Mars Invaders

    In The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury, a pretty blatant and interesting allusion is made. In the story when the humans send their expedition to Mars, chicken pox wreaks havoc. Almost all Martians are killed by this new disease, causing an inadvertent genocide. An entire culture wiped out, with no warning and nothing done wrong.

    Now doesn't this sound familiar, one group finding a native people, wreaking havoc on them with disease, and forcing out the natives who would not work with them. This is pretty close to the story of the Native Americans. The European explorers found the Native Americans, wiped out mass amounts of them with western diseases, and drove out the ones who wouldn't give up their culture and land to the explorers. 

    My theory is that Bradbury put did this as a warning, to discourage us from overextending in our explanation. To tell us to stay in our domain, lest we cause even more damage to other cultures.

 

So in class a while back we read a small excerpt from the work "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", and I found something very interesting. The submarine in the story is powered completely by electricity, which was just an extension of the technology that existed at the time. It was very surprising to me that the technology in the story was not anything that seemed insanely far out, but rather, a furthered version of the technology that was already being used.
    This led me to look at stories over time, and I found that there are a broad range of stories that focus on extensions of the technology we have already, either fearing or fantasizing it. Prime examples of this are things like "Terminator", "1984", and even "Metropolis" to an extent. I think this shows how whether positively or negatively, we are always dreaming of advancement subconsciously.
    Until next time - Aaron.