Friday, August 28, 2015

Escape from Spiderhead: Cool Story!

I thought that Escape from Spiderhead was a beautifully written story that created a new world from an old one. In this story, Saunders shows Orwellian creativity and ability to write science fiction. He builds a world in which prisoners are controlled by substances that scientists put in their bodies. The scientists in this story are attempting to create drugs that have a wide range of effects, such as increasing vocabulary and producing love. I think Saunders does a great job of creating this scenario, because it like something that could possibly happen in real life. Saunders also does a great job of bringing up moral dilemmas, such as the ethics of testing dangerous drugs on people who have been convicted of terrible crimes. Overall, this story made me think, made me laugh, and enchanted me.
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5 comments:

  1. AnonymousAugust 29, 2015 at 12:35 PM

    I also noted the depressingly frequent ties to our own life as well. Dystopias are always much more frightening when they're actually feasible.

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  2. AnonymousAugust 31, 2015 at 3:33 PM

    I totally agree with your point that Saunders’s story is very plausible. I know that back in Medieval Ages (or sometime around there) that people in Europe would use the bodies of criminals to learn more about human anatomy (cut them open, poke around). While much has changed, using criminals for scientific experiments is not that far-fetched. And I think Saunders does a great job bringing this dystopian story to life.

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  3. AnonymousSeptember 1, 2015 at 9:05 AM

    I also agree that this kind of situation is plausible, because people have engaged in practices like these more recently than the Medieval ages, like the Nazis did with their prisoners in the 1940's. I understand you liked the story, but did you think the "love" scenes were a little too graphic?

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  4. AnonymousSeptember 3, 2015 at 8:30 PM

    I also agree that this story created a new world, but not one that was very distant from our own world. We currently have animal subjects that are treated like the humans in this story. At this rate it will not be long until humans are used as they are in the story. That is why this story should not only raise concerns with testing on humans but testing on animals as well.

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  5. AnonymousSeptember 3, 2015 at 8:30 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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