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In Other Worlds

SF and the Human Imagination
Sep 03, 2017dissymissylessy rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
" Wells studied under Darwin's famous apologist, t.h.huxley, at the Normal School of Science. After he was seriously injured by one of his students, while teaching, he turned to writing." " Robert Silverberg: 'every time-travel tale written since THE TIME MACHINE is fundamentally indebted to Wells'." "The imagery and cosmogony of THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU owe a lot to Darwin." She traces its antecedents to Christina Rossetti and John Milton. " Moreau isn't a real god because he cannot really create; he can only imitate, and poorly, at that." "Once the powerful, monstrous sexual cat tears her fetter out of the wall and gets loose, minus the improved brain she ought to have, look out." "THE LAW mumbled by the animal-men in MOREAU is a horrible parody of Christian and Jewish liturgy; it vanishes when the language of the beasts dissolves: it was a product of language, not some eternal, extra-lingual, God-given creed." " One motif at the core of NEVER LET ME GO is the treatment of out-groups, and the way they form in-groups, even (!) amongst themselves...proud, cruel cliques." " Ursula K. Leguin's story, THOSE WHO WALK AWAY FROM OMELAS" "NEVER LET ME GO's people aren't heroic. the ending is not comforting. it is a brilliantly executed book by a master craftsman who has chosen a difficult subject: ourselves, seen through a glass, darkly." "BRAVE NEW WORLD hasn't gone away. shopping malls stretch as far as the bulldozer can see...hypnotic persuasion....officially enforced promiscuity that does away with sexual frustration..a highly intelligent managerial class..Lenina doesn't see why she shouldn't have sex with anyone she likes whenever the occasion offers, as to do so is merely polite behavior and not to do so is selfish. John, who's been raised outside the civilized pale, idolizes Lenina until she doffs her clothes in a casual and shameless fashion. never were two sets of desiring genitalia so thoroughly at odds." "Punishment for nonconformists is exile to Iceland, where man's final end can be discussed among like-minded intellects, without pestering normal people--in a sort of university, as it were."