X-Files: Post-Modern Prometheus

Well, in class we watched an episode from the X-Files called Post-Modern Prometheus. It was about how a doctor figured out how to create people and affect their appearance, but his experiment goes wrong and he ends up with someone with two deformed faces. Everyone is scared of the creation because he is so different from them; to them he is a monster. 

This related to the Frankenstein Complex in how people are afraid that when scientists mess with nature the result will be a monstrosity. It also shows that fear can change a few scared people into an angry mob who will stop at nothing to destroy the monster. 

This type sci-fi can serve as a warning. We have to consider how far we really want to take science, and are we ready for the consequences? When experimentation involves living beings, we can't just put ethics on the shelf so that we can satisfy our own curiosity. Just because we can do something does not always mean that we should. 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

We watched the Invasion of the Body Snatchers and it was relate-able to our theme xenophobia because the snatchers were afraid of the normal people and the people were afraid of the snatchers. In the movie the snatchers would place a pod next to the person they want it to become, and as the body grows and develops during the day when the people fall asleep, that is when it takes all of your memories. There is a scene that spreads terror as  the doctor comes back to town, a boy runs out into the street screaming that his mom is not really his mom. This touches on a deep fear of losing ourselves, those we love, or our way of life, to outsiders. This is similar to the Twilight Zone episode Monsters on Maple Street.
The movie not only fits squarely into the Sci Fi genre, it is also Horror because of the use of fear and possession.

Random Sample and King of the Beasts!

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.

Planet of the Apes!

Well, as we know xenophobia means the fear of someone who is different, an outsider. In the first Planet of the Apes movie with Charlton Heston, the apes were scared of him because he was different, he could talk. He had knowledge of things outside of their experience. Also the leaders, who were the Orangutans, knew that before them man was the dominate species, so when they found Taylor (Charlton Heston) they got scared. 
This movie also has a lot to say about class warfare and discrimination. In the movie, they were talking about how all apes are created equal, and it almost mirrors our culture and how we say all men are created equal. However, we know some are put unfairly before others and that's how it was with their society. The Gorillas were the warrior class, the Orangutans controlled the government and the religion (convenient), the Chimpanzees were the thinkers and the scientists; they also were more compassionate, more humane. The apes considered the humans as a sub-standard species, and the appearance of Taylor threatened the "natural order" of things. 
I know that our government hides a lot from us, so it didn't surprise me when in the movie we saw that the Orangutans hid stuff from the other apes. When they found the baby doll at the end and it started crying, they blew it up. The only evidence they had that questioned their power they blew up, so that no one would ever find it and wonder. No, ignorance may seem bliss for the ape society at the beginning but throughout the movie it unravels. I truly believe that everyone should know the truth no matter what the cost is. I wouldn't say that there is no hope for the future of the ape society. It's just that if they keep hiding big things like that and someone does find out about it, they could have an uprising on their hands.   When a society is based on fear, ignorance and deception, it's only a matter of time.

Ender's Game Project

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rDOFvsVhlQ&context=C3a4264eADOEgsToPDskJffRoaVl1tntBHQq1uEv2h

Ender #4 (The end of the book)

The last chapters of Ender's Game By Orson Scott Card were a few of the best in my opinion. Ender realized that he was both the destroyer and savior of a race. Had he realized that he was actually killing them he would have stopped because there is so much empathy in him and because they never picked a fight with him first, he had no reason to destroy them. Since his teachers all knew that, they did not ask him if he wanted to to kill them. They just tricked him and said it was just his final test in the games. He ended up obliterating their home planet just thinking it was all a game, but it almost destroyed him after he found out. The Buggers left Ender a message that only he would understand and be able to figure out what to do. They left an egg for him to find that had a queen inside who could be the mother to a reborn race.  and they also explained to him that they had not planned to come back to Earth to fight again because they had realized that were are as intelligent, if not more so, than them. They realized their mistake, but the humans didn't know that. Being so xenophobic we weren't going to take any chances of them coming back again, so we (as humans) decided that we were ending it once and for all. Ender was just thrown in it as the Commander of the fleet because of his intelligence and because he was just so good at what he did. He defeated the enemy when he was just an eleven year old boy. Yet, no one asked him what he wanted to do or asked him even if he would. In the end, it was great to see that a boy who had no control over his life eventually grew to help determine the future of human space colonies and the future of an entire species.

Ender's Game #3

In Chapters 10-12, let's just say a lot happens. Ender (only nine) became commander of an army that had been inactive for years, the Dragon Army. Usually commanders are much older, everyone thought Ender would be a commander, but not this early. When he went to see his army there were no veterans, they were mostly just launchies who had no idea what to do in battle. But that didn't stop Ender, right off the bat he started doing things differently, He put the younger ones closer to the door instead of having them in the back like usual going unnoticed. He made them learn the way he does things by when he says "move!" they'd better move. When they got to their first practice, he didn't start with formations like usual; in fact he never did formations at all. When he created the toons in his army, instead of the normal four he created five. They usually gave the commanders three months to get their army ready for battle but no, the games started changing once he got command of the Dragon Army. They only gave him three and a half weeks; but Ender thought they were ready even before he got the sheet telling him he had a battle. From that day, on they were getting battles daily and never once did his army lose, not once. They were the highest rank in every category, they were untouchable. After a couple of months they started giving him two battles a day, that was unheard of. Then the school tried everything they could to try to make him lose just one game but Ender was too smart and getting tired of there games. They made is army face two armies at once. Ender was done, he had the smallest but brightest solider, Bean, help with what to do. Finally Ender thought of a way to throw them off, it was to create a formation. They have never once practiced a formation so it took Ender all of five minutes to explain to everyone how it was going to work. If they can change the rules of the game, then there are no rules. They came out from behind the stars and it was throwing off the armies just how they planed it would, but they were so focused of the formation none of them saw that six soldiers had slipped away and now going through their own gate winning the game before they knew it. After that all of Ender's toon leaders became commanders of other armies and he thought they were screwing with him again, taking all of his good man, but they weren't. That graduated Ender to Command School, but the thing is you have to go through pre-command school first, Ender didn't he went straight there. Only people who were at least sixteen went there but still he was only nine. At this point we realize Ender has actually killed two people, a fact that would truly crush him if he knew.