Nuclear Fear

It seems anymore that fear is in fashion. Politically or even otherwise, you got to be scared. Be afraid that you will be blown up or be afraid that your rights will be taken away. It seems that Washington cannot find a happy medium for those two fears. Where did all this uneasiness start? 9-11? Vietnam War? Kennedy’s assassination? No, perhaps it goes back to that fateful day, August 6, 1945, the day that should really live in epiphany. It is the day we as human beings reached a turning point with no u-turn in site. We dropped the very first nuclear bomb and killed 100,000 instantly in Hiroshima, Japan, and the death toll rose well beyond that in after effects. We as Americans vaporized another people, leaving only a shadow of them in ash on walls, each in the position that they were in when the blast hit. We unleashed a monster that haunts us to this day. We fear terrorist will harness this power and turn it on us.

If this is all so scary, and in fact, something we would all rather act as if it isn’t real, why do our politicians talk about it everyday? William Powers of the National Journal, claims that our fascination with these fears that began after the first bomb was dropped “was a kind of glue (Powers).” Do the stories from this beginning of nuclear fear add adhesion to this ‘glue’? Aristotle described in the Poetics how tragic drama provides a “catharsis of undesirable emotions of pity and fear (Miller).” The drama cures worry like a vaccination prevents mumps. It provides “a controlled dose of it and then clears it away (Miller).” Could not two of our stories we have read provide the same effect?

The two nuclear pieces we read were “Thunder and Roses” by Theodore Sturgeon and “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury. Each piece is distinctive, though only a few years apart in publication (1947 and 1950 respectively). “Thunder and Roses” is set in a time when the United States has been near annihilated because of nuclear war. The men who survive had so little to do; “it felt good to have a purpose again-even shaving before eight o’clock” becomes meaningful (Sturgeon). Perhaps it is the language of this piece that strikes home. It is like watching “The Best Years of Our Lives” and yet, even more real and disturbing than that film. Perhaps it is the character Star Anthim’s description of the roses, “alive and sick, and the thorns turned back on themselves” that hits us hard, like Homer’s nightly routine of taking off his metal claws. We also know when we read this story that the knowledge of some of the effects of radiation poisoning has been discovered. Star faints and begins to bleed from her side. This shows signs of an expose of 3–4 sieverts which causes bleeding in the kidneys, mouth and under the skin. That type of exposure has a 50% chance of death after 30 days. Star does die, but the protagonist, Pete, is spurred on by her death to not allow any more violence to ensue. He prevents the last switch available from being hit. This story was published at a time when only the U.S. had weapons and “would actually threatened by deliverable bombs or missiles from another decade.” “Thunder and Roses” questions on whether any nuclear weapon is good, and looks to what the arms race might produce. Reading this, we might as a people might band together to get rid of nuclear weapons, but we have not. We won’t and in this political environment, we want to be the ones with the nuclear power.

“There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury is one of my favorites by him. It is a strange story, one that is absent of humans and yet it is centered on them. The story is about a mechanized house of dreams. It does everything for you; cook, clean, and even reads you poetry at night. Something has gone awry though. The breakfast isn’t eaten. The house stands alone, in a “ruined city that gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.” Silhouettes of people are described on the walls of the house, catching the whole family in midst action. Like those in Hiroshima, these humans become black images on the wall. Ghosts that the house works for that will never be alive again. The futility of the house, in its letting in the dog, being “angry at having to pick up mud,” it is heartbreaking. It calls for a human, but none are there. The house reads a poem of great relevance and irony, saying “not one would mind…/if mankind perished utterly (Bradbury).” Yet, it all the house’s work, it too has fallen victim to an accident. A “fire was cleaver” and the house cannot put it out and utterly burns and dies, like its masters, in ash (Bradbury). Bradbury makes the date of death of the house August 5, 2026. So near the same date as the Hiroshima bombing that one might as well assume he meant it that way.

In one story, humans prevail but barely. In the other, we are destroyed and even our technology does not survive much longer. So, what medicine do these stories provide? Are we cured yet of our fears? Indeed no. The fear of atomic annihilation is “free-floating and abstract" in that only “residents of two Japanese cities have ever lived through that sort of attack or could concretely imagine what it was like (Powers).” So we still fear, and these stories only provide a question, not a cure. They provide an insight, but we must look beyond it. We must imagine it as a real possibility without losing grip. Only time will tell if we can do that.

Works cited

Bradbury, Ray. "There Will Come Soft Rains." Science Fiction: The Science Fiction Research Association Anthology. Ed. Patricia S. Warrick, Charles G. Waugh, and Martin H. Greensberg. New York: Longman, 1988. 230-4

Miller, J. Hillis. "Narrative." Critical Terms for Literary Study. Ed. Frank Lenticchia, and Thomas McLaughlin. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995. 67.

Powers, William. " FEAR AND LOATHING" National Journal. 30 Oct 2004:3303. Proquest. 04 July. 2005. GALILEO .

Sturgeon, Theodore. “Thunder and Roses.” Science Fiction: The Science Fiction Research Association Anthology. Ed. Patricia S. Warrick, Charles G. Waugh, and Martin H. Greensberg. New York: Longman, 1988. 230-4

What is real?

It is a straight forward Monday holiday morning. Not much to do except mountains of school work, so I decide to lie in bed, and watch the good ol’TV. Not much on a Monday morning, so flipping channels becomes the entertainment. I switch past Dr. Phil and more surreal news of the day. I stop on the QVC shopping channel. It fascinates me how excited the hosts get about this stuff. Having ordered from them, I know it is good, but it is just stuff.

Honestly, I am only half paying attention, as it is jewelry and costume jewelry at that. Designed by Nolan Miller, mind you, and it looks like very expensive stuff, but it isn’t. Something stuck me though when the designer who was presenting along with the host made a interesting statement. He said, “It isn’t real, but it looks just like the real thing, and that is what matters.” I am sure there is no way Mr. Miller can realize the power of his statement beyond a great selling point, but all this talk about real and imitation in class are what made me sit up and think.

Several of our stories explore the idea of what is real and what is not. John Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” has an alien who imitates other living beings to near perfection. C.L.Moore’s “No Woman Born” has a real woman literally becoming a cyborg. She feels she is real in fact more real now, while her creators debate it. Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris take what is real and not just in the physical but in memory. Whether it is aliens, or robots or something we cannot even name, the question of real and imitation arises. It is in Campbell’s story that the question of real and fake becomes most important; in fact, life or death. Life or death is something we as humans truly understand. Perhaps it is animal, this will to survive or perhaps it is a stronger will from something. No knowing but it is in extremes we often find answers to greyer areas of life, or at least debate.

In Campbell’s story, scientists in Antarctica discover a frozen alien body. While they debate on whether it is alive or dead after being frozen, it de-thaws and comes to life. They soon discover it can fully imitate any living creature it comes in contact with. It destroys them, absorbs them and then becomes them in everyway except it isn’t them. It can speak, walk, and even has similar reactions except for the one biological test that the men discover.
These men, isolated in an alien landscape, debate its abilities. McReady rises “the idea of the creature imitating one of us as fascinating, but unreal…it doesn’t have a human mind (102).” There comes that word again, unreal. It is nothing like us thus it can’t beat us. Cooper has to say otherwise, saying “it has powers of imitation beyond any conception of man (102).”

Looking at these various words; real, unreal, imitation, fake, one can see a variation of words that could mean several things. When talking about Campbell’s ‘monster’, we are implying it was trying to deceive thus it is forgery, not a just a mere imitation but imitation with purpose. Strangely enough, according to Susan Blackmore, imitation is what sets us apart from the animals. All that we know; memories, stories and feelings, we “have learned by imitation from someone else” which is called a meme (Blackmore). Blackmore expanded on Richard Dawkins’s theory of the “selfish gene” and the “meme.” A meme comes from the word ‘Mimeme’ or ‘memory.’ Dawkins saw these memes, such as religion, entertainment, and language, as “parasites infecting a host, treated them as physically realized living structures, and showed how mutually assisting memes will gang together in groups just as genes do (Blackmore).” If this is true, what was so wrong in what the ‘monster’ did? He was merely a more evolved being, and evolved enough that it didn’t get its imitation in an imprecise manner such as speech but in actual taking over of the other being. It was the top of the food chain and thus should have won really

Looking at it all in a wider scope of popular culture, aren’t we all searching for the real and the fake? There use to be a word in my friends’ language called a poser. Notice the only one letter difference between poser and loser. A clever trick of popular language indeed, but I digress. A poser can be taken literally as one who makes poses, i.e. a mime. It is also a person who associates or attempts to associate with a certain subculture to reach some sort of social standing with in it. One particular friend was very adept, if that is the word for it, at picking out the posers. See, we were punk rock skaters before that was cool as it is today. Actually, I guess we were on the cusp of it being cool. We were the real deal. We had friends in crappy punk bands, and we listened to the real punk rockers. We wore our punk leather pyramid studded belts and our chucks till they fell apart, and thus, made us even more real. This real needs perspective though. If what I would consider a real punk, let’s say Sid Vicious for example, would see us or see us then, we would be posers. Are we just attaching to memes and some win out while some don’t? Or are we trying to become like the ‘monster’, dying to absorb and be exactly like everyone else in order to survive.

Works cited

Blackmore, Dr. Susan . "The Meme Machine." UK Memes Central. March 1999. UK Memes Central. 02 Jul. 2005 .


Campbell, Jr., John W. "Who Goes There?." Science Fiction: The Science Fiction Research Association Anthology. Ed. Patricia S. Warrick, Charles G. Waugh, and Martin H. Greensberg. New York: Longman, 1988. 102.

So it begins...

This will be my blog for the popular culture class this summer. What does this class hold in store? I cannot make any prediction that is for sure, but it has proven itself interesting already. I see a divided class, splitting across all lines of interest and foreknowledge of the subject. Some see no merit in serious study of science fiction. Some live their lives surrounded by it. But one might ask, where I fall in this cataloging that humans love to do to each other.

I have read hard and soft sci-fi writings. Ray Bradbury is my favorite author, though much due to his writing style. Poetic he is (look, I am using Yoda speech :P) and he has written more than I could dream to write in my lifetime. His choices of topic are wonderful too. One story comes to mind or rather, came to mind as we ended the last class speaking of human arrogance.

This story is basically about two priests that visit a planet that mankind is colonizing. They find some “creatures” in the hills, glowing orbs actually. They decide that they must convert said creatures since they must have a soul. The priests are not horrible men, and are not presented such but much more what I would call men who doing a good work that perhaps God didn’t call them to do. They are getting ahead of themselves and doing it out of their own thoughts. They understand that God came to us and saved us in our form. They surmise that it must also be so for the orbs. They strive to make a church for the creatures, with an orb like them to represent Christ like a cross does for us (yes, I am Christian). Through their striving and failure, the orbs finally speak to them. They let these men know that Jesus has indeed done the same for them, and in fact they have ascended higher in that they do not need their bodies. They had spiritual bodies. The priests realize their arrogance and repent. They presume themselves to be such men of God that they could understand all that is of God’s mind and plan. They discovered that they knew only what their human minds could know. They discovered the meaning of Isaiah 55: 8-9,

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher then the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts then your thoughts.”

Perhaps there are a few in the class who would read this would scoff at me, and that is ok. I respect and appreciate them even though they may not respect me, and will listen closely if they are intelligently speaking something relevant. I don’t know their life, and I don’t know their thoughts. Humans are remarkable and always full of surprises. My only wish is that everyone takes this class seriously enough to have lots of fun with it. Sci-fi is fun. It can speak to both the child and adult in us all. It exposes fears, hopes, lies, truths, and humanity the same as any literature has since the beginning of time. The themes do not change, only our environment around us. Everyone needs to accept the fact that science fiction literature is fast becoming science fact and life. It speaks to our times and the effects on humanity. I love science fiction, and if anyone wants to call me geek, thanks for the compliment.