Miranda Kalinowski: "Dear Michael Damian and Lynne Thomas: How to Escape from Taxes without Facing the IRS"

Dear Michael Damian and Lynne Thomas: How to Escape from Taxes without Facing the IRS

By

Miranda Kalinowski

None of us ever got our letter from Hogwarts. We got our hopes up, and were quickly let down when our 11^th birthday came and went without a visit from an owl. Even though having an owl deliver a Hogwarts invitation to us would’ve been awesome, deep down we knew that it would never happen, because we live in the Real World. We’ve heard about the Real World our whole lives, and about what we can and can’t do once we’re in it. Our parents would tell us that we won’t have time for video games or other forms of “nonsense” in the Real World, and we would wonder when we’d ever use seemingly-useless things like calculus. But what is the Real World, and when do we really start living in it? Is it when we have an adult job, start paying taxes, and become a “member of society”? If we’re not in the Real World before these things occur, then where the hell are we? And can we ever escape?

The Real World doesn’t leave much room for thinking outside the norm. We are expected to behave in a certain way in order to most effectively contribute to society. At times, the Real World can be flat-out boring; however, everything changed when the speculative fiction genre was introduced. Reading science fiction and fantasy stories may not allow us to physically take a break from the Real World, but they allow us to mentally take one. Short stories in particular are good for escape, because you don’t have to commit to reading a full-length novel, but you can still get a much-needed escape.

Speculative fiction is special because its stories focus around things not possible in our world. Most people wouldn’t want to read stories centered around filing taxes (unless that’s your thing), but would much rather jump at the chance to follow a young boy on his quest to slay a dragon. What better way to escape from a world of taxes and other adult responsibilities than to read a short SF story and live in a new world? We may never have the chance in our world to know what it’s like to go on a magical quest, but we can imagine what it would be like when reading about it through somebody else’s eyes.

Another reason why reading SF stories is enjoyable is because they make you wonder if their events could ever happen in the Real World. While many SF stories are about things that are impossible in our world, there are some stories that are very much grounded in reality. We rely greatly on technology, so could the technologically-dependent world in “The Machine Stops” one day be our future? It certainly seems possible, and reading about what life would be like in this future makes it even more real, because we get to have a chance to experience it through the eyes of Vashti.

Even when I’m no longer in the Speculative Fiction class, I will keep reading science fiction and fantasy because it keeps my imagination alive. SF stories mention things that are impossible in the Real World without a second thought. After reading “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long”, my mind didn’t immediately jump to analyzing every detail of the story the way you have to with more “serious” pieces of literature, but I instead wondered what it would be like to have a talking teddy bear as a friend (yes, I know that Ted  is a thing, but bear with me here). In what other genre of short stories could you read about how a talking teddy bear is accepted by a family without any second thought? Or about how a defective robot took two grown men captive and fed them sandwiches, like in "Reason"?

Why would anyone want to spend their whole lives in the Real World, when there is a vast array of other worlds to experience through short works of speculative fiction? By reading these stories, we get the chance to escape from the world of responsibility and enter the world of magical quests, robots, or anything you could possibly imagine. So even though your letter from Hogwarts never came, you’ll always be able to come and go from the Real World as you please, thanks to speculative fiction.