothing but vampires around him.

In Week 7- planetary disaster we explored “What does it mean to be human in a world that is ending?” 

Questions like:  what would we do if the world as we know it ends.  What would be our daily routine? The daily routine of Robert Neville is to clear his area of dead humans, replenish supplies and oh yes to kill as many of the infected humans in his area as he can before the daylight comes to an end.  “At sears he got the lathe, loaded it in into the station wagon, then searched the store.  There were five of them in the basement, hiding in various shadowed places.” This was now a typical day for Neville.  In this new world what is right and wrong.  He wonders does he have a right to kill all of these aliens.  Do they have a right to exist as he does?  Neville wrestles with this question after killing many of his former neighbors.  “He ignored that, beginning to suspect his mind of harboring an alien.  Once he might have termed it conscience, now it was only an annoyance.  Morality after all, had fallen with society.”

In Battlestar Galactica, the daily life for the characters is (like in Neville’s world) just to survive.  There is no time for anything but to fight the aliens.  The president in Battlestar Galactica has cancer but her first priority is to fight against the aliens.  To be human is to have a soul.  Both the vampires in “I Am Legend” and the cyborgs in “Battlestar Galactica” do not possess this.

In Week 8 the alien as the other, explored the human in a situation of what if you did not know who to trust? In the X-files episode, humans become affected by aliens that become a host in their brain.  Scully Mulder and company encountered alien worms that made a human host brain into killers.  You did not know who was infected with the worm.  Scully thought Mulder had become infected and locked him in a room because she did not trust him.  In “I Am Legend “Neville encounters the same problem because he knows the rule of this new earth is to be distrustful anyone you meet because it is usually kill or be killed.  He must be wary of other humans he comes in contact with.  After being alone for years, when he does come in contact with a woman, he does not know how to act with her or to trust her. 

Neville found the vampire gene has mutated and there are now mutant beings – he will now be the legend.   He will be the type of person that the new mutated humans will be fearful of.  At the end of the book it is as if he has become an alien in his own world.  He becomes somewhat like Mike in “Stranger In a Strange Land”. The new mutant humans did not know what to do with him so they decided to execute him.  “Abruptly that realization joined with what he saw on their faces-awe, fear, shrinking horror- and he knew that they were afraid of him.  To them he was some terrible scourge…”

 I enjoyed both adaptions but enjoyed the ending in the book more.  In the screen adaption Neville becomes legendary because he created the beginning of a vaccination for the disease. In the book he is legendary because he is different.   The idea that now you are the stuff of legends like vampires.  That the new mutant beings way of existence is the new norm and a human from the past is a creature to now fear was a more interesting ending for me.

Science fiction puts humans in ‘what if’ situations to explore how they would deal in the new world given to them.  I love read and watch stories that explore how the human element would deal with such extreme changes in the world they have come to know.  When you explore the human element in extenuating circumstances such as Neville is given, it is certainly the stuff of science fiction.

Resources:

Matheson, Richard.  “I Am Legend”.  RosettaBooks LLC, New York, NY Copyright ©1954  

I Am Legend (2007), Directed by Francis Lawrence, Starring Will Smith.  Warner Bros. Entertainment.

Robert A. Heinlein.  “Stranger In A Strange Land” Penguin Group (USA) Inc., New York, NY Copyright © 1961

Battlestar Galactica Mini-Series

The X-files

Invisible Shai

Shai knew from when she was young she could make herself invisible.  At first she thought at first it was the fact that no one seemed to pay her any attention.  Her granny would be the one who the most would acknowledge when she came into the room.  As her granny stroked her dreads she would smile at her or give her a kiss on the head.  Her mother was many times too busy with the newborn twins to pay Shai much mind.  She would just tell her to help with this or that for the twins.  Her father big Joe as his friends called him worked most of the time and was sleeping most of the other.  Every once in a while her father would be looking in her direction with a slight grin on his face and say

“Shaima, come here my baby girl”

She loved when he called her baby girl

“Come give this old tired man a hug”

Those times have been less and less because of the twins.  Shai had no jealousy or hatred for her twin brothers, she just noted the time with her parents diminishing since they were born.  So when she would walk into a room and not be seen by anyone there, at first she did not think anything of it.  Her first clue that she could be invisible was when she walked into the living room when her granny was talking to our neighbor Gina about the young women who had died recently in the apartment building they lived in Coney Island, Brooklyn.  The woman (named Tasha) was found in the stairwell in the back stairwell of the building.  Everyone assumed it was her boyfriend Obie.  Obie at this moment was being questioned down at the precinct. 

Granny said.  “I know Obie seems good boy, but who else would hurt Tasha”

Gina looked ready to bust with information about the death “I heard there was a huge argument and she walked out on him”

As this conversation was occurring, Shai walked right in between Gina and granny.  Not one “Shai move”, not one “Girl don’t you see grown people talking here.”   Gina and granny continued their gossip without a hiccup.  She decided to make herself visible by thinking she could be seen.  As soon as she did granny said “Shai where did you come from, girl go get Gina something to drink”

After Gina left, Shai thought about how everyone assumed that Obie killed Tasha.  No one thought of the possibility that it could have been someone else.  It would seem like other people should be considered for this crime.  It is not logical to think that just because Obie and Tasha were in a relationship, he had to be the killer.  Shai decided to use her new found powers to find out if Tasha’s was killed by Obie or someone else.  Her first step was to go around the building listening on different conversations and see if any would lead to who killed Tasha.  She spent the day doing exactly that.  At first it was weird to stand in the elevator and stairwell, and everyone pass her by or stand just a few feet in from her and not see her.  She was now privy to conversations and information people wanted to keep private.  She heard gossip about her family.  Gina telling other older women in the building

“Yeah, I was just in their house, and boy is it a mess.  Twins must be overwhelming for them to care for.”

Shai never like Ms. Gina, and probably never will.  She saw boys smoking weed on the staircase.  She did not want to smell the smoke, so she was just about to leave when she heard one of them say.  “I know that woman was going to tell who’s been smoking weed and setting off the alarms.  I was just trying to stop her to talk and she tripped”

The guy speaking was Don -Don “a name so nice, you say it twice”, he would arrogantly say sometimes.  When everyone had practically hung Obie for Tasha’s murder, here Don-Don stood confessing to the crime with a head full of weed and whatever else he put into the cigars he rolled himself.  How could she convey this new-found information to the authorities without revealing how she came across the information?  She went to the precinct hoping something would come to her there.  She just walked in the front and walked straight to the back of the precinct without a “Hey girl where are you going?”  Shai went to the officers investigating the  death.  Detective Jarrod who was a trusted officer in the neighborhood, not only because he was black, but because he was well liked.  She saw on his desk, photos of the crime scene.  She had never seen a person she knew dead.  It was hard to look at.  She saw notes that detective Jarrod was keeping on the case.  Jarrod went to where they was holding Obie.  When he did Shai, wrote as close to his handwriting as she could.  She wrote down, check out boys hanging out in stairwell.  She also wrote check out back hallway videotapes. 

Week III Quote

"The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror, an outlaw, who controls the sexual channels between nature and culture."

Camille Paglia

Week II Quote

 Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Maya Angelou

Week I Quote

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." Albert Einstein