In class we read the short stories: Random Sample by T.P. Caravan and King of the Beasts by Philip Jose Farmer. We are still talking about xenophobia and the fear of outsiders or someone different. In the first story, Random Sample, it was talking about a little girl who is very bad and not very nice. She is encountered by aliens visiting Earth and they put her through all these tests and of course she fails them all and hits them. She takes them outside and shows them what she likes to do, killing ants. The aliens seem not to like that and they leave. So my take on this story is that the aliens came down and took a random sample of what human is and they just happen to get someone who was not very nice. Then at the end of the story the aliens decide humans are not worth keeping alive so they start killing the humans by burning them like she was doing to the ants. We always assume that when aliens make contact, they will communicate with the "right people." Who is to stop them from coming up to the wrong person showing only the bad side of humanity?
King of the Beasts is a short story about only re-creating the higher animals, and the beautiful ones, to make up for all of the brutality and stupidity of destroying species. It's pretty much is saying that man is the most dangerous yet a beautiful animal, and the visitor in the story had to get special permission to grow it. At first you don't realize that the biologist isn't human; and not only do we get to see how we are viewed through alien eyes, we also realize that we have become extinct.
Classic blog. Thanks for this stuff.
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