Posts filed under 'Sci-Fi/Futuristic'
“The Hunger Games” and “The Maze Runner”
The Maze Runner by James Dashner
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
I’m curious about why so many YA books—popular ones anyway—are about dystopias, lousy futures worlds where everything is wrong, the opposite of utopias. In the YA version of dystopia, the adults have sold out the kids. They have wrecked the world and are using the kids, mercilessly, either as experiments in making the world better or as scapegoats for the ills of society. As our current trend in American society leans to ‘helicopter parents’—those who hover over and meet every whim as well of need of their children, I wonder if teens’ understanding of the havoc we wreck on our environment and the potential this has for their futures is the fuel behind this trend.
Two books that I’ve just read on dystopias are The Maze Runner and The Hunger Games.
In The Maze Runner, Thomas wakes up in an elevator, very groggy and with no memory of his past—no sense of family, home, nothing. He’s not sure how old he is. He learns that he is in the Glade, an area surrounded by a vast maze with moving walls. About sixty boys live in this new home, with one new boy being deposited each month in the elevator. All are in the same predicament with no memories, no idea why they are there or who has done this to them. Life there is so bad that when Thomas asks questions, the only answer he gets is a sort of ‘You’ll see.’
Although the constant use of ‘you’ll see’ and ‘you don’t want to know’ is probably meant to add suspense to the novel, it actually pulls like a weight attached to the reader. Many pages in, you feel that you are not moving forward—you’re just reading the same thing over and over. However, there’s enough that’s strange and weird in the book to keep you going. Each night, doors from the maze open and hideous “Grievers”, half live, half mechanical, come out. If a boy is stung by one and manages to survive, he goes through a torturous changing that brings back some of his memory. Because of this, the boys are desperately looking for a way out, running the maze during daylight and mapping out the changes in the walls, looking for a pattern.
Soon after Thomas arrives, so does the first girl in the Glade—and with her the beginning of the end. The boys must find a way out to the world of the Creators, not knowing if their chances there are any better.
In The Hunger Games, sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen provides for her family—a twelve year old sister and a mother—after her father is killed in a mining accident. The family lives in a future nation, Panem, which is situated in North America. There, the Capitol demands punishment and yearly sacrifice from the twelve districts that had once rebelled against it. And here again, the sacrifice is children. Each district has a yearly lottery in which one girl and one boy, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, is chosen to participate in The Hunger Games. Katniss volunteers when her twelve-year-old sister is chosen. The unlucky boy, Peeta, is someone who had helped Katniss years earlier.
Taking place in an arena where the environment is controlled, the games are a fight to the death. Yet the pregame object is to make a good impression on the audience (all citizens of Panem are forced to watch) and accrue ‘sponsors,’ thus increasing the changes of winning the games. This is a sort of “Survivor” gone bad—and believe me, the book is an indictment of our love of reality TV and our predilection for violence. There are stylists for the contestants and the deep irony that these kids are treated to dizzying elegance and luxury just before they are sent out to kill one another, while many, especially in Katniss’s District 12 (formerly Appalachia, an area of the country synonymous, for centuries, with extreme poverty) have been days from starvation.
Peeta has always cared deeply for Katniss and this increases the suspense. Only one contestant can survive. What is the pair to do on this shifting moral ground? If you wonder about the difficulties of being fully human and fully present in the face of so much evil in the world, you’ll love this book. Then again, if you just want something that’s fast-moving and action-packed, you’ll love it as well.
If you like The City of Ember, The Giver or The House of the Scorpion, I think you’ll enjoy both of these books. If you are short on time and have to pick one, make it The Hunger Games, which is a better piece of writing and a tighter story.
Add comment November 13, 2009
‘The Invisible Man” Student Reviews 2009
The following reviews by COHS students are on “The Invisible Man” by H.G. Wells.
Genre: Science Fiction Novel
Pages: 278
Reviewer: Jonathan P.
In the beginning of the story, a strange man all covered up showing no skin whatsoever, appears at The Coach and Horses, which is a small inn. He never came out of his room and always was messing around with some chemicals he had. At the same time a lot of strange things start happening with no criminal to be found, but it turns out that it was Griffin, who turned out to be a very smart medical student when, trying to become invisible, succeeded but somehow couldn’t turn back to being visible. So the whole time he is trying to find a cure for his mishap but getting more frustrated and dangerous as the days go by with no cure. In almost no time at all there are violent doings and in the end, he found the cure but because of the navy stabbing him, he died and slowly his body became visible on the ground.
In my opinion of this book, it had everything a good book should have. For one thing, it’s plot was very intriguing and had me hooked from the moment I saw the word invisible. The author used so many figurative elements in the story that not for one second was I lost or confused with what was going on or what the setting looked like. The book also had a very important theme that everybody struggles with and it was very comforting to see an author use that, for a sense that I have a deeper understanding that we are all human and do have a difficult time sometimes accepting the consequences that have been thrust upon us. All around, this is a tremendously good book that I would recommend to a lot of people.
1. I think that the author’s purpose for writing this book was to show people that no matter how curious you get about something and no matter what the consequences are, that you have to deal with them, because even though he was extremely curious about trying to become invisible, he didn’t like the consequences of not being able to turn back.
2. The basic theme and thesis of the book is acting before thinking and denial of very unpleasant events that are consequences of your actions.
3. The way the author put the development of the thesis is that little by little, the “invisible man” kept on getting more and more frustrated with his mysterious experiments by not getting the outcome that he had planned. From the beginning when the invisible man said, “Not a bit,” said the stranger. “Never broke the skin. Hurry up with those things,” when he was bitten by the dog, you could tell that he was getting very impatient and had lost his last nerve with him trying to find a cure.
4. The main issue that presented itself in the book is simply dealing with the consequences you made for yourself in your own doings and the way it is basically solved is when Griffin finally found the cure through all of the mishaps that happened.
Add comment June 2, 2009
“The Time Machine” Student Reviews 2009
The following are COHS student reviews of “The Time Machine” by H. G. Wells.
Genre: Science and World Fiction
Pages: 190
Reviewer: Josh B.
The book starts in the late 1800’s with the protagonist, known as the Time Traveler, suddenly entering his house very tired and looking as if he has been through quite an ordeal. At this moment, he proceeds to tell his story to his fellow peers. He tells of his time machine that took him to the year 802,701. While there he meets a group of beings called The Eloi. While there, he takes the time to study the Eloi and learn about them. Then all of a sudden, the traveler notices that his time machine is missing and is incapable of asking the Eloi where it is. As time goes on he encounters the brutish Morlocks who have control over the Eloi, as if they were cattle. As the story progress, the time traveler and one of the Eloi encounter several Morlock and find themselves fighting for their lives. He is than able to locate his time machine and escape to safety. He then travels even further into the future to discover a barren land. After that he returns back to the present, which is where the book started. After he tells his story, he tells his peers that he is going to travel again and will be back shortly. Much time past and where is went remains a mystery…
Very interesting book. It had lots of action and a nerve-racking story. You also felt an emotional bond with the characters.
1. To better illustrate the wrong that is done with having a somewhat class structure.
2. To show a still existing class struggle, thousands of years in the future.
3. The author supports the theme by showing that there is a class struggle among the creatures (The Peaceful Eloi and the brutish Morlocks) he meets, thousands of years in the future.
4. It has a continuing struggle between the two classes (Eloi and Morlocks). During the book, the protagonist finds himself siding with the peace loving Eloi. Unfortunately, the two classes are so different and the Morlocks are so brutish that there is no chance of change. This leaves the protagonist no choice, but to continue finding his way back to the present as he intended to.
Add comment June 2, 2009
“The Wish List”
“The Wish List” by Eoin Colfer
“The Wish List” is a quick, fun read for anyone looking for fast fantasy fiction. You might recognize the name of the author. He also wrote the “Artemis Fowl” series.
Meg Finn is a not-so-good, but not-too-terribly-bad kid who dies when she agrees to help a local teen delinquent rob old Lowrie McCall. Belch Brennan decides to kill Lowrie during the robbery, and Meg objects, defending the old man. Both trespassers are killed through Belch’s dim-witted action. Belch zooms through the tunnel to the next world and goes straight to hell as his soul mixes with that of his pit bull. Meg, however, hits the wall where the tunnel branches off between heaven and hell. Her soul is up for grabs—it is exactly balanced between good and evil.
Fighting to claim Meg are Satan and his assistant Beelzebub. They could use a creative mind in hell. However, Saint Peter is also on the lookout for Meg. The good and evil players make a bargain to send Meg back to earth to help old Lowrie carry out his final wishes. If she succeeds, she will earn her way to heaven and the opportunity to see her mother again. Unfortunately, the Belch-dog soul is set loose to thwart her.
Lowrie’s last wishes are pretty wacky and add humor to the book. He learns to face his regrets about life and in her way; Meg is helping him with his salvation, just as he is helping her. The various minions in hell are former movie stars and other love-to-hate-them sorts of folks. If you’ll be offended by an unorthodox look at the afterlife, this isn’t your book. But if you like wacky, you’ll enjoy this read.
Add comment November 17, 2008
How I Live Now
I decided to read How I Live Now in my search for good, young-adult fiction because it won the Printz Award for excellence in YA literature. It’s the story of Daisy, an American teen with some serious problems. Her mother died in childbirth and she refers to herself as her mother’s murderer. Her father and his new wife are expecting a baby, and Daisy is the odd-girl out. She is also anorexic.
To lighten the family load (or so it seems), Daisy is shipped off to England to stay with her Aunt Penn and her four cousins, none of whom she has met before. They live in a farmhouse in the countryside in a sort of idyll not common in the modern word. The family is sensitive and preternaturally perceptive. Aunt Penn must travel to Oslo to discuss the coming war—a situation that seems to be long in coming, and no one believes it will happen; but happen it does. Suddenly Daisy is in a foreign country without an adult to supervise her or her cousins. At first this is fun—living off the farm—but when the war actually touches their lives, the story changes.
Daisy is separated from her male cousins and must look after her nine-year-old cousin, Piper, when they are removed from the farm. They see the devastation of war—cold-blooded murder and the death of animals. Even Daisy must learn to kill an animal to save it from suffering. Eventually, the girls brave the elements and starvation in an effort to return to the farm and find out what has happened to the boys.
Daisy is the sort of teen everyone likes—that is in fiction. She’s sassy and audacious. The narrative uses run-on sentences and unusual capitalization to give the reader a sense of Daisy’s ironic sense of humor. As she learns to draw on her resources to live through the war, she matures and becomes much less self-serving.
A few aspects of the novel did bother me. One was that, near the end of the book, the author jumps forward in time about six years. I felt this was a way of not having to deal with the end of the war—or even of ever letting the reader know who the enemy was and what the fighting was about. More disturbing was Daisy’s relationship with her cousin, Edmund. Although she hadn’t met him before her trip to England, and he is the sort of boy she would fall for, the fact that they have a physical relationship gives the book a little ‘ick’ factor—after all, he still is her first cousin, whether she knew him previously or not, and such a relationship is taboo. (There are no details, graphic or otherwise, and the two are separated through most of the book due to the war.) However, on the whole, teens will like the book, both the loveliness of life in the countryside and the portrayal of life in a war torn country.
Add comment November 14, 2007
The Road
One of the comments you’d never see in a professional book review is “The book is graphic enough to appeal to high school guys.” I hate to admit it, but this is something I think about when I’m reading. Research shows–and anecdotal evidence at Colony High backs up that research–that high school boys rarely read, almost never when they have the choice.
This summer I read a great book–and I mean great in every sense—a literary masterpiece, a stunning work of fiction, an insightful look into a bleak future, a beautiful rendering of the father-son relationship. And–ta da–a book graphic enough that it will appeal to high school guys.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy is the story of an unnamed father and son who are making their way to the sea in a post-apocalyptic world. “A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions” have left the world barren. Animals are dead (or long ago eaten by the few remaining people), plant life is scorched and roads are melted. The air is always gray with ash, as is the snowfall. The sun is blotted out and winter arrives early. All living people are scavengers—and with little left to scavenge, most are cannibals as well.
In a world that is virtually hopeless, it is amazing that McCarthy can wrench the heart of his reader with the love of the father and son. The father has often told the son that they are “the good guys” and while they have to be on a constant alert for others (who might capture and eat them), they would never do such a thing themselves. Though starving and exhausted from their trek, the son reminds the father that the two of them “carry the flame.” The son always wants to do well, including helping other people. The father knows better and is more wary. Understanding that he is dying, he saves two bullets in his gun so that he can take his son with him.
Some of the situations McCarthy envisions are horrific (people imprison others and eat them limb by limb, cauterizing the amputations) and yet all strike the reader as inevitable in such a world. Too often, I’ve read reviews that describe a new novel as a ‘tour de force.’ After reading the book, I assume that the reviewer was the author’s best friend. The Road is one novel that deserves the praise.
1 comment October 24, 2007
