Yourself?

Asimov's Stories

It's been a long time since I've read science fiction. The stories of my youth, just as short stories were the stories of my adolescence, just as the world became the story of my adulthood.

I wonder how much I understood then..

I'm now rereading the books of my youth. Going through Asimov's Foundation series to see what those writers were trying to tell me such a long time ago. In a certain sense, my life is like those characters in Never Let Me Go. How much of the views of my world have been unknowingly shaped by those first few books?

Tammylan, Moon-face, Fenton Hardy, Sherlock Holmes, Edgar Allen Poe, those reccomended reading texts.

I remember a session with 3stan when we were identifying all the cartoons we've watched before. If we could just turn back time and watch them again as an adult, watching them critically, how many values we have today are part of those.. early "teachings"?

From Wile E Coyote, to Shredder and Mutant Turtles, to X-Men...

All of them treat life differently, all of them say certain things about the nature of our existence that as a child we never really questioned.

Is life really a never ending series of trapping, failure, trying again? Or do we empathize with running away, blind luck, and a certain cockiness?

Are the evil forces in the world of limitless resources, and yet also of woeful intelligence? The good men are resource limited, in nasty surroundings, and in many ways, depend on the goodwill of the people around them (April O' Neil) and their own ingenuity.

X Men was largely a study on discrimination, and how there are always different philosophies of dealing with discrimination. Extermination or Enslavement. Somehow.. peaceful co-existence was the ideal that could never have been.

posted by Downhere. @ 11:51 pm