For Thursday: Beautyland, "Massive Star" and "Red Supergiant"

 

For Thursday: Bertino, Beautyland, “Massive Star” and “Red Supergiant”

NOTE: Read as much of the next two chapters as you can, as both are fairly short (though “Massive Star” is longer than “Red Supergiant”). We will spend two days on them, so you can get me the questions by next Tuesday if you have to…but at least keep reading the book.

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Do we get a sense of what her alien ‘superpowers’ are yet? Is she aware of them, or do only other people see them? If so, what might they be? Is this something only an alien (like a Superman) could do…or is this a very ‘human’ ability?

Q2: During her last lesson with the alien teacher, Solomon, she is told that “She is not meant to have a regular childhood or adulthood. She must do her job…She does not have free will like her classmates” (135). This statement obviously sounds eerily similar to what the clones are told in Never Let Me Go. So like them, why doesn’t she resist or fight back? Why does she refuse to simply report and do her job? Couldn’t she be like Toni or Dominic?

Q3: The metaphor of a pie is used throughout these chapters, though it’s changed from the “father pie” we encountered earlier. Why do so many people tell her “life is not a pie,” and why doesn’t she believe them? What does this metaphor help her see or understand about human society?

Q4: When she learns of Carl Sagan’s death (the scientist who helped create Voyager 1 and the Golden Record), she is utterly devastated, and reflects, “Carl Sagan never stopped searching for her. He will continue forever, into the past” (146). What do you think she means by this? How is he “searching” for her, considering they’ve never met? And why does she see him as a father figure (or as a slice of her father pie)?