Human Response to Society Changes: Review of the Books, Nightfall and Pump Six

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Human Response to Society Changes: Review of the Books, Nightfall and Pump Six
Epigraph
“Very expensive to maintain, you know. Manufacturing a basic organism’s food is quite complex. Clean rooms, air filters, special lights. Re-creating the web of life isn’t easy. Far more simple to release oneself from it completely than to attempt to re-create it.”
Source: The People of Sand and Slag, third story in Pump Six
Science fiction is often used as a way of explaining the relationship between human beings and science. In the book, The People of Sand and Slag.” Pump Six and Other Stories the author Paolo Bacigalupi predicts the various changes that are taking place in the future world. The author also uses different characters and demonstrates how they transform themselves in two a certain form of an alien. Things re no different in the book, Nightfall.” Nightfall and Other Stories by Isaac Asimov. However unlike, Bacigalupi, Asimov provides a more accurate prediction of the future world by portraying a certain sense of empathy to each of the characters. Nevertheless, something that stands out in both books is the different ways that the authors of science fiction use characters with different traits to help the reader understand the power of science and how it is going to change their lives. Some of the issues mentioned in both books can be observed in our modern society if we take our time to observe changes around us.
Most of the stories in the book Pump Six are based on our present environment where people rely on oil as the main source of earning a livelihood. The first story in the book, the Pocket of Dharma, tells a story about a young man who is also a beggar. He gets a computer cube that contains the consciousness of Dalai Lama. Through this story, Bacigalupi presents the reader with an accurate vision of Chengdu which are also reflected in the other stories, Blade Runner and Neuromancer. The Fluted Girl is also the second story set in a culture where there is so much capitalism and celebrity culture. The story of the girl who is turned into a commodity by Madam Belari illustrates the different ways that human beings are supposed to pay a certain cost for the services that they receive. The third story People of Sand and Slag is one of the most fascinating stories in the book. The story is so short and the message precise. People come across a dog living in a place where it should not be living and decide to take care of it. However, they later realize that it is indeed very difficult to take care of the dog. The dog later dies and the people are not bothered. The complexity of the ending of the story leaves the reader with more emotions and we are left to wonder why the people are not bothered. In the following stories, the issue of ecology appears to dominate except in two stories; The Pasho and Softer. Softer is more of a psychological story that narrates how normal human beings can carry out some unimaginable activities against other human beings. The protagonist in the story commits murder for no apparent reason. In the other story of The Pasho, Bacigalupi ...