Escape Artists

Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Russell Nash on July 12, 2007, 06:28:20 PM

Title: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Russell Nash on July 12, 2007, 06:28:20 PM
EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies (http://escapepod.org/2007/07/12/ep114-cloud-dragon-skies/)

By N.K. Jemisin (http://home.earthlink.net/~njem/main.html).
Read by Máia Whitaker (of Knitwitch’s Scifi/Fantasy Zone (http://www.knitwitchzone.com/)).
First appeared in Strange Horizons (http://www.strangehorizons.com/2005/20050801/jemisin-f.shtml), August 2005..
Closing music: “The Fall,” by Red Hunter (http://www.whiskeyandapples.com/artists.htm).

I was a child when the sky changed. I can still remember days when it was endlessly blue, the clouds passive and gentle. The change occurred without warning: one morning we awoke and the sky was a pale, blushing rose. We began to see intention in the slow, ceaseless movements of the clouds. Instead of floating, they swam spirals in the sky. They gathered in knots, trailing wisps like feet and tails. We felt them watching us.

We adapted. We had never taken more than we needed from the land, and we always kept our animals far from water. Now we moistened wild cotton and stretched this across our smoke holes as filters. Sometimes the clouds would gather over fires that were out in the open. A tendril would stretch down, weaving like a snake’s head, opening delicate mist jaws to nip the plume of smoke. Even the bravest warriors would quickly put such fires out.


Rated PG. Contains passing nudity and apocalyptic themes.


Referenced Sites:
Superior Audio Works (http://www.superioraudioworks.com/)
Serve It Cold (http://www.podiobooks.com/title/serve-it-cold)


(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif)
Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://www.escapeartists.info/media/escapepod/EP114_CloudDragonSkies.mp3)
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Mr. Tweedy on July 13, 2007, 04:18:22 PM
Did anybody else imagine this as an animé?  The themes and overall plot a extremely similar to "Princess Mononoke" and "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind," and the general ideas are touched on in most of the animé I've seen.  1.) People damage and abuse Nature, for which offense Nature retaliates in violent fashion, usually employing some large scary creature.  2.) Arrogant people experiment with powers they don't really understand and bring doom on themselves.  These themes are combined with a good dose of animistic mysticism and portrayed with some dramatic scenes of destruction.  It's also got a young, headstrong protagonists who intuitively understands what her closed-minded "betters" don't get.

I also got an animé vibe from the way the various elements were tossed together.  Boy in a space suit falls for girl in grass skirt.  Mystic dragons thwart high-tech missile.  And the overall feel of the language seemed to create that sort of glimmering, kinetic, color-saturated look (at least in my mind).

I liked the story overall.  I was annoyed by the pointless descriptions of nudity.  It just seems like narcissism that this girl needs to drop descriptions of how totally hot she is into a story about civilization being destroyed.  I most enjoyed the descriptions of the sky dragons and their battle with the human technology.  Very picturesque.  The dragons themselves were both cool and scary and worked very well as a manifestation of Nature's anger.

Although the idea of Nature getting pissed always seemed a little cheesy and a bit too PC, I do like the theme of humans coming up against a natural order.  There are certain lines people should not cross and places they go at great peril.  These kinds of stories show the arrogance of humans thinking they can do and be anything without restriction being checked and punished, which is certainly an idea that merrits reflection.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: eytanz on July 13, 2007, 06:32:29 PM
I am a bit ambivalent about this story. It had some great moments - the imagery was very well constructed, and I agree with Mr. Tweedy about the sky dragons working very well as both a picture in my mind and as a concept. It also played the "culture clash" card much better than Ishmael in Love did last week - but at the same time, I found myself forming a dislike to all the characters, especially the narrator, and I found the plot to be rather predictable.

The main problem I had with the story, though is its muddled message and muddled way of getting the message across. Ok, so science is bad and technology is worse. And eventually nature will rebel, and punish us like the bad little boys and girls that we are. But that's ok, because nature only extends as far as the atmosphere, and if we're sexy enough and get lovers who live in outer space, we'll be fine.

Less sarcastically, I just feel that the story utilizes the kind of simplistic approach to environmental issues that does far more harm than good - that the only way to live in harmony in nature is to stop trying to understand it, and that if there's a change in the environment the correct thing to do is to adapt to it, not question why it happened and what its consequences would be.

Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: BrandtPileggi on July 14, 2007, 03:56:11 PM
I tell ya what... I cannot stop playing that damn song! Where did you get that version Steve? I've been looking for it incessently but I find a different version every time, and none of them are that one. I remember looking for it when you played it last time and coming to the same conclusion. The Fall by Red Hunter/Peter and the Wolf ftw.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Lzygenius on July 15, 2007, 09:54:53 AM
I completely agree with eytanz about this story.

On another note, I loved the reader's voice and I thought she was well suited for the main character.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: mrund on July 15, 2007, 10:53:27 AM
Silly nudity. A romantic and muddled view of "nature good, tech bad, but nature made by tech also good, so don't question it". Luddite. Patriarchal.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Dex on July 15, 2007, 04:29:25 PM
I completely agree with eytanz about this story.

It was a disappointing story.

With modifications it might work as a children's story
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Bdoomed on July 16, 2007, 07:14:37 AM
For some odd reason, this story scared me more than all the other doomsday warnings about global warming.  I wouldn't call myself environmental blah blah, but I do care about it.  During the explanation of the exodus and whatnot, it just scared me of how real it could get.  I dont know about the rest of you guys, but it affected me (effected or affected?) (dont know the consequences of that effect/affect/whatever yet...)

as for the rest of the story, I enjoyed it!  and thats all i'll say about that.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: ClintMemo on July 16, 2007, 11:43:14 AM
I liked this story overall, and I'll echo the "descriptions of the clouds as dragons was well done" opinion.

AS far as the "nature strikes back" theme - that's just the way the protagonist saw it.  The story is told through her eyes.  If it were told from the POV of her boyfriend, it could be a hard SF story about how the people who messed up the atmosphere thought they figured out the problem, tried to fix it and screwed it up worse.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: VBurn on July 16, 2007, 12:26:03 PM
Great story.  I agree with Clintmemo, the POV is what sets the "theme" although I think of it as the tone of the story. 

I liked how the "Aliens" ended up being humans.  I did not see that coming (I might just be slow on the up take, but it really added something to the story!) 
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: eytanz on July 16, 2007, 12:40:09 PM
I liked how the "Aliens" ended up being humans.  I did not see that coming (I might just be slow on the up take, but it really added something to the story!) 

What gave you the impression that they might be aliens? I'm pretty sure that they were introduced as being human from the start.

Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: eytanz on July 16, 2007, 01:04:46 PM
AS far as the "nature strikes back" theme - that's just the way the protagonist saw it.  The story is told through her eyes.  If it were told from the POV of her boyfriend, it could be a hard SF story about how the people who messed up the atmosphere thought they figured out the problem, tried to fix it and screwed it up worse.

I'm not sure I see your point here. Obviously, the choice of narrator is part of the design of the story and therefore influences the theme. But I find it difficult to believe that this is in any way accidental. Besides, it's not just who is speaking that's important, it's how. I didn't feel like the story was playing with unreliable narration and that I was really supposed to sympathize with the boyfriend. I felt that the author's sympathies were with the narrator and that the story was designed to place my sympathies with her as well. I think it was poorly executed in that regard, but if it was supposed to make me sympathize with the boyfriend than it was even more poorly executed.

I can't see why the fact that it's possible to write a different story about the same events should make me like this story any better.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Mr. Tweedy on July 16, 2007, 01:55:38 PM
The more I reflect on this story, the more I realize what a totally conceited person the narrator is.  Really, if you go through it, she's the only person who she portrays as having any virtues and the only one who isn't the victim of heavy criticism.  Large portions of her narration are devoted to telling us all how great she is: She's sexy, she's smart, she's too willful for any man to control, she understands the sky dragons when no one else does, she's honorable, she has more conscience than anyone else, and she ends up traveling around the habitat ring "telling [her] tales," spreading her own fame, in other words.

Pretty much everyone in the story who's not her gets torn into.  Her father is too conservative.  The men of her village are too timid.  The space people are arrogant, and the village elders are too foolish to oppose them.  The space boy is putty in her hands, so smitten by her sexuality that he comes back to save her while the rest of the Earth is ruined.  The people of the habitat ring are "limited and tame."

Basically, she's perfect and everything she does is right and everyone else is stupid and everything they do is wrong.

If I were a ring inhabitant, listening to her tales, I think I would assume that she was making it all up, or at least hugely embellishing.  Can you really trust a narrator who portrays theirself in this sort of light?
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: ClintMemo on July 16, 2007, 03:25:17 PM
AS far as the "nature strikes back" theme - that's just the way the protagonist saw it.  The story is told through her eyes.  If it were told from the POV of her boyfriend, it could be a hard SF story about how the people who messed up the atmosphere thought they figured out the problem, tried to fix it and screwed it up worse.

I'm not sure I see your point here. Obviously, the choice of narrator is part of the design of the story and therefore influences the theme. But I find it difficult to believe that this is in any way accidental. Besides, it's not just who is speaking that's important, it's how. I didn't feel like the story was playing with unreliable narration and that I was really supposed to sympathize with the boyfriend. I felt that the author's sympathies were with the narrator and that the story was designed to place my sympathies with her as well. I think it was poorly executed in that regard, but if it was supposed to make me sympathize with the boyfriend than it was even more poorly executed.

I can't see why the fact that it's possible to write a different story about the same events should make me like this story any better.
I'm not saying you should.  I'm just saying that the themes many people mentioned are in the story because it was told from her point of view.  If the story had been told from his point of view, it would have been very different, even though it would cover the same series of events.  I have no doubt the author intentionally chose to tell the story from her point of view. 
I think you could write the story from his point of view and make it sound like it was written in the 1940's - about a geeky nerd who came to save the planet with his friends, failed, but got the girl instead.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Zathras on July 16, 2007, 03:44:04 PM
For some odd reason, this story scared me more than all the other doomsday warnings about global warming.  I wouldn't call myself environmental blah blah, but I do care about it.  During the explanation of the exodus and whatnot, it just scared me of how real it could get.  I dont know about the rest of you guys, but it affected me (effected or affected?) (dont know the consequences of that effect/affect/whatever yet...)

as for the rest of the story, I enjoyed it!  and thats all i'll say about that.

I agree with Bdoomed on this.  Well put. I loved the imagery and though the narration was good.  When I saw the title I cringed a bit, thinking the story would be a fantasy ditty with dragons in it.  I was pleasantly surprised.   Not that I hate all stories featuring dragons, how can you dislike the Squokster? 
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Benticore on July 16, 2007, 06:32:51 PM
Personally, I liked the aggressive and sexually aware nature of the protag.  It seemed to me that someone in her position, at the vibrant cusp of youth and virility, would naturally view things the way she does.  It didn't seem to me that she was perfect, and she seemed to pay heavily for her independence with a loneliness that  followed her right off the damn planet.

Why is there an assumption of her being gorgeous simply because she is nude, and aware of how her nudity would affect men.  Most average looking women probably figure that cleavage will get the average male to look, no matter how briefly or intently.

I kinda wish there was more of an elaboration of the tension between the protag and her father, the struggle of not being a warrior, and not being a proper marrying woman either, but something different, something more.  But that wasn't really what the story was about.

I think the story really pushed towards the conclusion that some things are too fragile to tamper with without breaking the thing.  I really liked the fact that the 'Sky people' were trying to recreate the nature they had abandoned, but what they had were pale imitations of what they lost.

All in all, I very much liked the story.

Benticore
Out
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: VBurn on July 17, 2007, 12:36:09 PM
Quote
What gave you the impression that they might be aliens?

I think at first they were refered to as strangers and then sky people.  Part of it was the way the narrator treated the strangers.  I know if you hear hoof falls you should first think "horse", but in sci-fi it not always wise to make assumtions.  I don't think the author made a point of creating a delusion, which is probably why I enjoyed it. 

Of course I may be the only one out there who did not instantly think the strangers were humans from a space station.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: eytanz on July 17, 2007, 01:33:47 PM
Fair enough, though I think that one of the first sentences was something like "they were wearing white baggy suits because they didn't know what diseases they developed since they left", which immediately made me think of - well, I didn't actually think of space-station people but more people living in floating cities or something like that. I guess the word "cloud" in the title helped with that since it made me think "cloud cities".
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Etherius on July 17, 2007, 07:10:47 PM
I liked this one a lot, both for the imagery and for the reading. I definitely agree with Mr Tweedy that this has an anime feeling to it, though I didn't think of it until he mentioned it. I wondered what the cloud dragons might be -- some sort of colonial life-form that was inadvertently seeded in the upper atmosphere by human tampering, perhaps? -- but IMO things don't always have to be explicable to be enjoyable. (I enjoyed "Frankie the Spook", too, even though I have no idea how Francis Bacon could exist as a simulacron.)

The ending struck me as bittersweet -- making the best of an imperfect situation. The protagonist recognizes that all cultures have their strong and weak points, and she comes to the understanding that her preconceived ideas of the sky people were not all correct. As for the destruction of the villages by the cloud dragons, I took it to be a regional disaster rather than a worldwide one; maybe I missed something, but the impression I got was that the dragons would wipe out the local area around the disturbance but that humanity as a whole would not be exterminated on planet Earth.

The "deeper message" of the story, I think, is not that science is bad or evil, but that acting and judging rashly and out of ignorance is bad. The narrator and her people pre-judged the sky people as being all cut from the same cloth, and by the end of the story she realizes her judgment was not entirely fair. The sky people presume that they understand what is going on down on the planet, and the "earth people" are too proud of their perceived moral superiority to explain their perspective to the sky people. If the two sides had been willing to open a dialogue about what was going on, the sky people might have seen the signs of intelligence in the cloud dragon phenomenon, and the "earth people" might have won allies instead of alienating the sky people to the point where they just did what they had planned to do anyway. It's a lack of mutual understanding and a sense of false pride that dooms both sides; the only people who survive the disaster are the two who made the effort to reach out and meet each other halfway, fumbling though their efforts were.

Oh, and hi everybody. :) Long time subscriber, first time poster.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: doctorclark on July 18, 2007, 03:16:08 AM
I agree with the above comments on the strong imagery in this story.  Apparently so does the journal Science; I was shocked to pull this out of my mailbox just minutes after finishing Cloud:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol317/issue5835/cover.dtl
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: jdw on July 18, 2007, 02:39:52 PM
Basically, she's perfect and everything she does is right and everyone else is stupid and everything they do is wrong.

If I were a ring inhabitant, listening to her tales, I think I would assume that she was making it all up, or at least hugely embellishing.  Can you really trust a narrator who portrays theirself in this sort of light?

Couple things that might soften that view of the MC:
First, since the story's being told past tense (as it would be told to the Ringers), she does have the benefit of  20/20 hindsight. Since she's the only survivor (we know of) who objected to the Ringers' tech solution, yes, she's entitled to some loftiness.

Second thing is that small but non-trivial moment where she fights against going hitching a ride in the Escape Pod. She wants to stay put, stay in her home, even though it means certain death -- but she's in love, and she's a little horny, and she probably doesn't really want to die, so being human it makes sense that she acquiesces to her paramour's wishes. She was conflicted and she made a choice, and in the end there's still some ambiguity for her (I think) about whether she made the right one. I think this bestows upon her a bit of humility, and certainly some cause for sympathy. But I do agree that much of the character's description of herself, particularly of those "flaws" -- that really read as the sort of coveted virtues that seem to flow through every poor, provincial Disney heroine who just wants a little more from life -- do feeling conceited, a and a wee bit hollow, as well.   

I also agree with a previous post about the excellent quality of the reader's performance. I'm sure I wouldn't have felt nearly as close to the narrator if I'd simply read the piece.   
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Mr. Tweedy on July 18, 2007, 02:59:46 PM
I think that's a valid interpretation, but, for myself, I saw her "hesitation" as further conceit.  The way she tells it, her purity–her intimacy with holy Nature–is never compromised.  She wants to stay and endure the righteous judgement of Nature, so her character remains pristine, but space boy coaxes her irresistibly, so her survival is really his doing.  Thus, she gets to escape the judgement but still gets credit for having wanted to suffer it.  All the prestige of being a martyr, but you don't have to die.

Plus, her surrender to space boy's pleading is the only time in the story when she is pliant, which (begging everyone's pardon) is a stereotypical feminine trait.  She spends the rest of the story talking about how headstrong and indomitable she is, but at the end she melts a little and let's her romantic feelings sway her.  So, again, she gets to have it both ways: She gets to brag about how tough she is, but she gets to be tender and vulnerable too.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: SFEley on July 19, 2007, 04:27:06 PM
I try to stay out of these, but...

Let's see.  Inconsistent, center of her own universe, overgenerous in judging her own character and undergenerous to others (especially authority figures), and often moved by impulse over principle?  Or, as you put it:

Quote
Basically, she's perfect and everything she does is right and everyone else is stupid and everything they do is wrong.

Mr. Tweedy, you have just described every young person I have ever known.  And most of the older people.  Perhaps you were never such a person, and perhaps most of the people you associate with don't display these traits -- and if that's the case, kudos.  Or is it more that you do see these traits in people all the time, and that's why it annoys you to see them in fiction?

Whatever your reasons for finding Nahautu an active irritant in the story, they're fine and valid.  We all have different buttons that set us off, particularly when it comes to personalities.  (E.g., I've been watching Battlestar Galactica over Skype with Minx (http://"http://www.polyweekly.com"), and she hates Mrs. Tigh with a passion that really surprised me.  She has deep personal issues with manipulative women, and that character brings them all out.  She actually cheered when...  Oh wait, no spoilers.)

I have a different view.  I consider the variability and slight unreliability of Ms. Jemisin's protagonist a strength.  I don't think this story would have worked as well with a Heinleinian superwoman; nor with a weaker homebody who did only what everyone expected of her.  This is a character in unstable balance, with conflicting tensions -- and I find that interesting and believable.  If she bought entirely into the spacemens' vision, we wouldn't feel the same impact over the passing of the Earth.  If she was entirely bought into her tribes' culture and never felt the urge to wander -- then she'd probably be married and out of her father's house by this point, and who would tell the story?  This was the right character, in the right place, at the right time.

That doesn't mean you have to like her.  But from a dramatic perspective, I think the author succeeded at what she was trying to do.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Mr. Tweedy on July 19, 2007, 06:16:34 PM
Don't get me wrong: I'm not complaining.  I am not saying the story was bad because the character was irritating.  I'm just expressing what my perception of the character was and wondering what that might mean for the story.

You seem to agree with me that she was conceited (a trait you attribute to her youth) so no dispute there.  As for being irritating, well, yes, those traits really annoy me, and I do see them a lot in real people, and it annoys me there too.  You don't just see it in individuals, you see it in whole cultures: History rewritten be the elders to impress on the young that their own culture has a noble history while their enemies are savages.  This tendency to twist the past in one's own favor is extremely common, and Nahautu is by no means unique in that respect.

I think it is worth considering, though, how much you can believe from a person who goes out of their way to paint theirself in a good light.

I knew a guy in college who would talk for literally as long as you would listen about his many astonishing and gruesome adventures.  He spoke with complete sincerity, and he was so convincing that it took me several hours of listening to his tales to finally figure out that they had to be BS: No 20 year old could have seen and done that much crazy/amazing stuff.  (I wonder what he's doing now.  I'm sure there's money to be made by a person who can make up an impressive tall-tale in real time.)

So, what I wonder is this: Is Nahautu a reliable narrator?  I mean, consider the scenario in which the story is being told.  Presumably, we, the listeners, are Ring people, listening to her tell the story of her own life on Earth.  If I were a Ring person, the evident vanity of the narrator, combined with the fact that she has made a career of telling stories about herself, would lead me to strongly question the truth of her words.  I would wonder if any part of her tale was fabricated and to what extent.  Is she telling us this because she wants to communicate a message or because she wants to be admired?  I would wonder what the real story was.

Again, I'm not complaining: To me, this aspect of the story is interesting in itself.  I don't mean to imply that a conceited narrator makes for a bad story (I enjoyed this one).  I'm just thinking on what effect such narration should have on our interpretation of a story.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: DKT on July 19, 2007, 06:28:03 PM
Did she really go out of her way to portray herself in a good light, though?  Maybe she painted herself as kind of sexy, sure, but she felt more angst-ridden to me than good. 

For me, the narrator's voice (not to mention the narration) worked really well.  There was a lot more complexity and angst from being an outsider and I think most people can relate to. 

I don't know if she's a reliable narrator or not.  Like you pointed out, she is going around telling this story on the Ring, so first and foremost she's a storyteller. 
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Anarkey on July 19, 2007, 07:05:57 PM
I love N.K. Jemisin.  I loved this story when I read it at Strange Horizons, and I loved it even more when it was read here.  You picked an excellent reader for it, Steve.

I must have had a completely different experience than most of the other listeners who commented, because nothing of what has been complained about so far bothered me in the least.  I also didn't see it as an anime in my head, but then I was predisposed by the Frank Wu illustration accompanying the story at Strange Horizons (which is awesome, by the way). 

I'm a Wolfe fan, so I like unreliable narrators, and I thought this one was particularly well done.  She's simultaneously knowledgeable and naive, vulnerable and strong, self-righteous and curious...a very delicate balance that seems incredibly hard to pull off and yet essentially true to the way people actually are.

I really liked what I saw as some of the stereotype unraveling in the story.  The "native" here has appropriated cultural traditions...they are not her own and she is well aware of it.  She doesn't believe in the dragons as literal beings but as metaphorical ones, and yet the metaphor has such strength that it speaks to her in an almost spiritual way.  She embarks on a very purposeful act of seduction that works at least in part by playing on Rousseau's ideal of the noble savage, which the sky guy totally buys into.  I, personally, got a giggle out of how she engineered the "National Geographic" moments. 

This story reminds me a bit of James Patrick Kelly's "Burn".  The people who stayed behind on Earth had to promise to live a simple life, just like the ones who lived on "Walden".  Extreme Voluntary Simplicity.  But nothing is ever that simple, in either story and I enjoyed the complexity of "Cloud Dragon Skies".
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Swamp on July 19, 2007, 11:03:50 PM
She doesn't believe in the dragons as literal beings but as metaphorical ones, and yet the metaphor has such strength that it speaks to her in an almost spiritual way.

That's the way I read this, too -- that the "cloud dragons" were a metaphor.  I thought it worked extremely well and inspired some great imagery.

This story reminds me a bit of James Patrick Kelly's "Burn".  The people who stayed behind on Earth had to promise to live a simple life, just like the ones who lived on "Walden".  Extreme Voluntary Simplicity.  But nothing is ever that simple, in either story and I enjoyed the complexity of "Cloud Dragon Skies".

I also saw the correlation with Burn, which was also a fun read (or listen).  I'm glad it won the Nebula Award.  And then this week, I read another very similar story, but with an Amish male protagonist and a different type of ending.  The story is titled Rumspringa by Jason Sanford and can be found here (http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=issue&vol=i5&article=_004) in the InterGalactic Medicine Show online magazine.  (I believe you need a subscription to read it.)  These all have the same theme of a simplistic life amid interstellar technology.  The imagery of Cloud Dragon Skies, however, stands out in my mind.


Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: eytanz on July 20, 2007, 10:12:38 AM
She doesn't believe in the dragons as literal beings but as metaphorical ones, and yet the metaphor has such strength that it speaks to her in an almost spiritual way.

That's the way I read this, too -- that the "cloud dragons" were a metaphor.  I thought it worked extremely well and inspired some great imagery.

Cool interpretation. But that's not at all how I understood it. It never occured to me that the clouds were not actually transformed into living beings. And I thought the scientist boyfriend said there were amino acids in the clouds, which indicated that they were at least partially organic.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Roney on July 20, 2007, 09:52:32 PM
That's the way I read this, too -- that the "cloud dragons" were a metaphor.  I thought it worked extremely well and inspired some great imagery.
Cool interpretation. But that's not at all how I understood it. It never occured to me that the clouds were not actually transformed into living beings. And I thought the scientist boyfriend said there were amino acids in the clouds, which indicated that they were at least partially organic.

I was quite agnostic on this point.  There seemed to be indicators in both directions -- which I think applies to other aspects of the story as well.

I had expectations from the opening paragraphs... and they were low.  I was bracing myself for something quite preachy, strong on the "noble savage" idea (as mentioned by other posters) and/or hair-shirt environmentalism.  But the strong narrative voice, the narrator's conflicting desires (conscious and subconscious) and the frequent ambiguity made me sit up and pay attention.  I was still more interested in the background setting of the exodus, but I felt that it was an interesting story very well told.

I'm surprised at the strength of feeling behind some of the responses on the forum and how different they are to my perception of it.  I think it's a great testament to the subtlety of the writing that there are such differing interpretations (that are valid, consistent and supported by examples) of the same text.

I happened to listen to this story on a day when there were just a few, wispy (natural) clouds in the sky, nearly outnumbered by vapour trails (the obvious recent ones, and the older ones that might look like normal clouds if they weren't so straight, and not aligned with the weather fronts).  Living 30 miles south of London Gatwick airport on the busy route to holiday destinations in Spain, this is not an unusual sight, and it's one that doesn't usually make an impression.  But because of "Cloud Dragon Skies" it suddenly felt wrong for the man-made clouds to be competing with the natural weather.  I can honestly say that this EscapePod story altered my perceptions.  And that's what fiction (particularly science fiction) should be for.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: ajames on July 21, 2007, 12:47:58 PM
Great story, great discussion.

Is the narrator unreliable?

Is she playing loose with the truth as she tells her story to the people on the Ring?  I'm not so sure that the audience for this story is the people on the Ring, as I got the impression her audience was as naive about the Ring and the sky people as they were about her and her people.  Also, I would think her greater knowledge of the Ring and the sky people after living with them would inform her views of them, even if it only showed through phrases such as "At the time I thought sky people were...".  Finally, if knowing the intended audience of the narrator's story was critical to the story, the author could have easily made it more apparent who the intended audience was.  As it is, this story could as easily be an entry in her memoirs, intended for her great, great grandchildren, as a story told to people on the Ring.

She is an unreliabe narrator in the sense that she is telling what happened as she saw it, not as some sort of omniscient being or objective observer simply relating the facts of what happened.  Do her personality traits and cultural beliefs make her less reliable than most others?  That is, is her version of events further from 'the truth' than most other versions would be?  Or is she the most reliable narrator possible under the circumstances?  As others have already addressed these questions, I won't say more about them here, except to ask a question - does disliking the narrator lead to a greater belief that her narration is unreliable?    True, one could argue that the same traits which lead to a dislike of the narrator also diminish her reliability, but do they?  Her tendency to point out other's faults and her own strengths, as she sees them, does not mean that she is making up these faults, or her strengths.  While I take her characterizations of others and her suppositions about their motives with a grain of salt, I don't have cause to think that she is a pathological lair or has reconstructed events to fit her perception of herself or others.  [Then again, I didn't personally dislike her, either].

Is the message of this story that nature is good and science is bad?  I don't think so.  Certainly there is the message that science often has dire, unintended consequences, and we are arrogant if we think otherwise.  But it is science after all that has preserved some nature from earth on the Ring, and science that has preserved the human race, even if it was science that polluted the earth to start with [or our use of science, at least].  And I wonder if the real message here isn't that human beings simply can't accept things the way they are, without attempting to change them to suit our needs.  The complicity of at least some of the people of the earth, people who had sworn to change themselves rather than change the earth, in the sky people's plans speaks to this.  The people of the earth weren't even agreeing to change the environment in a way that would have significant effects on their ability to survive, only to change the sky back to the blue they were used to.  We are tinkerers at heart, and having discovered science we can't go back in time and live the idealized life of the noble savage, at one with nature.  And while we could learn some things from the wisdom of those who lived closer to nature, our future is with science, in the stars.

But the more I think about it, the more I think the the science/nature conflict is more of a setting for this story than a message, that the interaction between the peoples of different cultures is what really counts here.  If the author had a specific message she wanted to communicate, I think Etherius probably comes closest when s/he wrote:

"The "deeper message" of the story, I think, is not that science is bad or evil, but that acting and judging rashly and out of ignorance is bad. The narrator and her people pre-judged the sky people as being all cut from the same cloth, and by the end of the story she realizes her judgment was not entirely fair. The sky people presume that they understand what is going on down on the planet, and the "earth people" are too proud of their perceived moral superiority to explain their perspective to the sky people. If the two sides had been willing to open a dialogue about what was going on, the sky people might have seen the signs of intelligence in the cloud dragon phenomenon, and the "earth people" might have won allies instead of alienating the sky people to the point where they just did what they had planned to do anyway. It's a lack of mutual understanding and a sense of false pride that dooms both sides; the only people who survive the disaster are the two who made the effort to reach out and meet each other halfway, fumbling though their efforts were."

Whew!  Sorry for the long post.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: chornbe on July 24, 2007, 02:31:57 AM
I am a bit ambivalent about this story. It had some great moments - the imagery was very well constructed, and I agree with Mr. Tweedy about the sky dragons working very well as both a picture in my mind and as a concept. It also played the "culture clash" card much better than Ishmael in Love did last week - but at the same time, I found myself forming a dislike to all the characters, especially the narrator, and I found the plot to be rather predictable.

Exactly. I found it trite, with pluggable imagery.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: BlairHippo on July 24, 2007, 04:30:57 AM
I thought the story was excellent, with strong characters and vivid imagery.  I was surprised to see it get such a mixed reaction here, though reading the posts I certainly understand where the story's detractors are coming from.

Nahautu isn't the most likable narrator, is she -- she's arrogant and condescending.  I was able to get past it, but I see how that might be a barrier for many.  And she never really seems to fully own-up to the fact that she was partially responsible for the disaster herself.  She had the ear of one of the Sky People, and she saw that their fixation on details was causing them to overlook critical information.  But she decided she'd rather watch them fall on their faces than show them the extraordinary results of lighting a single untended campfire.  (Then again, I'm not surprised she only cops to her role in the most oblique off-hand way possible.  She helped kill everyone she knew and in essence destroyed her entire world; makes sense that she'd be hiding from it.)

I had some other lesser issues; I too wanted to know if the sky dragons' revenge was global or (as I suspected) local.  I was also very disappointed to learn that "The Ring" was apparently a literal Niven-style Ringworld.  Sorry, but I honestly doubt there's enough matter in the entire solar system (minus the sun) for a construction project of that magnitude; the asteroid belt would be a drop in the bucket.  (Seriously, my understanding is that if you took the entire asteroid belt and wadded it into an asteroid snowball, you'd wind up with a planet a fraction the size of Mars.)

But, those are nits.  The characters were imperfect but compelling and eventually won me over.  And I like Etherius's interpretation that the only two survivors were the ones trying to bridge the gap between the two cultures.  It's an excellent story; my sincere thanks to Ms. Jemisin for writing it, to Ms. Whitaker for reading it, and to Mr. Eley for publishing it.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: wherethewild on July 24, 2007, 11:26:04 AM
I liked the story, although Nahautu did grate on me a bit. Probably because she sounded the way I did at 19 (except for the breast pride thing) and I really wouldn´t want to meet that me again (wow did I think I was smart and strong and SOOOO DEEP-- you old people *sniff* have no chance at understanding the world and it´s youth, we´re the future you know!-- I´m surprised I wasn´t bitchslapped into tomorrow by half the people around me).

I understood that the cloud dragons were real, and not imagination/metaphor. The brief reference to amino acids in the atmosphere indicated so, and I was disappointed that wasn´t followed up on. Also that the cloud dragons interacted with the campfires. Lots of room in this premise for many different expansions/stories and I´d be interested in seeing some more.

Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Thaurismunths on July 25, 2007, 12:23:31 AM
Fantastic story!
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Listener on July 25, 2007, 12:00:20 PM
ClintMemo said:
Quote
I liked this story overall, and I'll echo the "descriptions of the clouds as dragons was well done" opinion.

AS far as the "nature strikes back" theme - that's just the way the protagonist saw it.  The story is told through her eyes.  If it were told from the POV of her boyfriend, it could be a hard SF story about how the people who messed up the atmosphere thought they figured out the problem, tried to fix it and screwed it up worse.

I kind of saw this coming when the father threw the sky people off the farm.

***

The thing about a narrator is: you don't have to like her.  You don't have to respect her.  You just have to listen to her, and form your own opinions.  Think about sitting in a college poli-sci class -- an advanced symposium or something.  You know enough to have your own opinions.  You discuss a text with the professor and the class.  You disagree.  You say why you disagree.  Unless the text is factually-inaccurate, the writer of the text has just as valid an opinion as you.  I remember vehemently defending Alexis de Tocqueville on several occasions -- specifically, how Americans prefer to be equal in slavery rather than unequal in freedom, or something to that effect -- and the other 11 people in my symposium thinking I was crazy for that opinion.

So, to all the people who hated the narrator: that's your prerogative.  I don't think I would've liked her as a person, but she's all we had.

I actually believed the clouds were some form of dragon.  Not a traditional dragon -- not like a Hungarian Horntail or Squonk or any of the others -- but more like living beings that exist in a way different from us (I believe I remember the sky people saying something about amino acids, and it's been a long time since 10th grade bio, but I believe those are the building blocks of DNA or something similar).  Given the ephemeral nature of clouds, it wouldn't surprise me if the cloud dragons lived short lives (like the Mayfly of a previous story) and evolved quickly once the sky turned red. 

I believe the dragons saw the sky people's attempt to turn the sky blue as the equivalent of a country hearing someone was going to drop a nuke on them and retaliating in advance.  The sky people were going to destroy the dragons' habitat; they had every right to fight back against the only people they could see.  Since the rocket came from the ground, not from space, they thought the humans on Earth fired it and acted accordingly.

The message of the story was a little overused -- if you're going to leave because it'll make the planet better, don't come back and use the same technology that ruined it to turn it into what it used to be -- and yeah, I felt the nudity was a little gratuitious, but overall I enjoyed the story.

Auditorily, the reader was satisfactory, though I could've lived without the effects being put on the narrator's unspoken thoughts.  Or was that just an audio artifact?
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Anarkey on July 25, 2007, 03:52:03 PM
First of all, ajames, I was fascinated by your post. Very thoughtful analysis, and I'm glad you took the time to type it up for us.  I wish I had something more intelligent to say in response but I wanted to acknowledge my enjoyment of your post.

I understood that the cloud dragons were real, and not imagination/metaphor. The brief reference to amino acids in the atmosphere indicated so, and I was disappointed that wasn´t followed up on. Also that the cloud dragons interacted with the campfires. Lots of room in this premise for many different expansions/stories and I´d be interested in seeing some more.

I believe I'm being misinterpreted.  The cloud beings are metaphorically dragons.  Obviously the artifacts she names dragons (and personally, I thought they may have been animate, but not living, if you know what I mean, and that's where I thought the amino acid statement was implying) are really there, she's not making them up.  Metaphor does not mean made up.  Also pretty obviously they aren't actual dragons.  I wasn't trying to say she was making them up, just that her naming them dragons was attaching a legendary meaning to them.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: wherethewild on July 25, 2007, 03:54:12 PM
(I believe I remember the sky people saying something about amino acids, and it's been a long time since 10th grade bio, but I believe those are the building blocks of DNA or something similar).

Just in case you wanted to know: they´re building blocks of proteins. (DNA is made of a string of nucleic acids; 3 nucleic acids form a codon; one codon codes for an amino acid; a string of amino acids forms a protein; kneebone´s connected to the thigh bone...).
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Listener on July 25, 2007, 04:55:54 PM
(I believe I remember the sky people saying something about amino acids, and it's been a long time since 10th grade bio, but I believe those are the building blocks of DNA or something similar).

Just in case you wanted to know: they´re building blocks of proteins. (DNA is made of a string of nucleic acids; 3 nucleic acids form a codon; one codon codes for an amino acid; a string of amino acids forms a protein; kneebone´s connected to the thigh bone...).

Ah, so I had it backward.

Still, though, I think the dragons were real.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Mr. Tweedy on July 25, 2007, 07:02:44 PM
The dragons are obviously real entities, although, as Anarkey points out, they are obviously not literal dragons.

What I wonder (and maybe listening again would answer my question) is where, exactly, they came from.  There seem to be two possibilities:

1.) They are some kind of Frankenstein creation.  People chucked a bunch of chemicals into the atmosphere and *ZAP* the chemistry came to life.  The creation conquers the creator.

2.) The dragons are a natural defense mechanism of the living earth.  I.e. Mother Earth is pissed at people for messing up the place and sends the dragons to punish them.  The creator re-conquers the creation.

The essential moral is the same either way, but it gives the story a very different feel depending on which explanation you go with.  The first makes for an ironic tale of man destroying himself.  I go for the second, which makes for a mystical story about man butting heads with the gods.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: eytanz on July 28, 2007, 10:37:24 AM
I was re-reading this thread, and I want to clarify something - in my post early on, I said:

Quote
nature only extends as far as the atmosphere, and if we're sexy enough and get lovers who live in outer space, we'll be fine.

Upon re-reading, I realized it may look that I'm one of the people complaining about the attitudes towards sex/nudity in the story - I want to make it perfectly clear that I'm not. The narrator's attitudes towards sex are actually one of the few things I found likable about her. And I found the nudity neither silly nor gratuitous, but natural, and I felt it fit in well with the story's wonderful imagery.

What I object is the fact that the message of the story end up being "the beautiful will be saved". In the end, it was neither action, nor inaction, scientific understanding, or tradition, that survives. Rather, the young and the beautiful - both male and female - get to live, and for no other reason than the fact that they are young and beautiful.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: ajames on July 28, 2007, 02:50:04 PM
In response to eytanz's last post, I don't agree that the young and beautiful survived in this story for no other reason than that they were both young and beautiful, though I will concede this is a viable interpretation.

For me, I think it was more than just being beautiful and young that saved these characters.  These two people from very different cultures with very different ideas were willing to cross those boundaries and at least give one another a chance, which is more than the other prominent characters in the story were willing to do.  And this is what saved them.

I'll admit that this isn't necessarily the case.  You certainly could reduce their "love" to ephemeral physical attraction, enhanced a bit by being forbidden [by her father for one] and various other factors easily associated with youth or beauty.  But I'm sticking with my interpretation.

I do agree with eytanz that the nudity in this story came across to me as natural, and I wasn't bothered by it at all.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: SFEley on July 28, 2007, 03:27:58 PM
In the end, it was neither action, nor inaction, scientific understanding, or tradition, that survives. Rather, the young and the beautiful - both male and female - get to live, and for no other reason than the fact that they are young and beautiful.

Heh.  And I thought it was just because they could run fast.  >8->
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: KnitWitch on July 31, 2007, 08:04:58 AM
The discussion and analysis of the story here has been very lively and thoughtful - alot of fun to read through.  I want to invite all of you to take advantage of an opportunity to ask questions and talk the author about her work directly later this week.

Join us for the first live interview and call-in show of KnitWitch's Scifi/Fantasy Zone Season Two with Nora K. Jemisin on Thursday, August 2nd at 9:00pm Eastern Daylight Time (8:00pm CDT/ 7:00pm MDT/ 6:00 PDT) hosted by TalkShoe.com

If you can't make it for the live show you can listen to the recording approximately half an hour after the show is concluded. Just log on to the Zone's TalkCast Page (http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=28497&cmd=tc) and click on the "DOWNLOAD" or "LISTEN" buttons.

Click HERE (http://www.knitwitchzone.com/aud/Jemisin%20Live%20Promo.mp3) to listen to the promo or visit the Zone website for more information on how to join in at www.knitwitchzone.com (http://www.knitwitchzone.com)
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Russell Nash on August 06, 2007, 07:54:25 AM
In the end, it was neither action, nor inaction, scientific understanding, or tradition, that survives. Rather, the young and the beautiful - both male and female - get to live, and for no other reason than the fact that they are young and beautiful.

Heh.  And I thought it was just because they could run fast.  >8->

Young and Beautiful = Athletic = fast

So, yeah, they were saved because they were young and beautiful.  The fat, ugly, sit at home on saturday without a date crowd didn't hook up with a sky person or couldn't run  fast enough to get to the Escape Pod.


Question:  How many EP episodeds have we had with actual Escape Pods?  Just curious.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: tpi on August 06, 2007, 06:47:51 PM
I find it very surprising that someone would find nakedness in this story gratious or irritating. It didn't even occur to my mind as it seemed quite natural. Maybe that's an American trait. 99,9% of Europeans (maybe Brits excluded) are scratching their head about an average american's reaction to naked people. It is totally okay to shoot people graphically on primetime TV, but a fleeting glimpse of a partially covered breast will cause a national outcry (eq. Janet Jackson and "Wardrobe malfunction")
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: wakela on August 06, 2007, 11:11:41 PM
I find it very surprising that someone would find nakedness in this story gratious or irritating. It didn't even occur to my mind as it seemed quite natural. Maybe that's an American trait. 99,9% of Europeans (maybe Brits excluded) are scratching their head about an average american's reaction to naked people. It is totally okay to shoot people graphically on primetime TV, but a fleeting glimpse of a partially covered breast will cause a national outcry (eq. Janet Jackson and "Wardrobe malfunction")
Don't want to get too off topic, but most Americans didn't give a crap (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/02/entertainment/main597184.shtml) about Janet Jackson's boob, either.  The minority that did was very vocal, however, and the media loves a scandal.    But I agree that it's weird that there would be a vocal minority that would care more about breasts on TV than people shooting each other. 

And for what it's worth, I thought the nudity in the story was appropriate and natural. 
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Planish on August 18, 2007, 11:45:53 AM
I was annoyed by the pointless descriptions of nudity.  It just seems like narcissism that this girl needs to drop descriptions of how totally hot she is into a story about civilization being destroyed.
Nah. It reinforced the difference between her and the boy, who's appearance pretty much got equal time. Not only was he completely covered and insulated in what sounds like a haz-mat suit, but the suit was quite formless, concealing his own shape that much more. She was very "be here now", and he was just on a field trip.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Planish on August 18, 2007, 12:07:49 PM
Why is there an assumption of her being gorgeous simply because she is nude, and aware of how her nudity would affect men.
Umm... Mr Tweedy mentioned the word "hot" (albeit in a negative context). There's a difference between that and "gorgeous", with "gorgeous" meaning merely superficially decorative, and "hot" being an attitude as much as anything else.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: TimWhite on September 06, 2007, 03:52:21 PM
Interesting setting, interesting characters...murky premise.
Title: Re: EP114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Post by: Unblinking on October 12, 2010, 04:26:52 PM
Too much of a message story for me.  And the particular message of "Don't play God", while worthwhile, has just been too many times since I saw Jurassic Park.  I expect I could've looked past this if either of the characters were interesting to me, but they mostly just annoyed me.  And even the message's form of delivery seemed rather muddled, put well by eytanz in an earlier post:

The main problem I had with the story, though is its muddled message and muddled way of getting the message across. Ok, so science is bad and technology is worse. And eventually nature will rebel, and punish us like the bad little boys and girls that we are. But that's ok, because nature only extends as far as the atmosphere, and if we're sexy enough and get lovers who live in outer space, we'll be fine.