Double Feature Picture Show

I love my science fiction class simply because I get grades for turning in response papers with paragraphs like this:

"While I loved Moore and Kuttner’s story and its exploration of what, exactly, makes children special, I wrestled with my inner Alice scholar. I could not suspend my disbelief long enough to avoid annoyance at a major plot hole. In 'Mimsy Were the Borogoves,' one of the little girls with whom Carroll kept company, presumably Alice Liddell, finds one set of the toys from the future, and she sings the first stanza of 'Jabberwocky' to 'Uncle Charles' (207). The analytical critic in my brain raged at this plot device. I knew full well that Carroll had composed the first stanza of 'Jabberwocky' when he was twenty-three years old, seven years before he made up the first Alice story for Alice Liddell (Gardner 7, 148). Moore and Kuttner’s idea of the stanza’s composition charmed me, but the timeline already in my brain shattered the fourth wall."

" Despite all the cold-blooded murder and moneylust, 'The Little Black Bag' presented a heavenly scenario. After all, I am twenty years old, and the prospect of a hypodermic needle in my arm still reduces me to blubbering sobs. Between a vicious bout of meningitis during my teenage years and a childhood dentist not entirely unlike Steve Martin in Little Shop of Horrors, I have developed an acute and all-consuming fear of dentists, syringes, hospitals, doctors, and that funny smell they pump into the waiting rooms. Kornbluth’s idea of painless, bloodless, needle-less medical care makes me dream of a beautiful, serene world in which none of my phobias exist. Of course, this dream assumes that the Kornbluth’s vision of the future also excludes bees, but that’s another matter entirely."

"Today, we encounter a portrait of the American family. A man, a woman, and his little girl seem to have built a normal, happy life. But beneath this happy facade, a secret lurks, a secret that will turn a father into an aggressor, a mother into a tyrant, and a child into unwitting fuel for their violent fire. No, this story is not presented by the Lifetime network. Instead, Richard Matheson, noted science fiction author, brings us this tale of familial horror and woe, a tale he calls 'Born of Man and Woman.' Mother’s horrible secret would shock their friends and neighbors: she gave birth to another child, a beast-child of massive strength, extra legs, and green blood. I hate it when that happens."