HackMD
3/11 SF課程
tags: SF
Aye and Gomorrah…
敘述圍繞兩類人展開，「我」是一個spacer（既寓意著在太空從事工作，也同時意味著處在間隔中，無性別、去性別），另一群人是frelk。通常frelks付錢給spacer來達成「free-fall-sexual-displacement complex」。
故事一開始，包括我在內的spacers在城市中娛樂，但是卻被其他人所排斥（包括小便間的男同志、drag），被要求離開，儘管有人表面上對spacer從事太空基礎設施建設所付出的勞動表示尊敬。
而frelk嚮往spacer，因為（1）spacer可在太空中工作，摆脱重力，实现「輝煌自在」（2）frelk的慾望來自於對愛的恐懼，無法實現的嚮往。正是space無法有性反應，才會被frelk所追求：
"You don't choose your perversions（歪曲）. You have no perversions at all. You're free of the whole business. I love you for that, Spacer. My love starts with the fear of love. Isn't that beautiful? A pervert（反常） substitutes something unattainable（無法實現的） for 'normal' love: the homosexual, a mirror, the fetishist（戀物癖）, a shoe or a watch or a girdle."
"If someone really had a sexual reaction to . . . us, we'd be scared away."
故事中，我的朋友去某地方尋找frelk賺錢作樂。而「我」在清真寺旁與一位frelk相遇，但我卻並不想要用身體換取金錢，而是試圖追求對方（不一定是愛情，可能只是單純尋求人際連結），因為「我」很孤獨。一番交流後，「我」向對方要求回報：
"Give me something—it doesn't have to be worth sixty lira. Give me something that you like, anything of yours that means something to you."
但是對方卻嚴厲拒絕，因為她不願意放棄自己作為frelk的自我（一旦有所愛，就不再有對愛的恐懼的慾望了），同時也貶低「我」為孩子。
除了性和慾望外，這是一個關於孤獨的故事。spacer因為特殊的工作要求而被去性化，沒有性器官，受到排斥，唯一願意與他們產生聯繫的frelk卻無法回報他們的情感。
Time considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stories
關於singer：
Why did the institution of Singers come about, springing up in just about every urban center throughout the system? Some have speculated that it was a spontaneous reaction to the mass media which blanket our lives. While Tri-D and radio and newstapes disperse information all over the worlds, they also spread a sense of alienation from first-hand experience.
關於竊賊：
There are very few successful thieves in this world. Still less on the other five. The will to steal is an impulse towards the absurd and the tasteless. (The talents are poetic, theatrical, a certain reverse charisma…) But it is a will, as the will to order, power, love.
When It Changed
Whileaway星球上，六個世紀（三十代人）以前發生過大瘟疫，殺死了所有男性。存活的雌性用卵子融合的方式繁衍後代，人人都是專家，忙於工作。現階段每個人都需要花3/4的人生在農場工作，但不久將來，約70年後，這個星球的工業將飛速完善，這裡將建設有大型城市。
這裡同時有著前現代的「傳統」習俗：孩子們要去山林中捕獵猛獸作為成人禮。而成年人則習慣進行決鬥。槍被普遍使用。
一天，四位俄羅斯男性地球宇航員來到了Whileaway…
我向男性地球人說明這裡的情況：
“Whileaway was lucky,” I said. “We had a big initial gene pool, we had been chosen for extreme intelligence, we had a high technology and a large remaining population in which every adult was two-or-three experts in one. The soil is good. The climate is blessedly easy. There are thirty millions of us now. Things are beginning to snowball in industry—do you understand?—give us seventy years and we’ll have more than one real city, more than a few industrial centers, full-time professions, full-time radio operators, full-time machinists, give us seventy years and not everyone will have to spend three-quarters of a lifetime on the farm.”
衝突集中呈現在男性與Whileaway住民的對話中：
“Where are all the people?” said that monomaniac.
（當討論到男性滅絕）“A great tragedy.” I waited, not quite understanding.
“Did you know that sexual equality has been reestablished on Earth?”
“I’m talking to you, Janet,” he said, “because I suspect you have more popular influence than anyone else here. You know as well as I do that parthenogenetic culture has all sorts of inherent defects, and we do not—if we can help it—mean to use you for anything of the sort. Pardon me; I should not have said ‘use.’ But surely you can see that this kind of society is unnatural.”
甚至討論到了Whileaway的婚姻
“You are—?” said the man, nodding from me to her. “Wives,” said Katy. “We’re married.” Again the dry chuckle（乾笑）.
“A good economic arrangement,” he said, “for working and taking care of the children. And as good an arrangement as any for randomizing heredity, if your reproduction is made to follow the same pattern.
這些話激怒了我的妻子Katy，她端著槍試圖射殺這位男性，雖然被我阻止了。
我對於男性的來臨感到恐慌，覺得他們會改變Whileaway的一切，害怕自己生活的意義被破壞，害怕男性到來後會將自己這些人視為愚蠢、不重要、軟弱的。
Sometimes I laugh at the question those four men hedged about all evening and never quite dared to ask, looking at the lot of us, hicks in overalls, farmers in canvas pants and plain shirts: Which of you plays the role of the man?
On the Fascination of Horror-Stories, Including Lovecraft's
Juss認為恐怖小說關注的是人類的基本心理。作品都是從個人內在、弗洛伊德式的觀點出發，常常處理個人和他者的關係，個人的本體處境這樣的問題。她形容恐怖小說:
Very concrete, very bodily, very "extreme", and although grotesque and frightening, in some sense also reassuring.
安慰的部分在於：恐怖小說描繪極端處境，這些描述傳達給人這樣的訊息：「有人已經來到過這裡，你不是獨自一人。」在當代這種拒斥破壞、恐怖、惡魔的壓抑文化中（作者主要說1950年代），如此訊息是令人著迷的。
Lovecraft的作品也有這樣的魅力，它直接表達了人類經驗的基礎問題（例如精神分裂症患者的感受）。
還有些作品關乎社會處境，The Yellow Wallpaper涉及自主、個人、分離的議題，實際上是一種政治抗議（女性主義）。Ancestral moat中的怪物與家族禁令、血脈有關。
但是，Russ也提到儘管恐怖小說的魅力在於關乎人類基本問題的直接、粗糙原始經驗的表達，這些恐怖小說仍然有其限制：具備政治性的只是罕見個別（例如The Yellow Wallpaper），其他作品都是個人悲劇，並且恐怖小說為了「感覺」真實，而壓抑了讀者的反思。這種思考的匱乏對藝術性有害。
Of course if people stay at this level, without analysis and without remedies, nothing happens except a constant desire for repetition of the original, elementary validation.
