Great Science Fiction Story example essay topic

Dark They Were And Golden-Eyed Science fiction is a very interesting subject because you never really know for sure if it's fiction or not. The scientific information contained in these stories makes you think; could this be real? The possibility is always there, in the back of your mind, just lingering around that these concepts could be reality. One day when you hear on the news about something you read in a science fiction novel, or saw in a science fiction movie, you " ll really start thinking about it.

Ray Bradbury's Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed is a great science fiction story to get you thinking about science fiction. I'm going to try and use Bradbury's story as an example of science fiction as genre. In Dark they Were and Golden-Eyed Bradbury shows you how life might be like if people lived on Mars. He gives the people a reason for going to Mars and then a reason why they must stay there. The people on Mars slowly start to change, their skin turns dark and their eyes begin to be covered with a gold film. None of the human really cared except for one, Harry Battering.

Harry was reluctant to stay since the second he stepped on to Mars. When him and his family got off the rocket and looked around Harry got a cold look on his face, "What's wrong?" asked his wife. "Let's get back on the rocket". Said Harry. "Go back to Earth?" said his wife. "Yes!

Listen!" said Harry (131). Bradbury repeats a lot of words like wind and gold. He said "The wind blew as if to flake away their identities". (131). The idea of losing your identity is a theme that is revisited throughout the book.

Harry was never comfortable living on Mars, especially when everything started changing. The food they had planted was changing their skin and their eyes. All of this made Harry very paranoid and he got to a point were he started to build his own rocket to go back to Earth. No one really paid much attention to Harry at that point, they just let him go on with his ways. As time went by Harry became weaker and weaker and eventually gave into the power of the planet without even realizing it. All of the humans change their appearance and are all now tall and slender with dark skin and golden eyes.

About 5 years after they had landed on the planet a rocket comes and lands on Mars to come and get the humans, to come rescue them. At this point all the humans had changed and were not humans anymore. The humans that came to rescue them discovered them and made friends with them not even knowing what they once were or knowing where all the humans had gone to. Bradbury does a good job of including a lot of facts in his story. This makes the story more believable and more interesting. It's gives the reader the idea that this might actually be possible.

That is really what science fiction is about, what separates it from other style and classifies it as a genre because it takes the unbelievable and makes it believable. Science fiction to me is a genre in and of itself. I personally think it should be classified as scientific ideas that have not yet been investigated. No experiments run or observations made; just assumptions so far. But I think scientists should really consider using some of these ideas for research projects. It's been done already, but not enough as it should be.

The world would be a much duller place without science fiction.

Bibliography

Bradbury, Ray. "Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed". Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century. Ed. Orson Scott Card. New York: Berkley, 2001.130-142.