LITR 4632: Literature of
the Future
Student Future-Vision Presentation 2011
Jeannene Gazaw – Future Visions Presentation – July 5
Islands
by Jacob Sackin (2008)
Primary Objectives:
To identify, describe, and criticize the narratives humans tell about the future:
Apocalyptic
Evolutionary
To identify, describe, and criticize visions or scenarios of the future:
Utopia/Dystopia – perfectly planned worlds/dysfunctional worlds
(Life inside pyramid vs.in mountains)
Summary:
Stuck inside a giant pyramid in a future devastated by global warming, Saskia is bored with her artificial life and yearns to experience the natural world. But unbeknownst to her and the other inhabitants of the pyramids, there are still survivors living outside. Abbie, a descendent of those who took refuge in the cooler mountains when the climate changed, is equally unaware that Saskia’s enclosed world still exists. Using her hunting and tracking skills, she and her brothers struggle to survive in a threatening wilderness overrun with invasive species, and dream of a place where they can live in peace.
The death of Saskia’s grandfather and Abbie’s search for a lost village eventually bring the two stories together. Now, each girl must choose whether to return to the familiar past or to step into the unknown.
Questions:
1. What is it about the science fiction genre and it’s authors that make them seen as proponents of the environment?
2. What do you think the world will be like a few hundred years in the future because of global warming? Do you think this kind of depiction of the future is fair/accurate?
3. Do you feel you could use a book like this to inspire/educate the next generation in terms of protecting the environment?
Passages from the text:
1. The pyramids were built long before I was born, reads Abbie, back when the air became too hot to breathe and the ocean swallowed up all of the low and fertile land. My grandfather told me that the world changed because of all the fuel our ancestors used to burn in their buildings and machines. The fumes filed the air, trapping the sun’s heat, and eventually made it too hot to live or grow food outside. By the time the last of the ice on the Earth’s poles had melted, the sea had swallowed up the city of my grandfather’s birth, and his family had found a new home in the mountains. It was here, in the caves along the cliff, that they began a new life, which today is all that my people and I know.
2. We are the descendents of those left behind when the people who could afford passage in the pyramids headed to their new home on the other side of the mountains. No one who is now alive has ever seen the pyramids, but a friend of grandfather’s, whose family came from the east, said that each one was as big as a mountain, filled with hundreds of thousands of people. This sounds like a lot, but Grandfather said it is nothing compared to the millions of people who were left outside to burn up in the sun.
3. Of those who moved into the pyramids, little is known or spoken of. People who could pay large sums of money moved into the higher levels, but most, who had little, were given places near the bottom, at the pyramid’s gigantic base. Our people, and many others, who were so poor they couldn’t pay for their passage, were left behind.
In the years that followed there was little rain, and the heat took the lives of all those left outside. Thousands fled to the north, and some built underground dwellings. Others moved up to the mountains, seeking shelter from the burning sun. Grandfather said that during those first few years many battles were fought over shelter, and that several of our people died protecting the caves from invading groups.
4. Then the great fire came and the mountains lit up like a torch. For many years afterwards people had to cover their mouths with rags because the air was so dirty. Dark years.
5.
People talk about the past like it
was the Apocalypse or something; like this is all God’s plan and the pyramids
are shelter from the storm like Noah’s
6. I want people to realize the freedom that our ancestors used to have and to understand that they might need to give up some of their everyday comforts in order for us, or at least our great-grandchildren maybe, to live normal lives!