Feb. 14th: Women as aliens
Midnight News by: Lisa Goldstein
What I really liked about the story “Midnight News” was that it didn’t start off like any other Science Fiction story I have encountered so far. The story takes place at a hotel bar where a bunch of journalist’s are gathered together watching television. The reader is introduced to Helena Johnson. She is an eighty-four year old woman who was chosen by aliens to make a really big decision about human existence. The aliens hold complete power over the humans, however, Helena has to make the choice as to whether the humans are going to live or die. Her decision will be announced on New Years Eve. Everything in the story seems to revolve around this woman. Helena loves to talk about herself. The top news stories of the day are always about her life and things she has said or done. As the human race knows that their lives are in the hands of this woman, many gifts and tokens are sent to her, in which she does appreciate and thanks people for. New Years eve comes and the humans are ready paranoid about Helena’s answer, which they should be because she holds their lives in her hands. Helena ends up deciding no, to spare every-ones lives. She doesn’t believe that the aliens, or “herself” should decide the fate of human race. Her decision comes based on the fact that people have been telling her what to do most of her life and for once the roles were reversed. The power of people was in her hands and she decided to do the right thing.
This weeks topic for discussion was “Women as Aliens” and I am not sure how this one relates, but I interrupted as this… Helena is described as an old woman with liver spots, so clearly she is not an alien in that sense, her physical characteristics are human. However, emotional and physically she was alienated from society. The aliens gave her a purpose in life. Her purpose was to decided the fate of her fellow man. So she was not an alien women she was a women of the aliens.
What I also liked about this story was the title, “Midnight News”. This is one of the few stories that the title relates back to the story.
