EP088: Blood of Virgins

[Bdoomed]

It seams to me, after reading all the posts, that I'm either way older than most of the posting crowd or some have forgotten after school specials.

what do you mean by that? although you are most likely older than me, what do ya mean by that?

[wakela]

First off, thanks to everyone here for the interesting discussion. 

wakela, i dont think this story was tryin to make sense, it wasnt supposed to be realistic in humanity's acceptance of man eating beasts of burden.  It is meant to be a satire on contemporary transportation.

That's a good point, and you are right of course.  But for me there were enough unbelievable points that the satire doesn't really work for me.  Instead of questioning whether the convenience of cars is worth the cost in lives, I am thankful to live in a world where cars become safer and safer each year, do not require us to torture Malaysian girls, and the media enthusiastically reports engineering flaws. 

Good stories have something to say, something to make us think.

I agree completely, but this one did not make me think.  It trod a well-worn groove of anti-corporate environmentalism.  Anti-corporate environmentalism is a fine thing to believe in and write about, but it's become tired.

It's also a more nuanced situation than the story lets on.  Anyone would be against cars if they ate people and served only the vanity of college students.  But my car takes me to work, lets me travel freely, and takes my kid to the doctor.   You have to work pretty hard to convince me that I shouldn't drive my kid to the doctor. 

[Bdoomed]

It's also a more nuanced situation than the story lets on.  Anyone would be against cars if they ate people and served only the vanity of college students.  But my car takes me to work, lets me travel freely, and takes my kid to the doctor.   You have to work pretty hard to convince me that I shouldn't drive my kid to the doctor. 

but therin lies the satire!  i dont know if you have read it, but Thomas Moore's A Modest Proposal proposes an outrageous solution to a problem, not to have people follow through on the proposal, but to make the situation known!  People are poor and the place is overpopulated... hmm lets eat babies! here are my reasons, my grounds, my rebuttal, now think! (i wont explain this, if you havent read it, read it! heh)

the story is makin an exaggeration to show the problem, that is the style the author chose in order to say what he wanted to say, and still tell the story he wanted to tell.  by totally blowing the situation out of proportion, you make it known.  and dont say "he coulda said the same thing a different way" because this situation has been said multiple times, its not like there is anything new here, but this is an artistic approach to the situation.  If anyone here has read A Modest Proposal this would probably be makin much more sense than to a person who has not. and by read i mean read and understood...

there are also parallels here
the dragons drink the virgin blood of humans
cars, as posted earlier, consume the virgin blood of the earth
and dragons, assumed here, are the equivilant of cars for them, they take em to work, travel freely, and take their kids to the doctors.

[Simon]

A Modest Proposal was Swift, not Moore.

Cheers

Seriously tho, as "satire" goes there is good satire like The Futurological Congress, The Sirens Of Titan or HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy...  And there is less good satire.  Being satirical doesn't make things good.

[beardiebloke]

This was a cool story.  It really took me back to my teenage days...

It also reminded me of "Clash of the Titans" where Athena demands that Andromeda is sacrifices "untouched by man" (or some such nonsense).  That bit always makes me shout "Quick! Someone shag her!"

Anyway, as far as being a fantasy story goes, I'm not so sure.  They talk about dragons having manufacturers so that makes it scifi in my book.  Anyway - it was fun and that's all that should matter.

[Russell Nash]

It trod a well-worn groove of anti-corporate environmentalism.

But my car takes me to work, lets me travel freely, and takes my kid to the doctor.   You have to work pretty hard to convince me that I shouldn't drive my kid to the doctor. 

There is nothing in this story that says there are no cars or other transportation. It does in fact mention not only bike paths, but streets. If everyone got around by dragon, they wouldn't need the streets. Also if Chris' parents had the money to buy him the dragon equivalent of a Mustang GT, they would have had enough for they're own if they wanted.

I don't think the author is slamming corporations for making cars as much as he's making a statement about peoples' choices of cars.

example:
My bother has a mini-van with 240HP! That's stupid! His Mustang "only" had 225. This van uses much more gas than it needs to just to have power available that it can't use.

Let me explain that last part. This van is front wheel drive and has passenger car tires. When the the van is put under hard excelleration, the front end of the van lifts (normal to all cars) and the tires have less weight to hold then against the road would start to slip if the traction control system didn't limit the engine power. At highway speed the van hardly needs 50 or 60HP. This thing has probably never needed more than 140HP and never will, but he uses the extra gas to have that power on hand.

Over-powered cars and trucks. Vehicles far bigger than anyone needs. The buying of a car just because of what the neighbors will think. This is what I feel the Author was commenting on. He's not saying anything against the family with the Camry for the whole family and the Corrolla for the commuter.

Oh yeah. I take the subway to work, the train on vacation, and my kids to the doctor's in a stroller. All of which are faster, safer, cheaper, and more enviromental. The car(yes I do have one) gets less than 4000 miles a year. Last point, I pay over six dollars a gallon and I don't care because I only fill up once every four to six weeks. The huge gas tax is used to buy open land and put it under protection from developement.

[Bdoomed]

A Modest Proposal was Swift, not Moore.

Cheers

Seriously tho, as "satire" goes there is good satire like The Futurological Congress, The Sirens Of Titan or HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy...  And there is less good satire.  Being satirical doesn't make things good.

HAHA i KNEW it didnt sound right! gosh i feel stupid now! thanks for the correction, Jonnathan Swift.. im sorry!
(oh and for what its worth, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the best book(s) ive ever read)

$6 a gallon! wow thats a lot!

[wakela]

Where's my post!!!!  I spent like an hour on that thing!  Full of quotes, links, intellectual references, clever turns of phrase, and puns.  Oh, the puns.  sigh

Summary:
OK, the moral of the story may be less "cars and companies are bad" and more "are our luxury items worth the costs."  Still, this does not make it particularly interesting to me.  It's a message I hear over and over again in the media. 

its not like there is anything new here

Then should it be on an SF/F podcast?

[Maximus-Primus]

It seams to me, after reading all the posts, that I'm either way older than most of the posting crowd or some have forgotten after school specials.

what do you mean by that? although you are most likely older than me, what do ya mean by that?

The story was written like an after school special. for those who do not know what one is, an after school special was a TV show on "after school" and it was usually an over dramatized morel dilemma. i.e. Do I spend the money I worked hard for, on the radio I want to buy or do I donate some/all of it to the feed the hungry. Or something along those lines. We were often forced to watch one of these as a group by our kind and loving but misguided mothers.
Since no one else was saying much along this line ( about the story's moral over dramatization ) I thought I would post a comment about that and see if anyone else saw the same connection between the too. I was not trying to bag on anyones age.

[Romirez]

I also thought the story was rather poor, to be honest. To me, this wasn't even a fantasy story - it was just a environmentalist case study or something. You can replace "dragon" with "car" and "blood" with "gas" and the story stays pretty much the same, except now it's not a "fantasy" work, just fiction. I like a bit more depth to the sci-fi/fantasy aspect of stories that are labeled as such.

edit: how in the world did I manage to type 'although' instead of 'also'

[jrderego]

It seams to me, after reading all the posts, that I'm either way older than most of the posting crowd or some have forgotten after school specials.

what do you mean by that? although you are most likely older than me, what do ya mean by that?

The story was written like an after school special. for those who do not know what one is, an after school special was a TV show on "after school" and it was usually an over dramatized morel dilemma. i.e. Do I spend the money I worked hard for, on the radio I want to buy or do I donate some/all of it to the feed the hungry. Or something along those lines. We were often forced to watch one of these as a group by our kind and loving but misguided mothers.
Since no one else was saying much along this line ( about the story's moral over dramatization ) I thought I would post a comment about that and see if anyone else saw the same connection between the too. I was not trying to bag on anyones age.

Sort off, but not really off topic... Does anyone remember the Afterschool Special "The Wave" where a teacher is asked by his high school sophomores how everyday Germans could become Nazis. The teacher decides to show them by starting and leading an afterschool club called "The Wave" and his charisma makes it a nationside phenomena? At the end at a big schoolwide gathering he unveils the real leader of "The Wave" to his audience of cheering teenage brownshirts.

Hitler.

I know I saw this one (among the date rape, drunk driving, and don't-take-quaaludes-before-the-prom ones).  I didn't dream it, honest.

[Russell Nash]

It seams to me, after reading all the posts, that I'm either way older than most of the posting crowd or some have forgotten after school specials.

what do you mean by that? although you are most likely older than me, what do ya mean by that?

The story was written like an after school special. for those who do not know what one is, an after school special was a TV show on "after school" and it was usually an over dramatized morel dilemma. i.e. Do I spend the money I worked hard for, on the radio I want to buy or do I donate some/all of it to the feed the hungry. Or something along those lines. We were often forced to watch one of these as a group by our kind and loving but misguided mothers.
Since no one else was saying much along this line ( about the story's moral over dramatization ) I thought I would post a comment about that and see if anyone else saw the same connection between the too. I was not trying to bag on anyones age.

Sort off, but not really off topic... Does anyone remember the Afterschool Special "The Wave" where a teacher is asked by his high school sophomores how everyday Germans could become Nazis. The teacher decides to show them by starting and leading an afterschool club called "The Wave" and his charisma makes it a nationside phenomena? At the end at a big schoolwide gathering he unveils the real leader of "The Wave" to his audience of cheering teenage brownshirts.

Hitler.

I know I saw this one (among the date rape, drunk driving, and don't-take-quaaludes-before-the-prom ones).  I didn't dream it, honest.

I heard that one on This American Life. Some teacher really did that about 15 or 20 years ago.

[radiant-man]

Not wishing to debate on fantasy’s place on Escape Pod or the political viewpoints expressed in story.  Just wanted to say that I enjoyed the story great deal.  Disappointed by lack of rampaging and city destruction, but will survive. 

And yes, 200 foot lizards don’t need no rescue.

[Bdoomed]

ugh ive been away too long, so much readin on this convorsation to do...
but
i DID see the wave in... 8th grade!  tis a true story too! kinda scary no?

[Brian Reilly]

It's taken me a while to listen to this one- I've been behind on my podcast listening. And I loved it (It's making me think I've neglected the Realistic Fantasy genre somewhat). I didn't feel the satirical elements overwhelmed the story. Unlike the dryads story, this was about the main character and his own personal life, with the idea of dragons as cars providing background. I didn't see it as a polemic at all.

I liked how the story turned out to be about the main character's own insecurities about sex, maturity, popularity, peer pressure etc. Fantasy monsters as metaphors for our own insecurities? Very Buffy.

If the story had been written to slam car culture, I think it would have been very different. It was about coming of age, not politics!

[SFEley]

Administrivia: All of the posts on transit and hybrid cars have been moved to a new thread.  That's no criticism on anybody, I just figured it was drifting too far from the story discussion and would flourish better as its own topic.  Carry on!

[Ryuujin]

What I'd like to see is some SF writer make up an entirely different political view of an alien species and see how well they mix up with humans and our (to them) weird ways.

But that's probably not likely to be submitted to Escape Pod, I'm thinking - though I'm sure that there are at least a few titles worth mentioning in novels and longer books.

[wakela]

What I'd like to see is some SF writer make up an entirely different political view of an alien species and see how well they mix up with humans and our (to them) weird ways.

Grab a keyboard and start writing, Ryuujin!  I'm sure it would be awesome.  BTW, have you read the Uplift books by David Brin?

BTW2: I study Japanese, but I'm having a hard time with your little tagline.  Whats it mean?

[darusha]

If the story had been written to slam car culture, I think it would have been very different. It was about coming of age, not politics!

I think it was about both, which was its problem for me.  The car/ecology thing was really interesting (to me, anyway) and the maturation/sexual issues were also really interesting, but I felt like each issue wasn't explored as much as I would have liked because there were both. 

Though, to be honest, I have to agree with the posters who have been put off by the number of eco-nut stories lately.  And I am an eco-nut.  I think it's just that there have been too many, too close together.  That, and I really didn't like Smooth Talking for some reason I can't quite pin down.  Probably the "anthropomorphism=worthy of saving" angle.

[dreamingmind]

I listened to this thinking it was SciFi, not Fantasy. It sounded like those manufactured dragons were just one luxury mode of transportation (as others have observed). That the dragons drank virgin blood had me thinking: Whoa! What do the genetic engineers make of that one? Weren't they able to isolate the genes responsible? Did replacing those genes eliminate some essential dragonishness? Or was it just too expensive to bother fixing it.

So while I was engaged with the characters, thinking "Yeah, just say you love her! It worked for me!" I was also thinking "How did the dragon manufacturers get this product to market? They must have a helluva lobby in Washington!" ... or maybe they're Chinese imports.

Needless to say, I really liked this Science Fiction story.

Don