It seems that violence is an unavoidable topic. It came to me while I was playing video games and came across a prepubescent boy screaming and yelling through his headphones about killing the other team, swearing while occasionally making derogatory comments about my gender and raging about the field to get a "kill-joy". While I don't promote violence, I have to admit that there is something about the allure of violence that draws attention to it. Like video games, science fiction promotes violence where there is a power struggle to assert dominance in order to win the war and it becomes a sort of primal instinct. In works such as Joe Haldeman's Forever Peace and narratives such as John Kessel's "Invaders" and Octavia Butler's "Speech Sounds", violence functions as a primal instinct to assert dominance over another and through the sheer pleasure of provoking that enables the man's innate need to fight and protect. Some might argue that it is through violence that allows adaptation and change that promotes the idea of ​​revolution and the need to protect as a reason to bring it about; the need for a justice system and the idea of ​​conquering for greedy and envious reasons demonstrates that violence is a natural part of human nature and is, therefore, attracted to the spectacle of violence. Consider the first idea in which violence seems to appear. be programmed into all living beings. There is a primal instinct to defend ourselves, our territory and essentially our sense of dignity. It becomes a means of asserting dominance, much like the animal kingdom where dominant males challenge another for the right to clan or mate. In Octavia Butler's short story “Speech Sounds,” narrator Valerie Rye d...... middle of paper...... Violence can be provoked in any situation. In video games, I've probably accumulated enough "kill-joys" and "over kills" that no one would suspect a person like me of being violent. So maybe it's a primal instinct, but there's something about it that shows that violence can be an overarching theme that can't be avoided, no matter what we do. Works CitedButler, Octavia. “Speech sounds”. The Norton book of science fiction. Ed. Ursula Le Guin and Brian Attebery. New York: Norton & Company inc., 1993. 513-524. Print.Haldeman, Joe. Peace forever. New York: Ace book, 1997. Print.Kelly, John. ENGLISH 2071F: Speculative Fiction: Science Fiction Notes. London, ON: University of Western. July 2014. Lecture notes.Kessel, John. “Invaders”. The Norton book of science fiction. Ed. Ursula Le Guin and Brian Attebery. New York: Norton & Company inc., 1993. 317-336. Press.