Week 14: Science Fiction and Satire

Week 14: Science Fiction and Satire
DON'T PANIC!
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy!

To finish the course, I decided for I would finish off by listening to the Hitch Hiker's Guide Radio Show. I've originally both read the novel and watched the movie.
I grabbed the nearest towel, and was ready. This is definitely one of my favorite all time books in the galaxy. It begins with the duo Arthur and Ford escaping the earth before it is destroyed to make way for a freeway. They begin their journey and use the guide. I would  like to add this is probably one of the best audio books I've ever listened to, especially the effects. They add a lot to the listener. The beginning starts out with the duo escaping earth and hitching a ride on a Vogon's ship which this particular Vogon is one of the worst poets in the galaxy. In which they have to either tell him how good is poem is or die. Of course, them saying his poem was good ended up getting them the death sentence anyways. These two meet a lot of different people throughout the audio book after they get thrown out of the airlock like Zaphod Beeblebrox who is the president of the galaxy and Trillian. They embark on a journey to a planet that sells planets. This is where we learn that the meaning of life is 42 from the supercomputer and Marvin, who I like because he's basically a depressed robot. In the end Trillian's mice don't even want to build a second earth but rather have Arthur's brain instead. Zaphod ends up saving Arthur from getting his brain removed from the mice and decide to go to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Week 13: Literary Speculation

Week 13: Literary Speculation

This week I decided to read more out of Cosmicomics a collection of short stories by Italo Calvino. I decided to read these because I remember in particular we read All at One Point and The Aquatic Uncle in our class. I read Games without End, in which two creatures Pfwfp and Qfwfq are playing a game with atoms eventually breaking the universe and in a continuous loop of chasing each other. These stories make you think exactly what the heck you are reading. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed each short story and thought they were in some aspects a bit funny, or gives you something to think about.

I think in Literary Speculation the author themselves aren’t interested in exactly hitting the marks on genre, it seems they like to mix or make their own free and less strict way of writing their own stories. Every single one of these stories had a pretty strange trippy ending, or in general is just weird. Either with messing with time and space itself or its just comes from something personal to the author. Usually coming from something that’s not of our world, it’s usually pretty out of the box. It can also be a casual and not necessarily an epic either, none of these follow any epic tropes and are just free. Genre shouldn’t limit or keep a writer from mixing or writing certain characters and novels a certain way.

Week 11: Steampunk and Cyberpunk

Week 11: Steampunk and Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk is the genre for this week, this sub-genre stems from the anxieties people have about the future like the environment and the future of the world.
Common tropes in Cyberpunk/Steampunk are the role reversal of the heroine.  Suddenly we see a powerful, modified version of the typical heroine. While the male seems to be sillier, and less useful this is not typical of the heroic norm.
A lot of people in our class debated about the different ideas of how everything will be in the future. It brought up lots of controversy in our own class and I think that’s the point. A lot of cyberpunk is questioning. The world would be changing, from robots possibly having human rights or showing humanistic qualities.  Automation would eventually take over work, what worth would humans even have if machines could take over the work of humans. Our whole world is going through these changes even now. People continue to alter their own bodies to be genetically modified. These things come from modern day issues, talking about how modern day technical advances and society is changing. Like not having conforming genders, or how science is starting to affect our own bodies.

I read Johnny Mnemonic by William Gibson, definitely following these tropes, a strong woman character named Molly and the Japanese mafia the Yakuza being talked about. It even talked about when Lewis needed to get a prosthetic for Molly hurting his thumb earlier. Other than the obvious points that make it a sc-fi, like the RGB code. This is a good short story that covers the very basic of what cyberpunk tropes are.