#816 Speech Sounds- Octavia Butler

#816 Speech Sounds- Octavia Butler

The world has been stricken with a man-made virus, a disease that acts like a stroke on the mind and body. “The illness had played with them, taking away, she suspected, what each valued most.”

So now the world that is left is without speech. In a post disaster L.A., Rye is trying to catch a bus twenty miles to Pasadena. Transportation doesn’t come by that often and can be very dangerous. As she expected, on the  bus a violent fight broke out. Because of the disease it was hard to communicate or understand what this argument was about.

“She had heard so little coherent human speech for the past three years, she was no longer certain how well she recognized it, no longer certain of the degree of her own impairment.”

“Loss of verbal language had spawned a whole new set of obscene gestures.” Of course!

The bus empties out with Rye afraid of a gunfight. Along comes a former cop still fulfilling his duty. He takes Rye with him and she allows for a rare relaxing of her defenses. They connect, but her bliss is short-lived as they come upon more trouble and he is killed. In the end, at the moment of her greatest despair, she finds hope in the future.

There is definitely more than a little Mad Max in here. In the afterward, Butler writes: “I began the story feeling little hope of liking for the human species, but by the time I reached the end of it, my hope had come back.”

Rating: 7-7-8-7= 29

#798 The Contestant- Daniel Alarcon

#798 The Contestant- Daniel Alarcon

Reality TV gone wild, sensationalism run amok. Ruth Thalia Sayas Sanchez was the first contestant of a hit Peruvian TV show called Moment of Truth. On it, contestants are hooked up to a lie detector test and asked increasingly personal and revealing questions. Of course the show is looking for dirt to come out. To make more drama, on the stage with Ruth is her parents and her boyfriend. She told the truth, including her stint as an exotic dancer and her two instances of taking money for sex. She won the money but shamed herself and her family.

Months after the show aired, she is knows as the prostitute from the game show. She goes missing, and turns into a national scandal. Reality TV meets tabloid journalism, add the ever present desire for money and fame, and we see the worst of humanity.

Notable Passage: “The truth is always illuminating…It will do no harm, even though it hurts.”

Rating: 7-8-7-7 Total= 29

#448 Looking For Something- Frank Herbert

#448 Looking For Something- Frank Herbert

The Chief Indoctrinator for Sol III (earth) has come back from a vacation to find that his replacement has inadvertently allowed a human a glimpse of reality. Paul Marcus is a hypnotist, and while performing his mind tricks one night he came across a dangerous thought:

“What if this—our whole lives, our world, everything we see, feel, hear, smell, or sense in anyway is more of the same. A Hypnotic delusion!”

Both he and his subject had the same thought, boring into their consciousness, a thought that was dead on the money. Humans have been put under strong hypnosis by an alien Denebian race, and now it was being threatened by this lapse in “indoctrination.”

Those two were put straight, given stronger hypnotic commands, and the threat is gone. But alas, just as that problem was fixed, another threat pops up:

“A Hindu creature has seen itself as it really is…The creature went insane as per indoctrination command, but most unfortunately it is a member of a sect which worships insanity. Others are beginning to listen to its babblings.”

Frank Herbert, ladies and gentlemen!

Rating: 8-9-9-8 Total= 34