Odds Against Tomorrow

The Power of Voicemails

hvitrano@uoregon.edu 2 Comments

Future coast is a very interesting game and reminds me of geocaching. The game is to create fictional voicemails that could happen in the future. When our class was told to each create our own voicemail the first thing that came to my mind was a plague or sickness. This is an issue due to climate change because eventually there will be no hospitals functioning. This reminds me of in the short story “Diary of an Interesting Year” no one could go to hospitals because all were shut down. I think Future Coast is a great project because it leaves people a personal voicemail. The purpose of the voicemails is to explain a situation that could occur. For instance, about buying extra food incase of a disaster. Also, explains what the future could look in different years. When making a voicemail you can pick what year this message is from. I think this is cool because it shows people who don’t know anything about climate change what might happen. The voicemails are very unique because it’s a individual call. It’s usually an urgent message and the person is calling for a reason. You can hear a tone in the persons voice and can evoke emotion. The purpose of the voicemails is to create emotion and the goal is for people to react.

The voicemails are an example of cli-fi because no one knows what is actually going to happen in the future. They are hypothetical situation that people think are going to happen and with research could actually. Some people in our class made up imaginary characters and situations that were cause because of climate change. Some students talked about advanced technology and how disasters are offering. Many of us talked about floods that were going to happen and how we called to warn our loved ones. I think the voicemails send a clear message about show we want to prepare people for the future. I think if someone doesn’t know much about climate change and got a voicemail it would terrify them. I personally would be scared to listen to a voicemail from the future and think about what might happen. Most stories we have read in class have different situations that are cause by global warming. The story Odds Against Tomorrow was a fictional story about New York in the future. New York is going to experience a flood that will ruin everything. The story has imaginary characters that are trying to convey a message to be prepared for the future. I think fiction is important for everyone because gives us a sense of the future. No one on this planet can predict the future but instead can be creative and use our imagination.

I loved this activity because it was personal and I could connect with some of the voicemails. One of the voicemails was someone calling their family to say goodbye because they don’t think they will make it out of the disaster. It puts you in the shoes of someone else and you imagine if that will actually happen.

We Survive Together, We Die Together

zbigley@uoregon.edu Leave a comment

They way we act in times of stress can show us who we are. The way we act in times of distress define us as a society and species. In the book Odds Against Tomorrow, after the flood, the author Nathaniel Rich described some of the people in New York as if they had lost all of their societal common sense. They were expressed as if they were creatures that did not belong in the bodies that encased their inner beast. It was like they had forgotten that as a people, we need to band together in times of sorrow and pain, not hurt each other.

Contine reading →

We Need to Inform People About Climate Change!

Casey Leach 5 Comments

After getting further into the novel, Odds Against Tomorrow I kept thinking about how I wouldn’t know how to survive if an extreme natural disaster destroyed the city I was living in. For instance, in the novel when the category three hurricane came through and flooded New York City, Mitchell handled the situation pretty well and used his overly expensive canoe to get him and Jane to somewhere safe. This part of the novel reminded me of the movie The Day After Tomorrow because it is literally the same concept, except everything ends up freezing over.

This specific part of the novel made me a little nervous just because an extreme natural disaster like that could happen at any given point and nobody would be prepared for it. Many people would not know how to survive in that type of situation, which is really scary. However, if people were informed of climate change and the natural disasters that can arise due to climate change then people would be able to prepare themselves for extreme natural disasters such as the category three hurricane in the novel. Also, if people knew more about climate change and the effects it can cause then people could try to change their daily habits to try to decrease the negative effects happening due to climate change.

Also, lately the weather has been extremely nice in Eugene and many students realize that this is happening because of climate change, but it is concerning because we have having 60 degree weather in Eugene in the middle of February. Flowers are already starting to bloom! THAT IS A PROBLEM! Many people are happy about the weather being nice and I can’t blame them because I have been very happy with it too. However, after I sat down and really thought about it, I got a little concerned because that is not normal winter weather. It makes me wonder if we are having weather like this now then what will happen next year and the year after that and five years later?

The main problem is that we have damaged our climate so much that even if people did change their daily habits, it wouldn’t be enough to stop climate change or help decrease the effects we are having to deal with because of it. This is what is really scary. I honestly never used to think about climate change a lot before because I wasn’t as informed about it as I am now and I still barely know anything, which is even scarier! Now, I notice the little things about climate change such as having mid 60 degree weather in the middle of February. While talking to my dad on the phone today, he asked about the weather and I told him how it was really nice, but that was because of climate change and he replied with, “Oh no, that’s not the reason at all”. So that just shows me that adults aren’t even fully aware of this and don’t find it concerning. Therefore, I decided that I am going to make it my goal to talk to my family about different issues involving climate change over spring break to see what they have to say about it because I want to hear other people’s thoughts on the issue and see if they find climate change to be a huge issue or not. I recommend other people do the same thing because you will be surprised to hear what some people have to say about the issue.

Who is Mitchell Zukor?

Stephen Siperstein Leave a comment

So… who is Mitchell Zukor, and what does our answers to that question say about how Nathaniel Rich chose to develop the protagonist in his novel Odds Against Tomorrow?  Based on the group activity we completed in class today, I put together a word cloud that tracks our class’s answers to the question, who is Mitchell Zukor? The larger the size of the word, the more often it appeared across different groups’ answers.

Picture 2

(Click on the image for a larger version)

I find it interesting to see Mitchell’s character visualized like this as it makes salient some of the patterns in who he is, as well as some of the contradictions in who he is (like his being both socially awkward and persuasive, both introverted and caring).

When thinking about your final projects and creating your own works of cli-fi, you might want to consider the complexities of your own story’s characters and how different kinds of characterization might allow you to investigate different aspects of climate change.  For instance, in Odds Against Tomorrow, Nathaniel Rich seems to have created a protagonist who is obsessed with disaster in part as a way to explore our own culture’s obsession with apocalypse, and yet he makes Mitchell likable enough that we as readers seem to really care about what happens to him.