Monday, December 3, 2012

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. 

Friday, November 30, 2012

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. 

Friday, November 23, 2012

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.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

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.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Quentin Coldwater. Wataguy.


The Magicians

The Magicians was a good read. It took fantasy like Harry Potter, Narnia and others of the genre and tossed them together in a blender. What I liked most about the story was the existential nature of Magic.
            The story follows a unique protagonist. Quentin Coldwater, who is a depressed and social spacious teenager. This was an interesting take on the hero as the closest book I’ve read to The Magicians is the Harry Potter series. I guess I’m just used to the “glass half full,” type of heroes.  Quentin however is anything but that. He is more real, more relatable.  Even the spark of magic disappears and becomes monotony as training becomes laborious.
            He is never satisfied. That is why I love him so much as a character. This constant search for more power manifests itself as depression, as sullenness. You see this a lot in the real world as well. For example when I was a boy I remember my brother doing a kick-flip on a skateboard. I couldn’t and I was jealous. I’d try and try and try for hours every day and couldn’t do it. Eventually I got so upset I picked up the skateboard and slammed it onto the pavement, shattering the tip. The point is, I feel your pain, Quentin.
            Quentin grows as a character throughout the story. All characters in all stories do, but I think it’s pretty forefront in this novel.  Even in the first few chapters you start to see a transition of character. His unrequited love for Julia transforms into a ember of what it once was. His contacts change, his mind changes and his attitude changes.
            This story can be seen as the last ‘coming of age,’ story. It’s a great story about transitioning from the last shell of child life into adulthood, even if it’s in Fillory. 

Monday, October 8, 2012

Night Circus isn’t so black and white, in fact it’s grey.




Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern was a breath of fresh air. Its interesting and contemporary take on what good vs. evil really is was enjoyable to read. When you think fantasy novel. You think of a young hero embarking on or having an epic quest thrust upon them. They overcome some great evil and the world is tossed back into normality thanks to their interference. It’s not a great piece of literature, nor is it groundbreaking. It’s just a pretty interesting book.
When first starting this book I thought to myself, “A love story with magicians? How droll,” but as I slothed through the pages I found myself intrigued with many aspects of the novel.  Primarily, I found the vagueness of good vs evil interesting. I think that contemporary issues often force their way into works of art, either knowingly or subtly.
For the past 11 years, America has been on a war against terrorism. The solider who shoots a woman and child on the suspicion of being terrorists is just as much to blame as the man strapped to the bomb. But are either of them really to blame? The solider was following orders. The bomber, brainwashed. These two wars America has been in have had very cloudy depictions of what is good and what is evil.
In the story, two young magicians, bound by a magically force, serve as proxies for an ageless feud between two magicians. Even the two puppeteers aren’t all that evil.  I must admit that I haven’t finished the novel yet. I plan to go back to it after the course is over. There are books I am more excited about reading for my speculative literature class. 


-Jack

Monday, October 1, 2012

The Hobbit, Real Talk




The Hobbit is a quintessential fantasy novel by the great J.R.R Tolkien. Its episodic storytelling style makes it a great coffee table book for any fantasy enthusiast.  Tonight’s blog post will be a little different. It isn’t about The Hobbit; it’s about how this book in particular affected my life as a reader.
            Let’s dive in shall we? I have dyslexia. To this day I still can't spell my way out of a paper bag. I attribute all my spelling success to the red squiggles that help keep me in check. You would be horrified at the amount of red squiggles on the screen right now. I’ll fix those in a bit. Regardless, I love reading. (I read about 1 book every week and a half.) When I was a kid I vehemently despised reading.  This book flipped my perspective.
            As a child, I had a tutor who would come on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for 2 hours. I’d scatter like a spotted cockroach every time I heard the ominous ring of the doorbell. After 5 or so minutes of fruitless struggling, I’d be seated in the kitchen with her and we would crack open a book. One day she looked at me with a sly grin,
            “Jack, I have a new book for today’s lesson that I think you’ll enjoy,” she says.
I grunt.  Reading fun? How could reading ever be fun? I think. She reaches into her worn leather purse and pulls out a book. This book was stained with use.  Its pages were worn and flimsy. The book had been smashed, bent, mangled, spilled on and yet it still functioned.  Intrigued by its aesthetics, I took a peak at the book laid before me. The Hobbit, was written across the cover.
            As soon as we started reading it together I was enchanted. I have always been a gamer and this was the perfect book for a young geek. When we finished the novel I became obsessed with Lord of the Rings.  It had such a huge impact on me that during my senior year of high school I wrote a 40-page paper about the allegorical themes surrounding Tolkien’s universe.
            I couldn’t be more grateful, it opened the door to R.A Salvatore, Stephen King, Greg Keyes, and a whole spectrum of other great writers.  Cheers!!! :)


-Jack

Monday, September 24, 2012

Haruki Murakmi is an Interesting Writer.



I found A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami to be a very unique story. It’s probably my favorite story I’ve read so far for my speculative literature class.  This was the first novel that I’ve read by Haruki Murakami and it won’t be the last. To quickly summarize the premise; a man in his late twenties uses an image of a sheep with a star on its hind in an ad. This pulls him on an adventure that means life or death.  For my blog post tonight I’ll be discussing how interesting Haruki Murakami’s writing style is.
            Put simply, this book is one hell of a ride. I didn’t understand it until the last 50 pages. That’s when the whole story clicked in my mind. I still have no idea what kind of story it is. It transcends horror and spills into a whole range of other genres. Even though I struggled a bit, I pursued the story along with our protagonist and Ears. (Ears, is the protagonist’s rebound girlfriend which he acquired right after he got a divorce.)
            It’s my belief that Murakami spilled a lot of himself into the story. I don’t know anything about him and I’m sure a quick Google search would confirm my suspicions but here’s what I think I learned about Haruki Murakami:  He likes France a lot. He likes language and is a very metaphysical man.  Also, he enjoys talking about philosophical topics and he’s hilarious. Again, I’m completely ignorant to what he actually is like but after reading this novel and digesting his writing style I make these assumptions confidently.
            The interesting thing about this story is that it’s so hard to explain but makes perfect sense. I tried telling a friend of mine to read it. She asked me what the story is about and I tried in vain to help her understand. You really have to read it for the story to make sense. I attribute this to Murakami’s writing style. He leaves a lot up to interpretation and places the reader in the story with little or to explanation. If you haven’t read it already, I recommend reading A Wild Sheep Chase, it’s one wild ride.


- Jack

Monday, September 10, 2012


The life of Robert Neville.


Robert Neville’s life was, as he put it, “monotonous horror.”  The interesting part is that he had gotten used to the horror, it’s the repetition of life that was such a droll to him.  He lived in a sort of limbo of emotions, not having a high point or a low point in the day. His life was one of perversion and twisted fantasies that were forged from a life of solitude. The interesting thing is that acceptance of this life, and odd dependence of it led to his death.
            At the beginning of the story we are introduced to a naïve Robert Neville, he spent his day making wooden stakes to stab vampires with. At night he would drink himself into a stupor. Listening to Cortman, egging him on to come outside. This is when you first notice the morality of Robert, you notice how he thinks to himself, as if he were talking to himself. Then there are the women, the ones who flaunt their goods at Robert Neville when he is looking through the peephole. His instinctual needs had the most destructive affect on him in the early days. He overcame these issues when he almost died one night by arriving late after visiting his wife’s grave.
            After almost a year of being alone, he spots a dog in the daylight. This dog becomes a symbol for hope to Robert and more than anything, a companion. Weeks go by and Robert tries to coerce the dog with food.  This obsession with befriending the dog really hits the reader with just how lonely Robert is.  When the dog dies, Robert isn’t sad. As he buried the dog, he just felt void of emotion. At this point you can see the mental toll that solitude has on Robert. He is slowly becoming less and less human.
            When he found Ruth, another human, he could never trust her. He even contemplated killing her a few times to go back to his old life. When he beings to show her compassion and regains a bit of his human essence, he is bashed unconscious and Ruth turned out to be a vampire spy. She warns him to leave. He doesn’t. This is because of his dependence on his life of solitude, it drove him insane, like it would to any man.
            The part that stood out as his true departure from humanity is when the living vampires roll up in a car and started slaughtering the dead.  Robert, felt bad for the dead vampires. He understood their agony and was furious about the butchery. Just before he died, he realized something. That in this new world. He was the monster.
           


-Jack 

Monday, September 3, 2012



Zombie Apocalypse, Then and Now.

The other week I read Monster Island, a chilling narrative written in blog format, which you can read here, http://www.davidwellington.net/books/monster-island/. I loved every thrilling moment of it; except for a few parts that I felt were a tad untrue to zombie mythos. (I’m a zombie realist kind of guy.)  Tonight I watched Night of the Living Dead. As I sat there with a Stella and popcorn so buttery my fingers felt like Land O’Lakes I realized something, I kept repeating one word over and over in my mind…BRAIIINNSSS! (I jest, the word was different.)
            Currently, zombies are back in Vogue and it’s astounding how they have aged. From radioactive miscreants to plague bearing savages. 40 years is a short amount of time for things to have changed so much. The zombies in Night of the Living Dead had a mission; they were less instinctual and a bit more methodical about their approach to killing. They only wanted the flesh of the living. The zombies in Monster Island were more visceral, doing what an animal would do to survive. Even going as far as eating the bark off of trees to get what little supplements they provided.
            Another thing different about the two is the lapse in time in which the events occur. NotLD happens in the heat of the attacks while Monster Island happens about a month after the zombie apocalypse. I tend to favor Monster Island because I find most aspects of the story are more realistic and more conceptually interesting than Romero’s vision.
I’m sure it’s personal opinion, but I grew up in a time when zombies moved fast. Left 4 Dead, DayZ, 28 Days Later. These are the zombies I am familiar with. I even have a copy of How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse under the seat of my motorcycle!  This isn’t a bash on NotLD, just a stimulated young adult’s point of view. I enjoyed NotLD and found it to be a very sad film. It was also great to see one of the very first film adaptions of zombies. The mythos of the undead has changed drastically, from voodoo to a mysterious virus; I’m excited to see where it will be going next.

-Jack

Here’s a link to Night of the Living Dead. A movie worth watching if you haven’t seen it yet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRkrQZ0A1SU