Last meeting we discussed our "World Builder" worksheets. We all had very different, very brilliant ideas for other worlds/stories/characters/settings/dilemmas/etc.
Our "stories" transcended many cultural norms and values. Not only did we negate the concept of gender entirely in many of our stories, by we also negated culturally constructed concepts of time and space. We seemed to be interested in the concept of the "unknown" or the "invisible" or the "shadow"--those factors in life that are so often unexplainable or unattainable through our human means. We have unlocked the prison of our minds and imagined a world anew.
The story we have selected for next week comes from a collection of short stories called Cosmicomics (1965) by Italo Calvino. At Daybreak is a short story about life before matter condenses into forms that we are more familiar with today. What can we learn from our subatomic ancestors and the origins of matter itself?
Please come prepared to discuss this reading and continue working on your "World Builder". We will meet this Friday March 29th at 6pm at Sycamore.
Remember that this class is looking at gender images through science fiction. Can you analyze this reading from a feminist/gender perspective? Why/why not?
“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.” ----Carl Sagan
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