Multiple Imagery
It can be a risk to connect too many similes together in one description, but when it is pulled off, the result can really add vivid shading to a scene. Such is the case in this example of simple character description which rises to another level as a result of multiple metaphorical images working with a purpose:
“He was bent like a dying palm tree and when he’d said, `You have never traveled; I must do a full scan. Remain where you are,’ his voice was drier than the red desert outside my city. But he read my astrolabe as fast as my father, which both impressed and scared me.”
Physicality
The collective distinguishing physical features of a group of people is a popular arena for writers to engage the use of metaphorical imagery. The tendency is to engage it once in a comprehensive manner and let it go, but a very effective method is displayed here in which the writer builds an effect by layering a simile on top of a metaphor:
“Two girls who might have been a few years older than me, covered their mouths with hands so pale that they looked untouched by the sun. Everyone looked as if the sun was his or her enemy.”
The Meduse
The Meduse are an alien species that are not exactly like E.T. or those big-headed gray creatures we’ve become familiar with. Although, to be truthful, they are not entirely exotically alien in their appearance. There are a few analogues to which they might be compared. Anyone who has seen the low-budget 1950’s sci-fi cult classic The Atomic Submarine—or a couple of cartoon characters inspired by that movie known as Kang and Kodos—will be able to picture the Meduse fairly easily with this helpful description:
“The Meduse in front of me was blue and translucent, except for one of its tentacles, which was tinted pink like the waters of the salty lake beside my village and curled up like the branch of a confined tree.”
Useful Technology
So much technology in science fiction seems to exist simply for the sake of being advanced. Very often, the most utilitarian of needs are completely overlooked even though it would be not great difficult to include it. A notable exception to this noticeable lacking are the facemasks worn by the characters in the novel which do include a very useful function that can only be considered a technology work of genius:
“I adjusted my facemask. The air that it pumped in smelled like desert flowers. The makers of the mask had to have been Khoush women. They liked everything to smell like flowers, even their privates.”
Existential Metaphor
The fun with metaphorical imagery begins on the very first page with some existential philosophizing on the part of the narrator. Wasting no time in this short novel—a novel, really—the first-person narrator is already undergoing a life-altering change in circumstances and, what’s more, recognizes it as such:
“Straightening up, I paused and shut my eyes. Now the weight of my entire life was pressing on my shoulders. I was defying the most traditional part of myself for the first time in my entire life.”
