Twists and Turns (Blog 3)

"That Only A Mother Could Love" by Judith Merril is a typical science fiction story in that it starts off with confusion. The reader isn't fully aware of everything that has happened in the story. As you, the reader, start to understand the time frame and the main character Maggie says things such as,

 "Apparently, there was some degree of free radiation from atomic explosions causing the trouble. My baby's fine. Precocious, but normal."

This short story I felt was very good, I'm a big fan of a good twist ending. The title now makes a lot more sense to me than it did before. Although the setting for this story is domestic, the situation is not. I believe that's what makes it more like the genre than anything else. It has the reader under this preconceived notion that yes, there has been radiation and mutation, what's described sounds like a scene from "The Hills Have Eyes" minus the cannibalism, but other than babies being born mutated everything else is normal. Especially in the main character's mind.

The main character starts off as mundane as any typical army housewife story. The letters she writes to her husband all make everything sound completely normal. It had me believing the only thing wrong with the child was the extremely fast-paced intelligence. 

The main character is just relieved to know that her daughter has only one nose and a beautiful mind, she doesn't even go into detail on the letters to her husband that their daughter has no limbs. A part of me believes that she isn't even aware of it because of her unawareness in her thoughts. As the reader, you get to see into what she's thinking and feeling and not once did she mention anything about her daughter being deformed but I believe that's why the story has the name that it does. Although, everyone else sees her daughter as deformed, she still sees a smart bright-eyed beautiful soul.

*****

"We See Things Differently" by Bruce Sterling is a short story about what America is like in the future after catastrophic events have taken place and instead of being on the top of the Earth's political food chain, America's now on the bottom. Americans are ignorant and have a scarce amount of religious belief. There are many different examples in the text that proves the degradation of America's social and economic standings.

This quote is an example of the decrease of Americans that have faith in religion at this time;

"It is not just the poverty; they were always like this, even when they were rich. It is the effect of spiritual emptiness. A terrible grinding emptiness in the very guts of the West, which no amount of Coca-Cola seems to be able to fill."

 This quote shows just one example of the economical standings of America in the story's present time;

"We rolled down gloomy streets toward the hotel. Miami's streetlights were subsidized by commercial enterprises. It was another way of, as they say, shrugging the burden of essential services from the exhausted backs of the taxpayers. And onto the far sturdier shoulders of peddlers of aspirin, sticky sweet drinks, and cosmetics."

Another example of the economic decline is the inflation of money in America at the time of the story. It becomes apparent early on in the story when the narrator reaches into his pocket to pay for cab fare,

"The lining of my coat was stuffed with crisp Reagan $1,000 bills. I also had several hundred in pocket change,"

If that's not enough proof check out how much it costs for a newspaper,

"It was a newspaper vending machine. She set it beside three other machines at the hotel's entrance. It was the Boston organization's propaganda paper, Poor Richard's.

I drew near. 'Ah the latest issue, ' I said. 'May I have one?'

'It will cost five dollars,' she said in painstaking English. To my surprise I recognized her as Boston's wife. 'Valya Plisetskaya,' I said with pleasure and handed her a five-dollar nickel."

I was honestly a little confused as to what exactly caused the decline in America's economy, until I read this next paragraph, it's a bit of a long quote but  I really feel it helps explain the Americans side of things to understand how, in the story, America got to be where it is. The main character is an undercover terrorist, playing the facade of a reporter, and he's interviewing one of the biggest rock-n-roll political symbols in America, at the time. In this quote, Boston, (the rock-n-roll symbol) is getting interviewed by the so-called reporter,

"'Why are you afraid of multinationalists?' I said. 'That was the American preference, wasn't it? Global trade, global economics?' 

'We screwed up,' Boston said. 'Things got out of hand.'

'Out of American hands, you mean?'

'We used our companies as tools for development,' Boston said, with the patience of a man instructing a child. 'But then our lovely friends in South America refused to pay their debts. And our staunch allies in Europe and Japan signed the Geneva Economic Agreement and decided to crash the dollar. And our friends in the Arab countries decided not to be countries anymore, but one almighty Caliphate, and, just for good measure, they pulled all their oil money out of our banks and into Islamic ones. How could we compete? They were holy banks, and our banks pay interest, which is a sin, I understand.' He paused, his eyes glittering, and fluffed curls form his neck. 'And all that time, we were already in hock to our fucking ears to pay for being the world's policeman.'

'So the world betrayed your country,' I said. 'Why?'

He shook his head. 'Isn't it obvious? Who needs St George when the dragon is dead? Some Afghani fanatics scraped together enough plutonium for a Big One, and they blew the dragon's fucking head off.  And the rest of the body is still convulsing ten years later. We bled ourselves white competing against Russia, which was stupid, but we'd won. With two giants, the world trembles. One giant, and the midgets can drag it down. So that's what happened. They took us out, that's all. They own us.' "

Although I practically fell asleep through the beginning of this short story, the end of it really caught my attention. Both short stories are similar in the aspect that the endings are twists I never would've expected.


Update:

After the discussions in class based on these two stories I have a better understanding of Sterling's "We See Things Differently". I also didn't pick up on a lot of the hints that Merril dropped in "That Only A Mother". The discussions made me notice those little hints and also helped me see that she was writing an alternate history, whereas in Sterling's short story it's almost as if he predicted the problems we would face with the middle east.