Category: Uncategorized

While reading the Stars in My pockets like Grains of Sand it was interesting to note how the issues Delany tried to address through his science fiction novel are those issues our society struggles with today. Delany introduces future societies that challenge and question the concepts of ethnicity and gender sexuality through established interactions among different races such as humans and aliens, homosexuals, and pronoun usage. There is also the concept of the Family and the Sygn which can equate to the views of the various groups comprising our society (I equated them to the Democratic and Republican party ideals). The Family believes in the nuclear family centered in one culture and founded in heterosexual relationships. The Sygn in the other hand, accepts the idea of many types of relationships and understands the value of distinct cultures coming together in the same society. Delany’s cross-cultural and cross-racial themes wants to convince readers to escape what has been dictated by society pertaining these subjects, and rather see them as the norm. I believe Delany words seek to free those who feel oppressed and in turn make them feel hopeful of one day being able to achieve a society where such “perfect world” exist and there’s not a “better” or “more normal” than the other type of relationship, race, or identity but everyone is driven by their personal desires without being judged or oppressed. I believe with the legalization of gay marriage we are making some improvements but there is still more that has to be done to reach this “perfect” society.

Journal 6
Sexuality is a prominent theme that runs through Delaney’s Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand. In his world, rules, regulations, and computer programs govern the dating life of the humans within the society. Although these rules seem to limit the sexual exploits of the people and Evelmy in the society, the Sygn also allows for homosexuality and interspecies relationships. Moreover, gender in their society is not tied to sex, but rather an indicator of sentience and desire. In this day in age, although the world is becoming more open and accepting of those that do not align with traditional sexuality and gender preference, we still have a long way to go until the world looks more like Delaney’s then our current society.
It took a while for me to grasp and understand the gender pronouns and the societal structure as it pertained to sexuality throughout the novel, however, eventually I began to wonder whether Delaney’s ideas are not out of reach. Although, unless some closely related species to humans is discovered, I do not believe that there will come a time when humans engage in interspecies relationships, the world is moving towards the general consensus that both sexuality and gender is a spectrum or continuum. This idea, if widely adopted, is the first step to abandoning gender as it pertains to sex and adopting alternate meanings for “he” and “she” as Delaney describes in the novel.
It will be interesting to see where the world arrives within my lifetime on the topic and policies surrounding sexuality.

This week in class, we explored the different themes in the book Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand. Something that stood out to me in the book was that RAT Korga was sought out by everyone because he was a “survivor”. They were curious for many reasons. He was very different from everyone else because he did not have a GI. The GI gave everyone access to cultural knowledge, which helped them be more integrated and understand each other. Mark was nervous every time RAT Korga interacted with another human or other species because he was unaware of the social standards. I think it is interesting to think of how a GI system would work in our world. Although it seems as if having “perfect knowledge” would be ideal because of the information given to make certain decisions, it takes away one’s privacy. Privacy to me is very important because people are opt to act certain ways to make themselves look better or to fit in to what society considers “normal”. Privacy allows an individual to explore and find out who they really are when nobody is looking.

With this dependency on others and a loss of individualism, it made me realize that if I was a survivor of some catastrophic event, I would question why I am not dead. Although this is a pessimistic view, it is very real and happens to people all the time. In war, soldiers suffer from PTSD because of all of the gruesome and painful times they suffered through. They create a connection between the people that they are with, and when they become the last one standing, they often feel lost. I would also feel very frustrated and would not see the point in continuing life. If everyone you knew and loved had died, it would be extremely hard to build new relationships. This occurs when RAT Korga leaves Mark and Mark feels like nothing else compares to him. I would also feel anger towards the world because it seems unfair for your loved ones to be taken away. I guess it also just really depends on what kind of person you are. If you are a person that does not need anyone, you would have other feelings. The other side of this situation is that a survivor would be given a new chance to start over, build new relationships. If they had problems or hardships in the past, those could potentially be replaced. I feel like people would not judge you as much, they would only praise you and think highly of you because of how you were able to come out of such a situation where everyone else died.

Continuing on our discussion from Thursday’s class concerning how the GI would take away from our privacy. I believe that if everyone had access to all the knowledge of every people from when they were young there would be no way for individuality. Everyone would have the same complete knowledge and would have no experiences or biases to shape it into anything. It would be like if everyone was a twin who had lived the exact same life. Everyone would wear, or not wear, the best clothing, have the best thoughts, know the best ideas, etc… It would be just a world of clones.

One of the things I found most interesting about this week was our discussion of the GI and the implications of having one in our society. When thinking about the GI the first thing that it reminded me of was not the web or Wikipedia, but instead the Multivac from Asimov’s short stories. The parallels are astonishing in the way that they both contain information about practically everything, and while GI doesn’t provide answers in the same way that the Multivac does, they are both a fundamental structure around which the societies are based, and without them the worlds upon which they are based would fall into chaos. And while the GI does not provide obvious, clear answers to questions in the same way that the Multivac does, its plethora of information and the manner in which people may access it to gain new information is a way of allowing the individual to make an informed decision about their question based on the provided information.

Another interesting aspect of the GI is in the fact that it provides raw data, or knowledge, with which people can do whatever they chose. And while the GI system works well for the peoples in Delaney’s book, it could cause serious problems in our world today. One of the biggest reasons it would cause problems is that while it provides knowledge, most notably on other cultures, it does not provide any platform on which one might begin to understand the other cultures. Thus, while one might assume that the GI would lead to less conflict by facilitating a greater understanding of other cultures, it would have the potential to cause more conflicts. This is due to the fact that each person who obtains new knowledge does so with a bias which they formed throughout their life experiences, and thus the knowledge they acquire is biased. And because of this bias, any attempt to understand would be clouded by opinions and biases, and would thus never become pure understanding. This biased understanding is evident in some of the issues of today, particularly in people’s fears of Islam. Due to the commonality between many of the people who perform acts of terror, many Americans have become afraid of the Islamic religion, and are thus biased against a large portion of the world’s population. With this fear, many people chose to educate themselves on the religion, to a certain extent, and while the unbiased individual might see how accepting and peaceful the religion actually is, those biased individuals found information that was in keeping with their biases. And some people used this new biased understanding to justify acts of terror against innocent Muslims, being fuelled by their lack of understanding. Thus, while GI seems to work well in Delaney’s world, it would most likely lead to more chaos in our world due to the stark difference between knowledge and true understanding.