Cindy Ho: "Dear Michael Damian and Lynne Thomas: Can't Be Late for 10 Check"

Dear Michael Damian and Lynne Thomas: Can’t Be Late for 10 Check

By

Cindy Ho

            The real world gets boring rather quickly when you live a normal high school life. Most of my days consist of waking up, going to class, going to club meetings, doing homework, and then sleeping. Currently, most of my readings are either from calculus textbooks or history anthologies. It wasn’t until my Speculative Fiction Studies course with Ms. Townsend this semester that I reconnected with fantasy and science fiction (SFF) readings that I had enjoyed so much in middle school. Within a 30 minute period, I could travel to new world and witness an unforgettable adventure. Through the variety of short stories that ranged from hard science fictions to fantasies with fairies and magic, I had finally found a breath of fresh air.

After eight hours of having information and lectures thrown at me, I just want leave my cold, hard wooden desk and that is exactly where SFF come in to save the day. SFF present a new world that isn’t centered around getting an A on that next paper or test, offering my mind a break from the stress of everyday life. Through world-building, authors create places where the normal rules of reality don’t hold true and their creatures can only be found in our wildest dreams. Within the first paragraph of a story, I am transported to a new realm as my mind starts to piece together all the various facets of the world I have just entered. Sentence by sentence, I escape the four walls of my classroom and enter who knows where. The element of surprise also makes science fiction and fantasy stories so exhilarating. I have no idea where I will be taken or what strange events are going to occur. There is a constant feeling of anticipation that stays with you until you finish the story. My ultimate example of the element of surprise, or in this case, more like horror, occurred in Poul Anderson’s “Kyrie”. In the beginning of the story, the reader understands that through some strange space-time phenomena, Eloise, a human, can communicate with Lucifer, a foreign species called Aurigeans, through telepathy. Eloise’s spaceship is in danger and she needs Lucifer’s help in order to save herself and the rest of the crew. At that point, I could sense danger as Eloise risked losing her beautiful relationship with Lucifer if the mission failed. However, nothing could have prepared me for the gut-wrenching ending where **spoiler** Lucifer successfully saves the spaceship but Eloise is left hearing his screams of death eternally. Mind-blown.

 Furthermore, short SFF especially are perfect for people like me who have a fear of commitment accompanied with a busy schedule. Each time my class begins a novel study and the teacher hands out a daunting 400 page book, I automatically have a sense of dread as I know I will be spending long nights slaving over each chapter. However, with short works, there is less intimidation from the length of the reading. I am more willing to commit to reading a short work as I don’t need to split my reading into multiple sections, breaking my concentration as well. For long books, I may have to go back and review past chapters if I don’t remember where I left off or if I forget what happened at a certain part. Thus, short SFF gives me a more wholesome experience as I can read the entire short in one sitting. Even The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, which overall is a decently-sized novel, becomes much more manageable as it is broken up into individual stories that can stand alone by themselves. I am not left hanging with some cliff hanger or dramatic fight scene if I stop reading at the end of an entry/chapter. Short SFF is like a fun-sized Twix bar, short, sweet, and incredibly hard to stop after just one.

My glimpse into short SFF this semester will keep me definitely coming back for me. I cannot think of anything else that can leave me as in awe and exhilarated in such a short period of time. If I ever need a break from my drab piles of coursework, I know that I can turn to SFF for a journey to some crazy new world and still manage to finish my adventure in time for 10:00PM check without even breaking a sweat.