Tag Archives: history

Literary Devices from A to Z – Brought to you by the letter G

 

 

 

is for Genre

 

 

 

Genre is used to describe types of literature. Some examples are science fiction, young adult, supernatural, thriller, adventure, and police procedural.

In the genre of science fiction, authors take current social mores and technology and project how that might change in the future. One example of this is “Star Trek” and communicators. In “Trek”, Gene Roddenberry imagined how people might communicate in the future and came up with the small, handheld devices. It’s no coincidence that when real life engineers were designing handhelds they used the communicator as a model and came up with the flip phone. Incidentally, modern smart phones appear modelled after another “Trek” device, the PADD (personal access display device).

In Phase Shift, museums on Gaia meld high and low tech in their dioramas. A description follows:

…the display was lifeless, a series of plaster casts of various skeletal remains sitting dully on a number of podiums, arranged in chronological order according to the era of each animal’s evolution.  Now, one by one, each piece of bone is animated in turn.  I watch as the first skull grows holographic muscle and skin and then rotates a full three hundred and sixty degrees on its podium.  Following that, the hologram grows a body, a three-dimensional representation of what Gaians believe the animal to have looked like when alive.  The three-D body comes away from the skull on the podium and it, too, rotates full circle.  Lastly, for its magnum opus, the hominid looks me square in the eye and takes a series of steps toward me, leaving the diorama behind.  Once more it rotates a full three hundred and sixty degrees before vanishing into thin air.  It takes almost a full five minutes for each specimen on the Gaian human evolutionary line to cycle through its trip down the runway.

When the last specimen has finished, the gallery is once more still.

Here, holographic technology is melded with a low-tech plaster diorama to create an interactive museum display. Given the state of holographic technology today, it’s not such a long stretch to assume one day the two might be joined to make history come to life for museum patrons.

The key to writing science fiction is to make it plausible. Readers should be able to imagine a future in which the technology and social structures might exist.

How many genres of literature can you think of? Write them below and I’ll compile a master list and share it in a future blog post.

 

“The Curse of Oak Island” is must see TV!

A curse. Pirates. A treasure. Booby traps.

It has all the trappings of the next “Indiana Jones” or “National Treasure” movie. The main difference? This is for real.

Oak Island, Nova Scotia. Three boys discover a pit (“the Money Pit”) on and begin to dig. As they get deeper, strange artifacts begin to pop up. Flagstones. Wooden platforms. Small metal artifacts. And then, at around 27 metres (that’s more than 80 feet), they find a stone cipher that when translated says, “Forty feet below, two million pounds are buried.” The boys dig a little more, and then leave for the night. When they return, the shaft is underwater. They conclude a booby trap has been triggered by their digging, which flooded the shaft to protect the treasure from plunderers (oakislandtreasure).

In modern times, Dan Blankenship and his associates dig a shaft parallel to the Money Pit (called 10X), fortifying it with steel. He takes some video in which he insists he can see a body, a treasure chest, and other buried  items. 10X eventually floods as well. Due to disagreements over land ownership, digging on the island ceases until brothers Rick and Marty Lagina buy a controlling stake in the island’s tourism company and are able to resume excavations.

I saw the first episode of History’s “The Curse of Oak Island” yesterday; I haven’t been that excited since seeing “In Search of Noah’s Ark” when I was a kid. The premiere episode explains the history of the Money Pit and 10X and documents the Lagina brothers’ excavation of the pits as they search for the fabled treasure. Viewers get to see the Blankenship video and meet Dan Blankenship (now 80 and just as obsessed as ever) and his son who are active members of the Laginas’ team. The first thing they do is send a camera into the Money Pit, but the footage comes back inconclusive and the files mysteriously disappear from the computer midway through the viewing. Perhaps this is part of the curse, they wonder.

Next, the team drills into the hole while one of the brothers searches the fill. They find bits of blue transfer ceramic, but not much else. Lastly, air is pumped into the shaft in an effort to remove the water. They jerry-rig a sediment holding tank and use a shovel to start mucking about, but turn up only a single metal artifact. Later, the team takes a boat ride to see the island from the water. They hypothesize the presence of five box-drains, used to draw sea water into the shafts and plan to dive at a later date to confirm or debunk their existence.

In “The Curse of Oak Island,” the Laginas and the Blankenships document their real-life adventure as they search for pirate treasure. The curse promises that seven will die before the secret of the Money Pit is revealed, which only serves to bolster the excitement which makes this an hour of tv worth watching. What I like about “The Curse of Oak Island” is that, unlike other salvaging shows, the Laginas do things legally. They let us know the credentials of the team members, as well as the permits needed and the legalities and cost of the dig and that the task they have undertaken is dangerous, with the implicit message not to try this at home.

“The Curse of Oak Island” is not only exciting television, it’s also responsible television. And that’s good archaeology.

Did you see “The Curse of Oak Island”? What did you think?