Ah, I enjoy the time in covering Philip K. Dick's great little short story "Human Is" (1953) when I get to point out that I, too, ladies and gentlemen, am an alien, and show them my old Alien Registration Card which enabled me to live in Japan for many years. . . and zoom in the OHC view on the word "alien" on the card. The kids usually get a kick out of that. My point is that in Japan I am an alien, as they would be aliens were they to visit America or any other country, that "alien" (which means "other") is a matter of point of view, that aliens in science fiction stories like "Human Is" are usually metaphors for human beings who are different or who come from different cultures, and so on.
I also tell the class about the time I was on a flight from Japan to Los Angeles and had been sitting by some middle-aged Japanese ladies who were in a tour group, and we got off the plane together, and in LAX airport I heard them say (in Japanese), "My, aren't there a lot of foreigners here," without being aware that at that point THEY were the foreigners... As usual, I ran out of time and couldn't finish the story and related topics comfortably, not being able to hit all my other examples of similar stories in sf and other genres, in which one consciousness is put into (or invades or is invited in etc.) a different body, or even the most similar story which isn't even sf, The Return of Martin Guerre, which was remade into Somersby with Richard Gere playing Jodie Foster's "husband," who returns after being away at the Civil War for a few years and is completely different, so much so that the neighbors start getting suspicious as to whether he is really the same man or not. And yesterday was my last day of classes for 2017! Hurray! Because I don't teach Mondays or Tuesdays, I won't have to go into school on Christmas Day (unlike all my colleagues who have classes on Monday) or the day after. Mind you, the school year sure ain't over, cause we have one more set of classes in January after the new year holiday, on Friday, Wednesday, and Thursday, plus over a week of exams, and so on and so forth, but I do have about two weeks of vacation now, so that's nice indeed. I need it. I'm running out of energy more and more as I get older, and needing more time to regain it. Whew.
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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