Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Martians Claim Canada by The Martians Claim Canada by Margaret Atwood. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Cloudflare Ray ID: 658d594279d784f8 • Your IP : 188.246.226.140 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. Biography of Margaret Atwood, Canadian Poet and Writer. Margaret Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian writer, known for her poetry, novels, and literary criticism, among other work. She has won several prestigious awards over the course of her career, including the Booker Prize. In addition to her writing work, she is an inventor who has worked on remote and robotic writing technology. Fast Facts: Margaret Atwood. Full Name: Margaret Eleanor Atwood Known For: Canadian poet, lecturer, and novelist Born: November 18, 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Parents: Carl and Margaret Atwood (née Killam) Education: University of Toronto and Radcliffe College (Harvard University) Partners: Jim Polk (m. 1968-1973), Graeme Gibson (1973-2019) Child: Eleanor Jess Atwood Gibson (b. 1976) Selected Works: (1969), The Handmaid's Tale (1985), (1996), (2000), the MaddAddam trilogy (2003-2013) Selected Awards and Honors : Booker Prize, Arthur C. Clarke Award, Governor General's Award, Franz Kafka Prize, Companion of the Order of Canada, Guggenheim Fellowship, Nebula Award Notable Quote: “A word after a word after a word is power.” Early Life. Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She was the second and middle child of Carl Atwood, a forest entomologist, and Margaret Atwood, née Killam, a former dietician. Her father’s research meant that she grew up with something of an unconventional childhood, traveling frequently and spending a lot of time in rural regions. Even as a child, though, Atwood’s interests foreshadowed her career. Although she didn’t start attending regular schools until she was 12 years old, Atwood was a devoted reader from an early age. She read a wide variety of material, from more traditional literature to fairy tales and mysteries to comic books. As early as she was reading, she was writing too, drafting her first stories and children’s plays at the age of six. In 1957, she graduated from Leaside High School in Leaside, Toronto. After high school, she attended the University of Toronto, where she published articles and poems in the school’s literary journal and participated in a theatrical troupe. In 1961, Atwood graduated with honors with a degree in English, as well as two minors in philosophy and French. Immediately following this, she won a fellowship and began grad school at Radcliffe College (the female sister school to Harvard), where she continued her literary studies. She got her master’s degree in 1962 and began her doctoral work with a dissertation called The English Metaphysical Romance , but she ultimately left her studies after two years without finishing her dissertation. Several years later, in 1968, Atwood married an American writer, Jim Polk. Their marriage produced no children, and they divorced only five years later, in 1973. Soon after the end of their marriage, however, she met Graeme Gibson, a fellow Canadian novelist. They never married, but in 1976 they had their only child, Eleanor Atwood Gibson, and they lived together until Gibson’s death in 2019. Early Poetry and Teaching Career (1961-1968) (1961) The Circle Game (1964) Expeditions (1965) Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein (1966) The Animals in That Country (1968) In 1961, Atwood’s first book of poetry, Double Persephone , was published. The collection was well-received by the literary community, and it won the E.J. Pratt Medal, named after one of the foremost Canadian poets of the modern era. During this early part of her career, Atwood focused predominantly on her poetry work, as well as teaching. During the 1960s, Atwood continued working on her poetry while also working in academia. Over the course of the decade, she had teaching stints at three separate Canadian universities, joining the English departments. She began as a lecturer in English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, from 1964 to 1965. From there, she went on to Sir George Williams University in Montreal, where she was an instructor in English from 1967 to 1968. She ended the decade teaching from 1969 to 1970 at the University of Alberta. Atwood’s teaching career did not slow her creative output in the slightest. The years 1965 and 1966 were particularly prolific, as she published three collections of poetry with smaller presses: Kaleidoscopes Baroque: a poem ; Talismans for Children, and Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein , all published by the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Between two of her teaching positions, also in 1966, she published The Circle Game , her next poetry collection. It won the prestigious Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry that year. Her fifth collection, The Animals in That Country , arrived in 1968. Forays into Fiction (1969-1984) The Edible Woman (1969) The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970) Procedures for Underground (1970) Power Politics (1971) (1972) Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972) (1974) Selected Poems (1976) (1976) Dancing Girls (1977) Two-Headed Poems (1978) (1979) (1981) True Stories (1981) Love Songs of a Terminator (1983) Snake Poems (1983) (1983) Bluebeard's Egg (1983) (1984) For the first decade of her writing career, Atwood focused exclusively on publishing poetry and did so to great success. In 1969, however, she shifted gears, publishing her first novel, The Edible Woman . The satirical novel focuses on a young woman’s growing awareness in a heavily consumeristic, structured society, foreshadowing many of the themes that Atwood would be known for in the coming years and decades. By 1971, Atwood had moved to work in Toronto, spending the next couple of years teaching at universities there. She taught at York University for the 1971 to 1972 academic year, then became a writer in residence at the University of Toronto the following year, ending in the spring of 1973. Although she would continue to teach for several more years, these positions would be her last teaching jobs at Canadian universities. In the 1970s, Atwood published three major novels: Surfacing (1972), Lady Oracle (1976), and Life Before Man (1979). All three of these novels continued developing the themes that had first appeared in The Edible Woman , cementing Atwood as an author who wrote thoughtfully about themes of gender, identity, and sexual politics, as well as how these ideas of personal identity intersect with concepts of national identity, especially in her native Canada. It was during this time that Atwood went through some upheaval in her personal life. She divorced her husband in 1973 and soon met and fell in love with Gibson, who would become her lifelong partner. Their daughter was born the same year that Lady Oracle was published. Atwood continued writing outside of fiction during this period as well. Poetry, her first focus, was not pushed to the side at all. On the contrary, she was even more prolific in poetry than she was in fiction prose. Over the course of nine years between 1970 and 1978, she published six collections of poetry in total: The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970), Procedures for Underground (1970), Power Politics (1971), You Are Happy (1974), a collection of some of her previous poems titled Selected Poems 1965–1975 (1976), and Two-Headed Poems (1978). She also published a collection of short stories, Dancing Girls , in 1977; it won the St. Lawrence Award for Fiction and the Periodical Distributors of Canada for Short Fiction Award. Her first non-fiction work, a survey of Canadian literature titled Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature , was published in 1972. Feminist Novels (1985-2002) The Handmaid's Tale (1985) Through the One-Way Mirror (1986) Cat's Eye (1988) (1991) (1992) (1993) Good Bones and Simple Murders (1994) Morning in the Burned House (1995) Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature (1995) Alias Grace (1996) The Blind Assassin (2000) Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing (2002) Atwood's most famous work, The Handmaid’s Tale, was published in 1985 and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Governor General's Award; it also was a finalist for the 1986 Booker Prize, which recognizes the best English-language novel that reaches publication in the United Kingdom. The novel is a work of speculative fiction, set in a dystopian alternate history where the United States has become a theocracy called Gilead that forces fertile women into a subservient role as “handmaids” to bear children for the rest of society. The novel has endured as a modern classic, and in 2017, the streaming platform Hulu began airing a television adaptation. Her next novel, Cat’s Eye , was also well-received and highly praised, becoming a finalist for both the 1988 Governor General's Award and the 1989 Booker Prize. Throughout the 1980s, Atwood did continue teaching, although she spoke openly about her hopes that she would eventually have a successful (and lucrative) enough writing career to leave short-term teaching positions behind, like many literary writers hope to do. In 1985, she served as the MFA Honorary Chair at the University of Alabama, and in the following years, she continued taking one-year honorary or titled positions: she was the Berg Professor of English at New York University in 1986, the Writer-in-Residence at Macquarie University in Australia in 1987, and the Writer-in-Residence at Trinity University in 1989. Atwood continued writing novels with significant moral and feminist themes into the 1990s, albeit with a wide array of topic matter and style. The Robber Bride (1993) and Alias Grace (1996) both dealt with issues of morality and gender, particularly in their depictions of villainous female characters. The Robber Bride , for instance, features a consummate liar as the antagonist and exploits power struggles between the sexes; Alias Grace is based on a true story of a maid who was convicted of murdering her boss in a controversial case. Both received major recognition within the literary establishment; they were finalists for the Governor General’s Award in their respective years of eligibility, The Robber Bride was shortlisted for the James Tiptree Jr. Award, and Alias Grace won the Giller Prize, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and was a Booker Prize finalist. Both also eventually received on-screen adaptations. In 2000, Atwood reached a milestone with her tenth novel, The Blind Assassin , which won the Hammett Prize and Booker Prize and was nominated for several other awards. The following year, she was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame. Speculative Fiction and Beyond (2003-present) (2003) (2005) (2006) (2006) The Door (2007) (2009) MaddAddam (2013) (2014) Scribbler Moon (2014; unreleased, written for the Future Library Project) (2015) Hag-Seed (2016) (2019) Atwood turned her attention to speculative fiction and to real-life technologies in the 21st century. In 2004, she came up with the idea for remote writing technology that would enable a user to write in real ink from a remote location. She founded a company to develop and produce this technology, which came to be called the LongPen, and was able to use it herself to participate in book tours that she could not attend in person. In 2003, she published Oryx and Crake , a post-apocalyptic speculative fiction novel. It ended up being the first in her “MaddAddam” trilogy, which also included 2009’s The Year of the Flood and 2013’s MaddAddam . The novels are set in a post-apocalyptic scenario in which humans have pushed science and technology to alarming places, including genetic modification and medical experimentation. During this time, she also experimented with non-prose works, writing a chamber opera, Pauline , in 2008. The project was a commission from the City Opera of Vancouver and is based on the life of Canadian poet and performer Pauline Johnson. Atwood’s more recent work also includes some new takes on classical stories. Her 2005 novella The Penelopiad retells the Odyssey from the perspective of Penelope, Odysseus’s wife; it was adapted for a theatrical production in 2007. In 2016, as part of a Penguin Random House series of Shakespeare retellings, she published Hag-Seed , which reimagines The Tempest ’s revenge play as the story of an outcast theater director. Atwood’s most recent work is The Testaments (2019), a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale . The novel was one of two joint winners of the 2019 Booker Prize. Literary Styles and Themes. One of the most notable underlying themes in Atwood’s work is her approach to gender politics and feminism. Although she tends not to label her works “feminist,” they are the subject of much discussion in terms of their depictions of women, gender roles, and the intersection of gender with other elements in society. Her works explore different depictions of femininity, different roles for women, and what pressures societal expectations create. Her most famous work in this arena is, of course, The Handmaid’s Tale , which depicts a totalitarian, religious dystopia that openly subjugates women and explores relationships between men and women (and between different castes of women) within that power dynamic. These themes date all the way back to Atwood’s early poetry, though; indeed, one of the most consistent elements to Atwood’s work is her interest in exploring dynamics of power and gender. Particularly in the latter portion of her career, Atwood’s style has slanted a little bit towards speculative fiction, although she avoids the label of “hard” science fiction. Her focus tends more towards speculating on the logical extensions of existing technology and exploring their impact on human society. Concepts such as genetic modification, pharmaceutical experiments and alterations, corporate monopolies, and man-made disasters all appear in her works. The MaddAddam trilogy is the most obvious example of these themes, but they also play a part in several other works. Her concerns for human technology and science also encompass a running theme of how the decisions made by humans can have a negative impact on animal life. Atwood’s interest in national identity (specifically, in Canadian national identity) threads through some of her work as well. She suggests that Canadian identity is tied up in the concept of survival against numerous foes, including other humans and nature, and in the concept of community. These ideas appear largely in her non-fiction work, including a survey of Canadian literature and collections of lectures over the years, but in some of her fiction as well. Her interest in national identity is often tied to a similar theme in many of her works: exploring how history and historical myth are created. ashramblings. Brilliantly weird, irreverent, this is a must read story about jingoistic nationalism!. I'm not sure I've read everything into this that a Canadian reader would read, but this was such a great pick me up putting a smile on my face this morning. The short story can be found in Granta Magazine and I'd urge everyone to read this. I've no doubt it takes its inspiration from the quip "what would a Martian think of . " Atwood writes up a meeting between 3 Martians in search for "a musical" and the only sentient being they encounter when they land in Canada, a mushroom Amanita Muscaria . Atwood even supplied a sketch of the Martian ship flying above the mushrooms, which look remarkably similar to each other. The opening line sets the tone wonderfully "The Martian descent to Earth in their spaceship. They intend to go to New York - they want to see something call 'a musical' - but they get the directions mixed up, as many before them have done, and end up on Canada instead, as many before them have also done." After finding the mushroom, they talk about countries, borders, flags and war, about how human beings build societies yet subjugate those in their way. The mushrooms explains it thus "You draw a line, you put up walls and gates and such, you say some people can't come in and other people can't go out, you say everything in side this country is a certain kind of thing and that's how it is done inside the line you've drawn, you make laws, you have customs and a language, or two languages, or fifty-four languages. You have a flag, which is a piece of cloth with some sort of pattern on it, and it waves around in the wind. Unlike mushrooms: we don't wave anything. Maybe you have national outfits. You have a special song that you're supposed to sing. Some countries have dances, others not" . The mushroom's explanation of humanities constructions of countries just sound beautifully absurd, and of course more so when read against historical absurdities like the Berlin Wall, current ones like the US- Mexico wall, as well as the many identity struggles manifested as linguistic oppression, the marginalisation of native peoples etc. The mushroom's explanation continues "Sometimes the countries have wars. That's when they cross each other's lines and gates and so forth and try to kill the people in the other country so they can get all their stuff. " The inquisitive Martian naturally asks what stuff is, and the mushroom's answer? "Toasters. frying pans. Microwaves. All those anti-mushrooms devices. Other stuff too, like land, gold, dead animals and trees. Fish. diamonds" The Martians ask all the questions for example "what about the people who were already there? The ones without flags?" and the mushroom's responses continue to amuse and hit home on target most effectively "things didn't go well for them" - a bit of an understatement! "What is wheat?" say the Martians. It's anti-mushroom, says the mushroom. Wheat pushed the mushrooms off a lot of land" Back to the reason for the Martians being here. What is Canada: The Musical? There isn't one, says the mushroom, because for the musicals you need to have a story. YOu need to decide how the story should come out. in this Canada place, they've been arguing about the story for a lot of years" - yes spot on again as Atwood tackles the ownership of history in terms of musical theatre - yes I did say this was an absurd rendering of political points. SPOILER ALERT - the mushrooms finally persuade the Martians not to seek out New York because I think it's getting hostile to Martians down there" but instead to stay on in Canada and help decide the story of Canada: The Musical. ashramblings Verdict 4* I loved this absurd ditty from one of the great authors. And thanks to Granta for the special Canada issue. lookihaveopinions. In the New Yorker , March 5th, 1990 (despite saying “But now it’s the nineties” at one point—did Atwood write this in January, for heaven’s sake?) (scanned for subscribers) A few thousand words. Oh, I regret skimming the spoilery summary—I really don’t understand why the New Yorker bothers summarizing fiction, they do it so badly and spoil it so much. Kat is a marvelous creation. Her “go[ing] way too far” is marvelous. She seems to long for the unartsy domestic life she’s been cutting herself off from, contemptuously, for most of her adult life (“hand towels embroidered with lilies, fuzzy covers on the toilet seats”). A character who thinks they want one thing but actually wants another thing. February 6, 2019. Fictional essay: “Bread” “Bread,” by Margaret Atwood. Like David Foster Wallace’s “Octet,” this piece approaches the reader with multiple tiny stories that try to elicit a moral response. I wonder if Wallace was inspired by the form and content of “Bread,” though he certainly doesn’t trouble to mention it, and in fact he describes his ambitions as dauntingly original. And of course, unlike Atwood, he allows his own writerly anxieties to overwhelm the heavier moral themes he introduces earlier on. On a reread, the first section has been transfigured into something ironic, even accusatory: “You don’t have to imagine it” and making bread is “something relaxing to do with your hands.” The presumed reader is so comfortable, and must be disturbed. This is such a great piece of mental bargaining: “It’s not the hunger or the pain that is killing you but the absence of the yellow bowl.” A lesser writer would have just invented a longing for some ordinary and beautiful object and stopped there. It reminds me, if I may lower the stakes and arguably the brow, of Arthur Dent’s longing for a cereal box. The Iowa Review has so much free fiction online! Amazing. And this issue is devoted entirely to women. June 9, 2018. Short story: “Stone Mattress” “Stone Mattress,” by Margaret Atwood. Appeared in the New Yorker , December 19th, 2011, online here; collected in Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales (Nan A. Talese, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday, 2014); read by A. M. Homes for the New Yorker Fiction Podcast , June 1st, 2018, online here. 7,156 words, though it feels much shorter. (Spoilers.) Verna is charmingly believable. It seems like such a leap from her quiet, almost passive-aggressive husband murders (and not all of them even qualify as murders, I feel like) to the swift brutal one she enacts on Bob—I wasn’t sure if she could go through with it. But then she did. And I liked it. What to make of the ending? I think she’s going to get away with it, but it’s striking how apathetic she is about the whole plan, how distractable. “She ought to care more about that—she ought to find it an exciting challenge—but right now she just feels tired and somewhat empty. “Though at peace, though safe.” Is she lying to herself about feeling at peace? Surely she is. Surely her revenge hasn’t solved the problem of her life, her bitterness about the long-lasting effects of her trauma. Edited to add: “kind, soft, insulating money” is so great. Listening to the podcast, I was waiting for the noun (“love,” perhaps?) and “money” came as a delightful surprise. November 28, 2017. Short story: “The Martians Claim Canada” “The Martians Claim Canada,” by Margaret Atwood. Appeared in Granta 141: Canada, online here November 9th, 2017; read for Drabblecast 423, March 31st, 2020, with another charming illustration by Emily Cannon. This is great. The Granta illustration (by Atwood herself, it turns out!) really makes it. November 16, 2017. Short story: “Rape Fantasies” “Rape Fantasies,” by Margaret Atwood. Appeared in The Fiddlehead some time in the 1970s and in No. 185 (Fiddlehead Gold); collected in Dancing Girls & Other Stories (McClelland & Stewart, 1977); also in The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women in 1985; PDF here. Is this about rape fantasies at all? It seems more like just a darkly funny piece about a character who’s bad at fantasizing. Then again, it’s Margaret Atwood, and some readers have found a deeper meaning in it, about the character’s genuine fear: “As the story ends, we realize that Estelle all along has been in a bar, speaking to a man she has just met, worrying about the possibility she will be raped by him. ‘Like, how could a fellow do that to a person he’s just had a long conversation with, once you let them know you’re human, you have a life too, I don’t see how they could go ahead with it, right?’ (110). We are left wondering whether all these ‘conversations’ are Estelle’s deliberate inventions, her way of trying to control a potentially dangerous social interaction.” —Delese Wear and Felice Aull (x) November 15, 2017. Novelette: “Isis in Darkness” “Isis in Darkness,” by Margaret Atwood. Appeared in Granta 31: The General, April 26th, 1990 (online here); collected in Wilderness Tips , published in 1991 by McClelland & Stewart. A beautiful story. Bleak, but with a note of hope at the end, the hope that at least Richard can piece together some semblance of the thing he loved so much, hope in the very fact that amid the mess he’s made of his life, he can still love at all. December 1, 2013. Fictional essay: “Happy Endings” “Happy Endings,” by Margaret Atwood. According to Wikipedia, this first appeared in the 1983 collection Murder in the Dark ; PDF here ; also online here. Maybe 1,200 words? This blogger compares “Happy Endings” to “The Babysitter,” which seems apt. But “Happy Endings” has no scene and hardly any continuity in characterization, so I’m thinking it falls on the “essay” side of things rather than the “story” side. I admire Atwood, and I suspect that this piece was remarkable when it was first published (didn’t it get anthologized all over the place?), but I find it distasteful now. All it does is mock the idea of a plot, and since it omits almost everything that makes plots interesting, the mockery hits the mark easily. I am tired of aggressive meaninglessness. The last line may not be meaningless. It seems like a genuine challenge of some kind. Maybe Atwood is satirizing a particular cliché plot trend that I’m not aware of. August 21, 2013. Short story: “Voices Lost in Snow” “Voices Lost in Snow,” by Mavis Gallant. Appeared in the New Yorker in 1976; read by Margaret Atwood for the New Yorker Fiction Podcast released April 1st, 2013 (here) Who even knows how many words—let’s say 5,000 or so. I wasn’t familiar with Gallant before listening to this podcast. She seems to have written many stories narrated by an adult from a child’s point of view, one of my favorite tricks. I was impressed by the way, at the end, the adults’ situation came belatedly into focus for me and Linnet simultaneously. (Maybe a sharper reader, or one better versed in adultery, would have picked up on the father’s intentions right away. Even for such a reader, I think, that little scrap of gossip must still have the effect of an unveiling, as when a magician finally produces a coin or a card out of hiding.) One thing I like about this episode is that Atwood repeatedly dismisses Treisman’s comments and leading questions. I often get annoyed with Treisman for saying things I feel to be obvious, irrelevant, or wrong. Few of her guests contradict her as bluntly as Atwood here. Hello, Martians. Let Moby-Dick Explain. LAST night the Martians touched down in the backyard. They were oval and bright pink, with two antlike antennae topped by eyes fringed with sea-anemone lashes. They said they’d come to study America. “Why ask me?” I said. “America is farther south.” “You are an observer,” they said. “Please tell us: Does America have a different ‘flavor’ from that of other countries? Is it the center of the cultural world? How does it look to outsiders?” “America has always been different from Europe,” I said, “having begun as a utopian religious community. Some have seen it as a dream world where you can be what you choose, others as a mirage that lures, exploits and disappoints. Some see it as a land of spiritual potential, others as a place of crass and vulgar materialism. Some see it as a mecca for creative entrepreneurs, others as a corporate oligarchy where the big eat the small and inventions helpful to the world are stifled. Some see it as the home of freedom of expression, others as a land of timorous conformity and mob-opinion rule.” “Thank you,” said the Martians, after looking up “thank you” on translate.google.com™. “How may we best discover the essence of America?” “Through its literature, would be my choice,” I said, “but I’m biased.” “O.K.,” said the Martians. “What should we read first? Can we have marshmallows?” “Let’s start with two stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne,” I said. “ ‘The Maypole of Merry Mount,’ and ‘Young Goodman Brown.’ Here are your marshmallows.” Their pink antennae waved excitedly. They stored away the marshmallows as rare American artifacts. Then they read the stories, very quickly, as Martians do. “What do these mean to contemporary America?” they asked. “In ‘The Maypole of Merry Mount,’ ” I said, “some people having a fun party in the woods are disrupted by the Puritans, who consider them immoral. Both groups have come to America in search of ‘freedom.’ The Merry Mounters interpret ‘freedom’ as sexual and individual freedom, the Puritans as freedom to practice their own religion while outlawing the behavior of others. This fight is still going on in America: the same issues come up in every election. In my novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ ” I added modestly, “I’ve included them as ‘freedom to’ and ‘freedom from.’ ” “We took that in high school,” said the Martians. “What about ‘Young Goodman Brown?’ ” “So, in ‘Young Goodman Brown,’ ” I said, “this Puritan goes for a walk at night and discovers that all his neighbors and relations — including his young wife, Faith — are members of a satanic witchcraft group. He wakes up in the morning wondering if he’s had a bad dream. But ever afterward he distrusts the neighbors; and so do all Americans, because how do you know whether the neighbors are who they claim to be? Every once in a while America has a Salem-style witch hunt, during which hysteria takes over and people are tagged with the satanic label of the moment. Right now it’s mostly ‘terrorism,’ though in some quarters it’s ‘liberalism’ or even ‘evil-green-dragon environmentalism.’ ” The Martians decided to eat one marshmallow each to see what it tasted like. Their mouths were underneath: they dealt with food by hopping onto it. “Can we have popcorn now? Orville Redenbacher’s?™ they said. “And a Coke?™” “How do you know about those things?” I said. “We watch American TV and Internet,” they said, “like everyone else in the universe. Though American cultural hegemony is slipping, we perceive: newly rich countries such as India and Brazil have developed their own mass media. Also, America’s promise of democracy and egalitarianism — the mainstay of its cultural capital, widely understood — is being squandered. America is viewed as riddled with internal contradictions, what with vote suppression, the economic inequality protested by Occupy Wall Street, the impact of the mortgage meltdown, and the public’s loss of confidence in political institutions. So, the popcorn? We can do the microwaving.” They took out their ray guns. “After you’ve read the next book,” I said. “It’s Melville’s ‘Moby-Dick.’ ” The Martians riffled through Moby-Dick at top speed. Then they consulted translate.google.com™ for an expression that would best convey their reaction. “Holy crap!” they said. “Does this mean what we think it means?” they said. “What do you think it means?” I said. “I’ll do the popcorn myself: you might get the wavelength wrong.” “ ‘Moby-Dick’ is about the oil industry,” they said. “And the Ship of American State. The owners of the Pequod are rapacious and stingy religious hypocrites. The ship’s business is to butcher whales and turn them into an industrial energy product. The mates are the middle management. The harpooners, who are from races colonized by America one way or another, are supplying the expert tech labor. Elijah the prophet — from the American artist caste — foretells the Pequod’s doom, which comes about because the chief executive, Ahab, is a megalomaniac who wants to annihilate nature. “Nature is symbolized by a big white whale, which has interfered with Ahab’s personal freedom by biting off his leg and refusing to be slaughtered and boiled. The narrator, Ishmael, represents journalists; his job is to warn America that it’s controlled by psychotics who will destroy it, because they hate the natural world and don’t grasp the fact that without it they will die. That’s enough literature for now. Can we have popcorn?” After inhaling the popcorn, they slurped up their Cokes™, then asked me to take an Instagram™ on their cellphones of them with the bottles. “Now we are going to Las Vegas to do some gambling,” they said, “because it’s a very American thing. After that we will buzz the Grand Canyon, and then we’ll go to the Boot Hill Museum in Kansas and get pictures of ourselves dressed as Wild West cowboys and honky-tonk floozies.” “I think you should be careful,” I said. “Why?” the Martians asked. “Forgive me for pointing this out, but you look a lot like diagrams of the human female uterus,” I said. “Complete with fallopian tubes and ovaries.” A human being might be insulted to be told this, but it didn’t seem to bother the Martians. Having looked up “uterus” on translate.google.com™, they said, “Isn’t the uterus a good thing? The life force and so on?” “In some parts of America,” I said, “the men are obsessed with uteri. They feel that having one is potentially demonic. It’s a hangover from ‘Young Goodman Brown.’ If they saw you hopping around — worse still, eating popcorn — they’d go completely berserk, and pronounce you pregnant, and put you in jail.” “Maybe we will go to Radio City Music Hall instead,” the Martians said. “Good choice,” I said. “You won’t stand out in New York, or not much. If anyone bothers you, accuse them of being specist. Throw in that you’re vegans.”