Bridesicle by Will McIntosh

“…through life and revival, to have and hold…”

“’What’s that I’m hearing? Is that a marriage ceremony?’ Mira asked."

            In Will McIntosh’s “Bridesicle,” technology has advanced so far that people can now be cryogenically frozen after they die, and older dead people can “hitch” onto the lives of people still alive to live vicariously through the “hitchee’s” body. Specifically in the case of the cryogenically frozen people, it appears that many, if not all, of the females end up one way or another in what is called a “Bridesicle.” There, men come and partially “revive” them for short periods of time to see if any of the women there are willing to marry them, in which case they fully revive the woman by paying a fee. The main character, Mira, is such a woman who is currently still very much “dead” and frozen and inside the Bridesicle, but she happens to be gay

            I feel like the above quote from a marriage vow (as well as from the short story) really sums up a lot of the challenges and themes in the story. For one, it seems as if the humans in the future have really interpreted that phrase quite literally, for the brides are literally given “life and revival.” And, that is what Mira had been missing when she took her own life (and subsequently ended up in a bridesicle). Her lover, Jeanette, had died, and her mother, who was hitching on her, had not been so approving of the union. In a way, perhaps McIntosh is saying that even though we sometimes want people to see what we see, it is a big risk to do so, especially if it’s all the time. And besides, you will never see, or “have and hold” the hitchers ever again. On the other hand, McIntosh also showed us a success story of the hitchers through Lycan and his grandson.

            However, even though the bridesicles absolutely seem to violate the rights of a woman (why are they put into a bridesicle after they die? And why are there no “groomsicles” then?), it did really allow for true life and revival between Mira and Jeanette. Allowing themselves to be frozen allowed them to transcend a time where they could not be together, and therefore their love happened to be revived as well.

Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang pg. 1-15

Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life”, pages 1-15, seemed very different from all the previous science fiction novels and short stories that I have read. It seemed to be more in tune with actual reality than what I normally find science fiction to be like. This probably lends itself to the fact that the story alternates between the normal, familiar moments to human beings every day, about growing up, and then living in the alien world. The story starts off in a world that seems very normal to me, in a way that I did not even guess what kind of science fiction tidbits were in store for me. The story talks about how the narrator wants to tell her child how she was born, as well as the narrator’s reflections on her child growing up. It also is the story of how the narrator is sent to help decode an alien language, the language of the “Heptapods,” and how the narrator meets the child’s father through this. However, in the beginning, we know of the child’s start and end, for the narrator says “I’d love to tell you the story of this evening, the night you’re conceived, but the right time to do that would be when you’re ready to have children of your own, and we’ll never get that chance” (117). The fact that we know of the child’s birth as well as death definitely helps set up the rest of the story—what happens in between that time. However, the alien story seems to go in chronological order while the story of the narrator’s daughter growing up is rather nonlinear. Since I have not yet finished the story at this point, I cannot say for sure what I think this implies, but for some reason it evokes to me a sense that perhaps the mother, or narrator, will start to view her career in translating the alien language as ever more so important than child rearing, for she is so organized in her approach towards telling the story of the aliens. Or, if the memories are simply recollections as she thinks through her story, then perhaps this theory is not so.

Hijab Scenes #7 Body Paragraph

            The poem manages to show that even though so many people assume that she has no freedom or will not speak out, the narrator is a strong, confident Muslim American woman with independence, and a voice willing to fight back. Kahf shows this through the lines “Yes, I speak English; Yes, I carry explosives; They’re called words; And if you don’t get up; Off your assumptions, They’re going to blow you away.” In contrast to the beginning of the poem, where many lines questioning her American identity started off with the word “No,” a “Yes” is given for the part that makes her more American, for speaking English. She shows that she has been tired of people assuming that she is not an American citizen, and that she is not willing to just stand by and let others draw conclusions about her without her even getting a voice in the matter of determining who herself is. Therefore, she describes her “explosives” as being “words.” The part “explosives” also implies that she has been bottling up these feelings for awhile, letting some assumptions about her slide, even though she herself knows that she is American, just like those asking her the questions. Therefore, “blow away” not only implies that the ignorance of people will lead to their downfall, but also that the knowledge of the language, used to fight back, will be an eye-opener for certain people.