{"id":5649,"date":"2013-06-17T17:25:57","date_gmt":"2013-06-17T23:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5649"},"modified":"2013-06-20T09:45:04","modified_gmt":"2013-06-20T15:45:04","slug":"science-fiction-and-the-griefing-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5649","title":{"rendered":"Science Fiction and the Grieving Process"},"content":{"rendered":"

At io9, Lauren Davis writes about how science fiction helped her to deal with her grief at the sudden death of her younger brother.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The podcasts were meant to be a distraction, like the wine or the VCDs of movies my mom had brought home from a trip to Asia that Colin had never gotten a chance to watch. But one day, I heard Robert Reed’s story “A Woman’s Best Friend”<\/a> on Clarkesworld<\/em>, and I found that I felt inexplicably lighter. I ran home and immediately looked up the text of the story, rereading it for clues to my sudden shift in emotions.<\/p>\n

“A Woman’s Best Friend” is a funny story, a sort of multi-worlds parody of It’s a Wonderful Life<\/em>. Instead of being led through an alternate timeline by a down-on-his-luck angel, George Bailey is dumped in another universe by an interdimensional being who finds amusement in such rearrangements. George does meet a doppelg\u00e4nger of his wife, Mary, but she’s no sad spinster and is, in fact, hip to the ways of the multiverse. George left behind a drowned corpse in his own world, but he comes to find that his new home universe holds all sorts of wonders.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Really, whether it is Battlestar Galactica <\/em>(also referenced in the article) or The Iliad<\/em>, this is one thing that literature is supposed to do, to help you reframe your life’s problems and learn how to deal with them in a quasi-mythic way. So hurray for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At io9, Lauren Davis writes about how science fiction helped her to deal with her grief at the sudden death of her younger brother. The podcasts were meant to be a distraction, like the wine or the VCDs of movies my mom had brought home from a trip to Asia that Colin had never gotten […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[216],"class_list":["post-5649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-literature"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1t7","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2036,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2036","url_meta":{"origin":5649,"position":0},"title":"Still “Chasing Margaret”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Years ago, during my research leading up to the writing of Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America, I went through a period of fascination with science-fiction\/fantasy writer Margaret St. Clair (1911-1995), seeking her books on the SF shelves of used bookstores in various cities. She\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"California\"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=california"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8664,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8664","url_meta":{"origin":5649,"position":1},"title":"An Amber Alert from 1284 CE","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 21, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Amber alert\" defined for readers outside the USA. In five days it will be the 733rd anniversary of the most famous missing children case in Western Europe. What happened to the children of Hamelin, a town (current population about 57,000) in what is today the German state of Lower Saxony\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"childhood\"","block_context":{"text":"childhood","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=childhood"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/ham_play.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8982,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8982","url_meta":{"origin":5649,"position":2},"title":"Aphrodite Will Not Be Denied (3) \u2014\u00a0and also Hestia.","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 3, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"In a 2003 post titled \"Aphrodite Will Not Be Denied,\" I linked to Muslim clerics' criticism of Lebanese pop star Haifa Wehbe. Another Muslim singer with more complicated ancestry, Deeyah, \"irked the Muslim world\" with her music videos, and I said, \"As I once wrote, 'Aphrodite will not be denied.'\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Aphrodite\"","block_context":{"text":"Aphrodite","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=aphrodite"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":324,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=324","url_meta":{"origin":5649,"position":3},"title":"La Virgen as a Goddess\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 6, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"La Virgen as a Goddess Today's Denver Post dips a toe into the water with this story suggesting the the Virgin of Guadalupe might be a goddess--or at least a pop icon. \"Many of us are working to claim her larger cosmological meaning as earth mother,\" says scholar China Galland,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4038,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4038","url_meta":{"origin":5649,"position":4},"title":"“The Occult Experience” of 1985","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"A friend pointed me to the Vimeo page where you can see The Occult Experience (95 min.), an Australian television documentary from 1985, researched and co-produced by Nevill Drury, on witchcraftandprimitivepeopleandsatanismandexorcismandallkindsofspookystuff. Watching it was hard, because I kept turning away after encountering such portentous statements as \"The search for supernatural\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Australia\"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":935,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=935","url_meta":{"origin":5649,"position":5},"title":"The Silly (Halloween) Season Has Started","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Just one of these for flavor: Cindy Kaie, self-righteous principal of Kohl Elementary School in Broomfield, Colorado, has decreed \"no Halloween party.\"In a newsletter sent home to parents, Principal Cindy Kaier wrote that the traditional Halloween party celebrated in classrooms each year will be replaced by a fall party on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5649"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5665,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5649\/revisions\/5665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}