Week 14: Science Fiction Parody and Satire

             Satire is always an interesting look to look. Sci-fi has a genre is always taking it’s guesses at the future, and this is a always a great place to get a few laughs. Idiocracy is a great example of this, using the promise of the future to deliver a message on consumer culture is a very clever and funny satire of the future.

            When I think of this genre I mainly think of movies, more then books. I much like how Star Wars is often the first move people think of when they think Sci-Fi, Spaceballs is my go to sci-fi satire film. If nothing else Spaceballs manages to take a stab at some of the Star Wars and sci-fis more ridiculous parts. Some of my favorite jokes include combing the desert and the numerous mentions of “Spaceball’s the ____”.

            I don’t have much to say on this subject, its not something up for a lot of critical thought, it’s all for fun a lot the time.

 I wanted to write a quick post reflecting on the class some more. For the most part I really enjoyed it. I wish we had spent a few more weeks on honor and fantasy, I felt like we only had about two weeks of fantasy to go through. This is of course all just my personal tastes. I thought we could have had a “Swords and Sorcery” and a “Kaiju” week for sci-fi and fantasy respectively. I don’t know how much literature is about Kaiju but I’m sure there are a few books about them. Anyway, I loved the class shame.

Week 10: Narratives From the Multi-verse

This week I read the “Drowned Giant” this week because it’s name sounds like name of a metal album. The story follows the fate of a drowned Nephilim’s body as it washed up on shore. The body is enjoyed by the community, but it is slowly taken apart piece by piece as the story unfolds until at the end only the torso remains and is left to decay on shore until it’s nothing but a grand perch

for the seagulls. Those pieces of the giant taken are found all over the town in pretty cool creative uses. (The tattooed skin wall is pretty neat) This of course is symbolism for something, so like I normally do I read a few articles I find on Google to see what others think about the piece.

 The common theme seems be that, the body is broken down because, it’s a massive reminder of our mortality and that have this dead giant such a massive reminder. I guess I can by that, I don’t know what they do with dead whales that wash up on shore but I assume it’s the same thing. I don’t know when this written but I think their maybe a holocaust metaphor in here too. As pieces of something start to fade people forget and stop believing they ever happened.

Week 11: Cyberpunk

I read Bruce Sterling’s Cyberpunk in the Nineties articles which is strange to read a twenty year old article now. Sterling goes on to describe, the history of cyberpunk, which seems to be a punk rock version of sci-fi. “Cyberpunk is doing what we do to rats, and doing it to humans”. Very in your face an unapologetic about what it’s doing. I guess that’s punk in general. 

Though I love the idea of punk and cyberpunk, I don’t know how much power or shock it has left to offer in today’s age. Sure I don’t think it’ll die but unless something huge comes out of cyberpunk it’ll go the way of most punk sub genres and be underground. It’s 2013 now, I think most people have fun some excuse me “fuck up shit” if you over the age of 15 and on the Internet. I don’t think many people live with the idea anymore the world is a great place, it’s actually pretty much horrible. Maybe all these years in art school have turned me into a bit of douche now that reading that over, about how awful I think the world is, but my life is great and so are a ton of other people’s. I assume this is the target market for cyberpunk. I mean the fact we have the time and the chance to read cyber punk isn’t very cyberpunk is it?
            I feel the same way about horror and other genres that turn over the underbelly of the world to the dark side. It’s hard to shock people now a days. I mean it seemed like almost monthly we were having school shoots and awful godless things are happening, and that’s just in America.
            I may have gone a bit off topic here. To but it simply I don’t know what is going to happen to cyberpunk.

Week 13: Literary Speculation

            This week we read the Aquatic Uncle; it reminded me a lot of the scenes from Fantasia. The story takes place in the primordial days as fish make their way onto land from the sea. This seems to be the first or second generation of fish with feet, but the old generation still leaves in the nearby ocean.

            Our main character Qfwfq, is part of the new generation and has an old uncle by name of N'ba N'ga, who is still an aquatic fish. Qfwfq and his uncle do not agree about the future of their species, which calming that land or sea is better. Qfwfq’s wife falls in love with N’ba N’ga over a visit with them. Finally she ends up leaving Qfwfq for him, falling in love with living in the sea.

                        The ending of story has an interesting paragraph. Qfwfq comes on to name a number of animals who have something “superior” and that never change over the course of ages in a massive way. Animals like crocodiles and roaches and things. He states that

“They all had something, I know, that made them somehow superior to me, sublime, something that made me, compared to them, mediocre. And yet I wouldn't have traded places with any of them.”

I think the theme of the story is pretty much in these sentences. It’s roughly that few though, my wife left me to go leave with my old sea uncle and his old way of life. He believes that he isn’t a crocodile and that he needs to move on because it’s important for his kind, and that they can’t go back. It’s a very pro evolution and change theme, which I do happen to agree with. I liked this one, a bit of a sad one but that’s just fine sometimes.

Week 12: Diverse Position Science Fiction

 First of all Brother from Another Planet, is a great film to show in class. Very in enjoyable, nostalgic film, that just off the energy in the room seemed like everyone was really eating it up. I love it, glad I finally saw it, and it’s one of those movies I always seen on Netflix but never clicked on.

This week in class, we read “The Blood Child” which was an interesting sci-fi reading. The story is told through the eyes of young human who is next in line to be the vessel for an alien spices. This spices is known as the Tlic. Written as large humanoid Millipedes they use the human as nest and incubators for their eggs. The story goes to describe the history between the two spices. How this relationship came to be and give and take that most spices do to support each other, however the power clearly lies in the Tlic’s hands.

            The story is one giant metaphor for the current societies gender roles. Put simply the young male is women and the Tlic are males. When you break it down to the bare bones the reproduction path is the same for us. Think about males and females can’t reproduce with out each other. Additional have a baby is just like have a weird parasite grow inside of you until it burst out. I mean normally it’s the same spices most the time but you get the idea. It has some horror elements in it, thanks to the Alien like stomach exploding action, so it was a fun one.

Week 9: Space Opera

            This week was week nine aka, Space Opera week! The semester is really starting to heat up so for this week I needed to read a short story. This week we are covering Space Opera’s such for me and I assume many other people as a much more familiar genre in the form of Space Westerns, the most popular movie in this genre being Star Wars of course. I have to yah that I very much enjoyed the movie Forbidden Planet we watch in class this week. It’s one of the few old iconic Sci-Fi movies from yesteryear, and it was just a great as I had hoped it would be. On to this weeks reading though.

            The short story for this week was the “Nine Billion Names of God”. In short a group of

mountain monks want to print off the billions of names they believe that gods name will bring about the end of mankind. The hire two people from the west to program and build a machine to help them to this. This is a interesting idea and an idea that is parody in other forms of media. (There is an episode of Futurama in which monks look for god in the cosmos through a massive telescope. Fry and Lela even ride donkeys to the stop of the snowy mountain.) As the months roll by the two begin to fear that the monk will lash out at them when god doesn’t show after all nine billion names are printed. The slow down the machine so it finish at their exit flight comes to the mountain. As they fly into the night sky, they see that all the stars have gone out, signally the end of the world.

            After searching the Internet for the meaning of the short story, it seems to be a struggle or a partnership of spiritually and technology. How religion predicts the future put technology can make it come true much quicker.
 

Week 8: Mythic Fiction and Contemporary Urban Fantasy

American Gods was a really interesting read for me I always love this kinda of stuff. Modernizing something old like gods and bringing them to America is cool idea, then adding our own “American Gods” and how we as a new culture must too worship gods. I’m sure this is all some big metaphor, but I don’t really want to get too much into it.

            This was one of my favorites of the course, I found every little thing about it be interesting. Slowly feeding you bits of information as you join Shadow along for the stories length. You learn as he does what is happening and the chaos that slowly goes on over the course of the book. I also enjoyed the back and fourth the sub characters like the succubus women sucking men she sleeps with into her, the other one of these that stood out was the African gods section. It’s nice too because there is some religious lore in there too much makes it nice for people also interesting in learning mythologies of ancient cultures.
            I’ve never read another Neil Gaiman work, but I am interested in reading more. I’ve only ever heard outstanding things about Sandman. That would seems like the next logical place to go.

Week 7: The Novel of Spiritual Education

The words “Harry Potter” bring a lot of thoughts into the minds of the millennial generation. Castles, owls, qudditch, chocolate frogs I could go on and on about it. Many of us drew up reading the series as kids and we got to grow into them as the darkness grew in the series. I got lucky and had a really nice sweet spot in the year I was born. When I was 11 the first movie came out, the age you start at Hogwarts. Then my senior year of high school the final book came out.

            Despite growing up and into it, I think the Harry Potter series offers a strong cast of likeable characters that are all well defined and explored over the course of the seven books. Sprinkling death over almost all the books, JK Rowling managed to never make readers feel like their favorite could still be the victims of the evil magic of these world. At the same time there is a sense of hope through out everything. Death isn’t something you can escape and that is one of the main themes of the series. At the same time you have to learn how to accept death as well, because it’s part of life and you will come face to face with.

            Though not my favorite  Secondly, this were much of the fun happens. The crazy every favor beans, the fore mentioned frogs, owls, dragons, and so many other things are touched are on the original. It’s not as child to lose yourself with all the whimsy of the first novel.

in the series the Sorcerers Stone probably has the strongest aspects of this week’s theme. It’s the most school focused of any of the others the final victory being winning the house cup.

           

Week 6: A Rich Fantasy Life

Warcraft 3- Peon

             Sadly I slept through this class, which is a damn shame because I really wanted to learn about some stuff about high fantasy that’s life I guess. So I’ve never read a Tolkien book, but of course like so many people I’ve experienced the Lord of Rings and the recent Hobbit film. I’m very fond of those movies, like so many other people. I was excited to read the Hobbit since I’m counting down the days the 2^nd movie and it’s always been on my list of things I’ve wanted to read.

            The Hobbit is interesting; Tolkien’s style is something I wasn’t expecting. All the 4^th wall breaking of the reading so Tolkien can relate things to the present day to make descriptions. It makes sense, as this is a children’s book. It just wasn’t what I expected from the great father of high fantasy. I found it quite charming though, the songs especially stood out.  I fell as though I missed a golden book in my childhood after getting through it.

Album- Nightfall in Middle Earth

            All in all I thought that the Hobbit was a really cool novel and it’s no surprise to me that it really grabbed a lot of people as kid or even adults reading it. You have all your great fantasy tropes going on. Dragons, treasure hunting, wizards, orcs, trolls, goblins, warrior princes, and so much more and from what I know it all started with Tolkien. Did we even have fantasy, as we know it before Tolkien, honestly? I know he didn’t make up elves and dwarfs but my god did he spawn the all the stereotypes and tropes for these races and monster of middle earth.
I’ve been an avid World of Warcraft player on and off since 2007. I spent most of my high school on a world filled with all these things found in Tolkien’s works and even not having read them, I feel like I have a huge emotional connection to them jut because of what they helped create. So thanks Tolkien for helping create Dungeons and Dragons, Warcraft, Power Metal, and Live Action Roleplaying with your writings.