Horror/Sci-fi/fantasy Literature

Satire has always been a favored "genre" of mine, and for this week's satirical sci-fi I rewatched the movie "Idiocracy". This is a fabulous movie for this genre because it still is a very real, yet horrifying and comedic, take on our future world. Although, it is truly a statement of the present times and our society today, like all satire. It illustrates what we prioritize in our world today, such as commercialism, food intake, and consumerism in general. It shows the toll our planet will take, due to our current treatment of it, and the consequences there in. "Idiocracy" portrays a semi-lighthearted, slightly crude take on the future enough that people are able to digest it, but still hide from the issues its dealing with. The in class movie, "Downsizing" I felt related back to "Idiocracy" in a very distinct way in dealing with the constant issue of the state of our planet, but took this stance in a different tone. There was ver

This week's discussion on literary work v.s. genre work poses a very interesting topic. When we were first brought this subject, I didn't know what it was exactly talking about or even close to talking about. However through comparing the aspects and elements of literary works to those of genre works it has now become apparently clear. There are some stories, and texts that fall directly into the Sci-fi genre because they are about that, science fiction in its full. However there are those other texts that hold themes and perhaps elements that are found in sci-fi genre, but not considered to fall into the genre itself. The short story "The Distance of The Moon" I believe is a literary work, opposed to a sci-fi genre. This text does have distinct elements of sci-fi and fantasy as well, such as jumping to the moon, the moon being so close to earth you can reach it, and harvesting the milk of the moon. However, the main concept and plot of the story is not based on the

This week I read on my own, Bloodchild by Octavia Butler, and then read again for our in class reading. I found this story to be strangely uncomfortable and weird, but after reading for a second time found more compelling elements. The first time reading, I took this story for face value and thought it was just a weird tale of romance? But upon diving deeper beneath the surface in the second reading, I took into consideration the culture and values behind the writing of this story. There definitely seems to be an underlying analogy for slavery and the sex-slave aspect of this. The Terran are ultimatly controlled by the Tlic and used for the carrying of their young. The Tlic give them their egg to ingest which serves as a drug-trip-like experience of enjoyment and possibly hallucinogenic. There are themes of repression of the Terran and which can relate back to racial issues along with the female inslavement, due to the relationship between Tlic and Terran males, in this case role rever

There is a certain distinct reality created in most cyberpunk and steampunk narratives which can stem from or be centered around augmented or artificial realities. We can see different types rendered in some of this weeks material such as Blade Runner and Cyborg Manifesto. Blade Runner takes place in a futuristic  alternative reality. Some elements that support the believability of this reality are the buildings and the city's design, the advertisements on electronic billboards as large as the skyscrapers they are on, and the vehicles "flown". There are definitely elements of artificial reality as well, with the "robotic" and augmented people who are hunted down. Cyborg Manifesto is a different yet similar take on this artificial reality. Cyborgs are part human part machine and this text does go into the differences and some of the aspects of cyborgs and their version of their artificial and augmented realities. For both of these medias, there is a distinct and

1. What is your reaction to the text you just read? I am left feeling slightly uncomfortable after reading this short story, "Bloodchild." This seems to have an underlying analogy, from a metaphorical standpoint, but to what I am not too sure. Slavery? There seems to be many themes taking place, such as these insect-like Tlic using humanoid Terran to carry their young. But there seems to be an enslavement by the Tlic, making the Terran live on a "reserve" and only use them to carry their spawn. Super weird. 2. What connections did you make to this text? discuss the elements you connected with? Frankly, it was hard to connect with anything going on in this story. But if I were to go out on a limb, something that struck or resonated with me was how it was decided by the family and Tlic who the Tlic was going to implant their young in, the choice was usually taken away from the Terran carrying. This reminds me of in past older years when families decided who you

A fantastic example of a story illustrating the fiction of ideas is, "I have no mouth, and I must scream".  A central idea and theme for this week was mind experiments and just how far fetched ideas could be and still make sense within the fiction. While beginning, " I have no mouth, and I must scream", you are dropped into this world with no back story or real context to characters or setting and expected to keep up in this tumultuous world filled with pain, agony, and torture. You begin to put together this tale of a dystopian future, ran by a form of AI, or in this case, AM. I found it to be very curious, this story being written in the year 1967 and has so many common themes of today with artificial intelligence taking over the world as we know it.  This story was written after the red scare was pretty much over with, but it takes on the setting and back story, as we come to find out, of a world where the war against communistic countries waged on and eventually