Puss Reboots: Blog: June 2010: Farewell Atlantis

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Reviews:
All Aboard the Dinotrain by Deb Lund
Are You Afraid Yet? by Stephen James O'Meara
Bailey's Day by Robert Haggerty
A Brief History of Time by Shaindel Beers
Cat Heaven by Cynthia Rylant
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
A Dark, Dark Tale by Ruth Brown
Dead End by Helen R. Myers
Dreamstone by D. A. Hendrickson
The Electric Church by Jeff Somers
The Essential Basho by Basho and translated by Sam Hamill
Excuse Me... Are You a Witch? by Emily Horn
Farewell Atlantis by Terry Bisson
Freckle Juice by Judy Blume
Grampa's Zombie BBQ by Kirk Scraggs
The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry
How to Host a Killer Party by Penny Warner
The Kayla Chroincles by Sherri Winston
The Ladies' Paradise by Émile Zola
Little (Grrl) Lost by Charles de Lint
Little Quack's Hide and Seek by Lauren Thompson
The Man Who Did Something About It by Harvey Jacobs
Owly Volume 1: The Way Home and The Bittersweet Summer by Andy Runton
Princess Ben by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Revolutionary War on Wednesday (Magic Tree House #22) by Mary Pope Osborne
The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
The Soul of the Rhino by Hemanta Mishra
Spot Visits His Grandparents by Eric Hill
The Texicans by Nina Vida
The Thanksgiving Door by Debby Atwell
Twister on Tuesday (Magic Tree House #23) by Mary Pope Osborne
Two Little Trains by Margaret Wise Brown and Leo Dillon
The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman
Veracity by Laura Bynum

Previous month

Farewell Atlantis: 06/01/10

"Farewell Atlantis" by Terry Bisson begins innocently enough with a couple watching a film in a theater. The man asks the woman if she's seen anyone else: an usher, other audience members. She hasn't. They are alone and somehow they know each other's names even though they don't remember ever having met before.

It's a modern rendition of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. As a film studies student, the Cave comes up frequently in discussion. It's one of the foundations of film theory and there are some similarities between the Cave and the typical movie theater, so it's natural to draw connections between the two. In both cases, the illusion is broken the moment someone decides to look away from the shadows on the wall or worse, exit the cave. That's exactly what Frank convinces Stella to do: leave the theater through the only exit.

From here things go from ancient allegory to more recent Twilight Zone. Frank and Stella go through the process (told in a very lighthearted and humorous fashion) of figuring out who they are and what their purpose is. I don't want to spoil the ending but will say that I loved it.