Oryx and Crake

I haven’t finished the novel Oryx and Crake, by Margret Atwood yet due to all the work that has been piled on during the last couple weeks but I have been really enjoying it so far.

            What I find kind of creepy about the story so far is the feeling of backwardness in the main character Snowman. Who was once a man by the name of Jimmy. Throughout the story, Atwood gives us insight into Snowman’s past. It’s a very interesting addition to the story and helps explain why the world is the way it is. You learn about him from a very young age and follow him up to young adulthood and finally as he is now –Snowman.  It’s as if Margaret Atwood is starting the story off at the end of another story, a story with a sad ending.

            The voices that play in Jimmy’s head are unique and I’m really glad I read this as my last novel choice because it reminded me of I am Legend, which was one of the first novels I read for my speculative literature class. In that story, the main character, Robert Neville is a little bit saner than Snowman, but you start to notice him talking to himself more and more. Robert Neville died before getting a chance to dissolve his humanity to the same extent as Snowman. The moment Jimmy took on the name Snowman is the moment Jimmy died.

            This leads me to what I thought about next. Is Snowman even human? Sure throughout the novel he talks about the Green Eyed Children of Crake as not being human, but has he lost the thing that has made him human over the years? I’m not sure how to answer that question. One part of me believes he most certainly has. He has moved into a dark age, living from day to day with blunt escapisms in his ragtag existence. However, he clearly holds on to love and hope and those are very human concepts. This book is holding my interest and I can’t wait to find out how it unfolds. I wonder if Snowman will still be Snowman in the end.  

The Death of Circuits.

I had never seen Blade Runner before. (Shame on me, I know.) However, I really enjoyed it. It had a lot of strong themes that progressed throughout the movie. It made me want to read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. By Philip K. Dick.

I found the idea of Mega-Manufacturers like the Tyrell Corporation intriguing. This is hauntingly similar to the real world. Monsanto anybody? (Except Monsanto is a little bit more evil, but that is another story altogether. Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo, ect. Those are the current world’s “Game of Thrones.” Also, this movie was released in 1982 and portrayed a grim, dystopian future set in the year 2019. If the Mayans were wrong, we will be hitting this year fairly soon and we can all take a long sigh of relief that it's not too much like Blade Runner.

            Another interesting aspect of this movie is the “grey area.” It makes you question who the good guys are. Are the androids Deckard hunts the bad guys? They’re escaping their work. Thus, escaping slavery. I feel that this story is a great example of “victims of circumstance.”  Tyrell, Roy, Zhora, even Rachel and Deckard all have these sad endings or grim futures. 

            Spinners are cool. We have always had a fascination with flying cars and it’s actually a technology that isn't far off. Granted it uses magnets and magnets under the street to create the “flying” affect but it is still doable by 2019.  I always find it fascinating when things once thought of as the pinnacle of sci-fi are now just out of reach; or even stranger yet, old technologies now.  The original Star Trek had devices very similar to that of a cell phone as well as many other small gadgets that you see on the market today.

            Today’s SciFi is just as weird as ever, we have a lot of interesting contemporaries, Margaret Atwood, China Meiville and others. I wonder if their worlds, their creations, will come to fruition as well. 

And I thought F%$# was a bad word….

Babel -17, is an interesting SciFi novel by Samuel R. Delany. During an interstellar war one side constructs a language that can manipulate thought. This language is called Babel-17 and turns anyone who learns it into a traitor. The language also enhances other abilities as well. It’s strange because I couldn’t help notice how this story –written almost 40 years ago can be eerily translated into some popular topics of today.

            The first thing I thought of when I understood what Babel-17 was the term “Designer Babies.” A  “Designer Baby” is a phrase coined by media and journalists, which refers to a baby who was created with the help of in-vitro fertilization. This sounds harmless right? Well right now, it is. But what does the future have in store? Soon people will be able to choose the genes their kids have. “I want a child who is 6”1’, who will have blue eyes and blond hair with an IQ of 132,” one might say.   All those qualities sound attractive and appealing right? Right. But are they the parent’s child anymore or the scientist’s child? Are they even a Child? Those are the proper questions to be asking.

            How Babel-17 and Designer Babies relate is the correlation of modification between the two. Babel-17 bends and manipulates your way of thought. It changes you to not really be you anymore. Creating a Designer Baby has the same affect but on a physical level.  It doesn’t even give the natural baby a chance. Also, both stem from an idea of betterment.  Yes, Babel-17 is a language that turns you into something you’re not but if everyone spoke it there would be no wars. The same motif of betterment is true in Designer Babies. We are enhancing humans faster than evolution ever could. We are playing god.

            But at what price? Where does that leave the poor and the middle class? It affectively absolves the pursuit of happiness from the Declaration of Independence. With the advancements in science and technology Designer Babies will soon have pretty insane options. But are they still humans? Is it the end of an era? Only time will tell. 

Alphaville. No, Not the Band

Alphaville was an interesting movie. For starters I watched it in French and got some needed French practice.  This was an interesting Sci-fi film because it took French “detective noir,” stories and went in an interesting direction. Had I been younger and more ignorant while watching this film I would’ve just assumed it was a spy film, (which, at the heart it is,) with no real allusions to Sci-fi.
What I thought was cool about this film and with a lot of sci-fi films in general are the gadgets that they use. Sometimes these gadgets become a reality. For example the way Alpha 60 communicates with Lenny Caution throughout the film is very reminiscent of how a cell phone works. This film was also made roughly 30 years before cell phones really started becoming a thing.
This is one of the earliest “computers running the show,” movies that I have seen and it felt very Orwellian to me. The idea of Big Brother has been replaced with Alpha 60, a computer manifested by the great Professor von Braun. Another parallel between these two stories is the constant modification of the language. This idea always crept me out and makes total sense in a perpetual dictatorship. Cutting words that evoke a feeling of love, sadness, or happiness really dehumanizes the people of Alphaville turning them into drones of the computer.
I also really like the fusion of the private-eye ant-hero story colliding with sci-fi. You don’t see this kind of fusion very often and I would actually love to see someone remake this film with a huge box-office budget. I would go see it in a heartbeat.
Alphaville was all right. As an enthusiast I’m glad I watched it. It has a good story and many interesting elements. Some movies, some books, some games age like wine. This aged like milk (Not the story, just the cinematography was hard for me to watch.)  It deserves a Peter Jackson remake. I’d like that.

The Brother From Another Planet

The Brother From Another Planet, is an interesting movie. I watched it about a week ago and I still can’t decide if I like it or not. I think it’s a good movie, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t know if I would go out and evangelize it to all my nerdy compadres. I will get into the elements that I liked about this story in a bit, but first I’d like to talk briefly on the one thing I didn’t like that kind of put a damper on things. I found the story hard to comprehend. I kept getting a little confused at what was going on and why things were progressing the way they did. This is due to the way it was filmed and the way that the story move forward. It felt very fragmented.
What redeemed the movie for me was a slue of different things.  For starters I LOVE ME SOME low budget films. (Really, I do.) And this was apparently low budget.  Also, this movie is hilarious. It has a great cast. All the characters have their own whip crack-dynamism about them and are all very engaging. Which leads me to another reason why I should like this movie. The main character, The Brother.
The Brother is a unique character because throughout the film he doesn’t talk. This is great because it adds that sense of alienation that is needed in the story. A new person in a new land.  In addition, it is hard to engage the audience without talking. It’s cutting off a means of communication. All his communication must be done through body language and Joe Morton does a great job at just that.  He is a really convincing black alien.
Lastly, I’d like to briefly touch on the men in black. The villains of the story. I thought these two guys were interesting because I grew up in an era where the men in black were the good guys out to defend humanity. In this story the men in black are aliens’ out to recapture a slave. This to me was unique.
The weirdest part for me was to see the Twin Towers. I grew up in New York City. I was born there and plan to move right back after college. I was 9 when they fell and now I’m 21. It’s just weird to see them.  –This last part was so far divorced from what I was talking about, it’s just important to me and I felt the need to through it in.

I wish I could Jaunte to class at 8:29 everyday.

As the semester has progressed, I have found it harder and harder to continue reading the novels assigned for homework due to the fact that I’m up till almost 4:00A.M. everyday slaving away behind a computer screen. There are two novels that I plan on reading regardless of how much work I have.  One of them is Orxy and Crake, I’ve wanted to read that novel for a while and finally have an excuse to do so. The other was The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester. Which I finished about two weeks ago and finally have time to blog about. (Sorry for the delay, Mr. Steiling.) I’ve wanted to read this story because it’s basically the Count of Monte Cristo goes to space and I’m a huge fan of that story. However, it needs to be unique. It needs to have it’s own special elements that make it stand out as a story worth reading. Otherwise why not just read the original by Alexandre Dumas? Let me explain what makes The Stars My Destination stand out among the crowd.
The novel is set in the future and a new form of transpiration has been discovered. It’s called Jaunting and it is basically teleportation. There are some limitations to how and where you can jaunte. These boundaries make it all the more interesting, especially in the main character Gully Foyle. In addition to the cool idea of Jaunting it’s interesting to see how it evolves throughout the course of the book. (What I’m about to say is a spoiler and my opinion so if you haven’t read the novel yet you may want to come back and reread this post later.) The man on fire. That is Gully. That is Gully after he found a way in the future to travel through space and time but that is also jaunting. What I am trying to say is that Jaunting became a character. It evolved from an idea, to a mode, to a character and hey, that’s really cool.
I could talk about this novel for hours. The idea of inter-solar system war is believable and how I think space travel will naturally go. (Think about our own human history and you can see parallels that would make sense for this to happen.)  The story is old but at the same time fresh and engaging. I haven’t enjoyed everything I’ve read this semester. But hey, I’ve enjoyed most of it! (Night Circus was meh.) But this novel and A Wild Sheep Chase are my two favorites so far. Up next Orxy and Crake.

It’s Like Watching Generic Fantasy Spin in a Toilet. I love it!

I recently watched the two part mini-series, The Colour of Magic. This series is based off of Terry Pratchett’s comic novel by the same name. Let me just start off by saying as an aspiring art director, I want to shake the hands of whoever designed the sets. They were amazeballs. The production designer must have gone above and beyond the call of duty. It was obviously a low budget production with mid 80s special effects but that just added to the charm. What I liked most about this mini-series:  The story, strong characters, and media crossing potential.
- The story.  This was one of the more unique stories I have learned about in this course because it isn’t unique at all.  Imagine all your run of the mill fantasy archetypes. Dragons, swords stuck in the ground, evil bad guys. Now imagine all of them with the most hilarious and awesome spins and viola! You have The Colour of Magic. It takes tried and true stories and motifs and makes them fresh again. Which isn’t nearly as easy as one might assume.
- Strong characters. I think character development in this story plays a very important role for not just the main characters, but a lot of the supporting roles go through many dynamic and obvious changes. This is most apparent at the Unseen University (Which in itself is paradoxical. Wizards –The pinnacle of intelligence and their barbaric hierarchy system.)  After you watch it you’ll understand what I mean. I don’t want to give anything away here. Teehee.
-Media crossing potential. The two points I stated above blew me away but I also believe that this story has great media crossing potential. What I mean by that is it wont only appeal to TV driven story goers, but also gamers and readers. For starters, it was already based off of a great comic novel so it has that appeal to readers. Also, in 2009 a game came out by the name of Trine. Trine is a puzzle game with an over-the-top fantasy setting. I couldn’t help but see parallels between the two even though they tell completely different stories in completely different mediums.  
To end this blog post I’ll leave you with something short and sweet. The Colour of Magic is awesome. It’s on Netflix, (for now.) Go watch it.