Outside Reading #2


For a class in my sophomore year we read a story named The People of Sand and Slag, and I felt that it dealt with the idea of the super human in an interesting way. Within the story the main characters we are introduced to in the start of the narrative have abilities acceding the normal capacities of any regular person and lacking the normal wear and tear residing within most of humanity. This was done via the in-universe Weevil tech in which you essentially put a bug into your system, it lives there like a parasite, and you earn fantastic and insane abilities. However, as we watch the short journey of the “heroes”, they act profoundly inhuman and fail to have compassion for organic life at points in the story. I connected this to our conversation of the lack of importance non-empirical knowledge is carrying within our society today. The short story shows life without non-empirical knowledge as science alone rules the day and this future is unfamiliar and something that is not human. I feel that the story told imparts the importance of all stories and the vital information imparted from them.

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