Week Thirteen: Literary Speculation

     For this week, I read Oryx and Crake. I found this read to (living up to the title for this week) quite speculative. Snowman/Jimmy has a incredibly strong battle of what it means to be human and struggles to keep it alive. Are we made human through our interactions with other humans? our Memories? Or doing whats right and protecting ones wishes? The story ends with snowman in a tough predicament: Save the colony of created he's sworn to protect, or join these three of his own kind? Being human in my eyes is doing what you feel is right, if its a mistake you learn from it and add to your experience. The human experience is living, making mistakes, standing your ground on the issues you truly believe in. I enjoyed the book for it had this deep speculation with Snowman's retrieval of the memories that lead to the plague and the end of human civilization. Is the purpose of creating a being or an Artificial intelligence our way of ensuring we have a legacy that will outlive the human race when nature takes its course with us? The speculation asks more questions than it answers.

     The same question can be asked about writing in genre. Genre and writing are talked about in different circumstances but they go hand in hand. Everything is classified and divided into genres as well as sub-genre. A new piece of writing does not stay free of a genre, it is simply reclassified or receives a basis from an already established genre. It would be as if a company in the United States decided to create a new automobile. The Genre of American cars would already exist, it would simply be a unique facet of that specific genre. It could be a standard mass produced car, or  super car, muscle car or hyper car, but it would still be designated under the American Auto Genre. It is all relative and there are pieces that cross multiple genres, but they simply share these different genres. The text ties into this in the way that it depends on ones perspective. It may be a certain auto, or in the case of the uncle in The Aquatic Uncle, each character has a different perspective of what it means to be an evolving creature in the world. One is not wrong, they just see the world through a different perspective based on their strengths and weaknesses. The same can be said for genre, and it can lead to speculative thought into its definitive position.