Diverse Position Sci-Fi

There's a very colonialist theme in Dawn by Octavia Butler, and it's not subtle. The main protagonist is a black woman, whose family was lost years and years before the start of the book. She was kidnapped, but her captors claim they saved her. When the story starts out, she's imprisoned, isolated, confused, and she doesn't know why, or for how long. Kept alone until she's ready to face the alien race that took her away from Earth. The reason for all this? Integration. Much like Bloodchild, the extraterrestrial creatures use the unfortunate circumstances of the humans to their advantage, and while it may not be moral, or welcomed, the result seems to be in the best interest of both races.

There seems to be a trend of science fiction stories that take modern problems and expand them into the larger universe. Of course, any genre does this, but transcending the boundary of reality and universe gives the opportunity to present the problem in a new context. Sometimes, all an audience needs is a new viewpoint to understand the issue at hand. Sometimes.

Cyberpunk and Steampunk

Snow Crash features an alternate reality fueled by anarcho capitalism in which corporations run the world and shape culture. Technology plays a significant role in this futuristic setting, and brings along with it a virtual reality world used both as a tool and an escape from a grim reality, treated as two individual universes. Technology is so ingrained with the real world, viruses can be introduced as drugs, although unheard of before the events of the story. With the advancements we've had since the writing of Snow Crash, we are inching closer to a similar reality. VR is becoming more advanced and commonplace, and with the sophistication of new technology comes the adaptation of coders and hackers.

The Fiction of Ideas

The Drowned Giant takes an interesting look at how the human populace treats subjects outside of our common knowledge. Fear or panic are the probable fist reactions, but in this story the otherworldly creature is as dead as can be, and clearly no threat. Of course there are the few like the narrator who have a natural curiosity, and the scientists who show up and do some amount of studying the giant before leaving. But the rest, the various townsfolk, are left to their own devices, and have no care in the world about who this giant is, where he came from, or how he came to drown. Or even what this means for the world.

I've never seen a beached whale, but I can imagine they would have been treated pretty poorly too in the 60's. The deceased giant is handled with no humanity; the people climb him, carve him, burn him, and hack him to pieces, with no regard that this phenomenal, foreign thing on the beach was once living and breathing just as they are. Honor of the deceased is relative. The death of one's mother has a different weight than a ex-coworker's aunt. The giant is so far removed from the people that he is not treated with the same respect as any dead human is expected to receive.

Contemporary Urban Fantasy

Everyone knows some amount of mythology, and mythology is a vital part all of our media, new and old. The Lion King is Hamlet is The Oresteia. American Gods takes a less subtle approach, and feels like the grown-up version of the Percy Jackson series. Mythology is known as a thing of the past; contemporary myths are few and far between, and the ones we do have are widely accepted as false, i.e. Bigfoot. Religious stories are old.

Neil Gaiman masterfully blended the old gods with modern day society; I was awestruck by how creative and innovative some of these ties were. The people's relationship with gods of any culture were never simple and clean, and they didn't always make sense. The gods of American Gods feel so much more believable than Percy Jackson's, of which had little variation from their sources.

Spiritual Education

I found that the most interesting part of The Night Circus was the observation of the two student characters, Celia and Marco, and the natural comparison of the teaching styles used for them. Both magicians use approaches very specific to their own personalities and lifestyles, and project their views and expectations onto their students. Neither are ideal in morality.

Both of the magicians play as an abusive savior to their apprentices, and are given absolute power over their life. Celia and Marco are groomed to compete in the magicians' rivalry, and raised with no sense of personal importance; their childhoods and onward spent serving their mentors one way or another.

As a novel marketed for young adults, it feels as though there's an underlying lesson of how to identify such abusive relationships, by providing not one, but two exaggerated situations. These situations, while of course nestled in the world of fantasy and fiction, can be very real and very difficult to understand not only for children, but for anyone in similar situations.