Blog set 4 Apocalypse and Post-apocalypse

                       H.G. Wells “The Star” (1897)

As I read this story at first I had to get used to the way Wells wrote this story and it took me a while to comprehend what he was trying to say. As I reach towards the last couple of pages is when I finally started to understand what was happening to these people on earth. The story started out slow and it did not catch my interest much but after I read it a second time around I begun to visualize what was happening and it was quite frustrating and scary. To see these people not have any idea of what was happening as we would of known because of our knowledge of these things, you can see how astonished they were by this strange bright light getting closer and closer and not knowing what it was or what to do. As one of the characters in the story the Mathematician warned the world no one took him seriously until it was too late. The end came and not everyone survived and as that star got closer and brought hell to earth there was not one soul to hide from the devastation that was about to happen. Towards the last page we see what another species the Martian astronomers that were on Mars saw from their viewpoint and to them what was happening to us on earth did not look that bad to them and then it ends with “Which only shows how small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem, at a distance of a few million miles.”  

                                                    

Octavia E. Butler “Speech Sounds” (1983)

In the beginning of the story you can see how it already starts in a fight, then the main character Rye said “buses were so rare and irregular now,” so I automatically came up with post-apocalypse era. To have lost something we use to communicate physically and verbally with throughout our lives is an eye opener and curiosity does stricken you but same time imagining living without being able to read, write, or even speak because of such a vicious virus it shows how dangerous and scary life would be. The way Obsidian and Rye communicate throughout the story intrigues me, because even though they both are impaired differently they still find ways to communicate and that shows hope to me in some way for them. To think that parentless children would become scavengers to survive and then just become wild because that is what their future looked like is a very upsetting and saddening thing to imagine. The ending was surprising because I thought Rye wasn’t able to speak or understand the children until she did speak and that’s when I knew even though this story was in a post-apocalypse era the ending did not fully end in a sad note but it left me wanting to know more of what happens next, does she find her brother in Pasadena? Leaves me with questions for someone who enjoyed the story.

UPDATE:

    Day 1

          My name is Alice, I'm 21 and I am a computer hacker. These past two years have been a nightmare for me, losing my family in a Tsunami on a trip to Asia and then I left the fire academy. I felt that I no longer belonged there. I couldn't save my family, how can I save strangers at that. I left my lifetime goal of being a Firefighter and turned to being someone I thought I left behind a long time ago ,a criminal. I'm hot-headed and have a bad temper at times but my boss deals with me because I make him good money and I am really good at my job. I've been stuck in this small dark office for months since I can no longer be at use in the real world. Let's just say the FBI was not to happy when I leaked some TOP SECRET stuff on the internet but they won't ever find me not in this place. I have been hearing rumors about some weather anomalies happening around the world but what really caught my interest and turned me ice cold was the word Tsunami. After I did some digging, I come to find out that no one knew about the Tsunami that killed my family because it was covered up. Why would this horrific news not have been known and why cover it up? This was one of the first anomalies that occurred and NASA knew about it, they let thousands die that day. So I have been tracking down these anomalies myself and there seems to be a pattern going on and next one is heading straight for us. I need to warn everyone about this, maybe this time I can save people, but how will I get out this place I am a prisoner? No, I will find a way! If someone finds this and I'm no longer around it means they finally found me. Alice here logging off.