2009.11.25 Wednesday
WAIT
"Wait" by Roy Kesey (from the Kenyon Review)
in The Best American Short Stories, 2007
Is this a science fiction? or a fantasy or a spoof?
People are waiting for the flight at an airport. The flight is delayed because of the fog. The passengers get irritated or bored, and some of them start playing games, local people go out of the airport, restaurants get short of foods. Other things happen as well. A meteor hits part of the airport. Soldiers fire. Some Cubans try to fly in a plane, which ends up exploding on the runway. There starts a fight with automatic weapons at a wing. A Bulgarian poet and most others die.
A Canadian accountant, a girl from Ghana and a Mongolian boy, as well as the statue of the boy with his cell phone and globular fruit, survive the confusion. The living people fly in a rattan basket with a balloon.
Some of the comments:
The readers do not know the location of the airport, or where the passengers are leaving for.
There is not any description of people's characters which are specific to a particular area or nationality, except about the accent in the first paragraph.
Some description about the people are realistic and ironic, such as the airline personnel always smiling, saying there is no reason to panic.
This is similar to (or a spoof of) some "panic" or "chaos" movies, such as "Poseidon Adventure", "Jurassic Park" or more recent "The Independence Day", "Armageddon", and the forthcoming "2012".
The ending with a balloon seems apocalyptic. This is also interesting in that people who had waited for a high-tech airplane finally escaped from the chaos in a low-tech balloon.
in The Best American Short Stories, 2007
Is this a science fiction? or a fantasy or a spoof?
People are waiting for the flight at an airport. The flight is delayed because of the fog. The passengers get irritated or bored, and some of them start playing games, local people go out of the airport, restaurants get short of foods. Other things happen as well. A meteor hits part of the airport. Soldiers fire. Some Cubans try to fly in a plane, which ends up exploding on the runway. There starts a fight with automatic weapons at a wing. A Bulgarian poet and most others die.
A Canadian accountant, a girl from Ghana and a Mongolian boy, as well as the statue of the boy with his cell phone and globular fruit, survive the confusion. The living people fly in a rattan basket with a balloon.
Some of the comments:
The readers do not know the location of the airport, or where the passengers are leaving for.
There is not any description of people's characters which are specific to a particular area or nationality, except about the accent in the first paragraph.
Some description about the people are realistic and ironic, such as the airline personnel always smiling, saying there is no reason to panic.
This is similar to (or a spoof of) some "panic" or "chaos" movies, such as "Poseidon Adventure", "Jurassic Park" or more recent "The Independence Day", "Armageddon", and the forthcoming "2012".
The ending with a balloon seems apocalyptic. This is also interesting in that people who had waited for a high-tech airplane finally escaped from the chaos in a low-tech balloon.
JUGEMテーマ:英語の文学