Cyberpunk/SteamPunk Response

For this week I read Fragments of a Hologram Rose; A short story. The reality that was supposed in this short story is one that has ARS machines, that can help with multiple things such as sleep issues, holograms, and the ability to destroy the holograms because somehow they're 'real' and tangible.

One of the interesting things about the ARS machines is the implied super futuristic use for them but also being incredibly 'dated' in what is used in them; the main character talks about 'cassettes' which I assume is cassette tapes that are used in these machines and for looking at events and objects.

Admittedly, even though I read this story two times very carefully, I found it incredibly difficult to retain or even really understand what was happening in the story. The most I could understand is that the main character had issues sleeping because of him being dumped by his ex-girlfriend during what I assume was the collapse of the modern world, due to the slum-like circumstances he explains himself to be in, and the constant power fluxes that are happening during the story. He uses the ARS machines to help himself sleep by what I assume is him remembering good things about his ex girlfriend.

Overall, an interesting story, but I had a lot of trouble trying to understand it-- I wouldn't likely recommend this one to another person, due to this hard to grasp narrative.

Multiverse/Beyond Scifi - Reading/Writing for this week.

For this week, I read through The Drowned Giant, and the first chunk of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

The sort of 'mind experiments' done in these two stories were pretty interesting to me especially the Drowned Giant's take on things.

The Drowned Giant sort of challenges the reader's perspective on the way they view certain creatures and objects in their every-day environment. Despite the fact that something as bizarre as a dead giant washing on shore would be a huge deal, it was only momentarily a huge deal in the story. It's baffling how quickly the thing turns into something that both side-shows and the government picks apart to either sell for money, or to be donated to a museum, or to be possibly used for building supplies.

The other story that had a good sort of mind story was I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. This story really dealt with the fact that people had a large fear of AI and computer technology, and the inspirations for deadly, self learning AI are really evident in this story, and I can see where characters like Glados and HAL get their scary touches to their dialogue. The biggest mindgame that happens in No Mouth is the changes that AM does to the four inhabitants, and only really giving them things when they need to 'survive' so it can continue torturing them, plus the whole explanation on how/where AM came from as a result of the Cold War turning into World War 3 was very interesting.

Space Opera ~ Vintage Season

For this week's topic, I decided to read the short story called Vintage Season, because the title of it really intrigued me. When it comes to things that this story has done that has been re-done in newer versions of 'space opera', I can name a few-- I'm not really great at listing my thoughts out in a coherent manner, so I'm going to use bullet points.

 - Time Travel: The antagonistic characters in this short story are from different periods of time in the world.
- Mysterious Disease: The blue death, which the main antagonistic characters have been inoculated with, appears as an actual threat at the end of the story when the meteor strikes the town. The main character, presumably, dies from it.
- Cross-time/Interspecies love: The main character and one of the younger time-traveling ladies sort of fall in love for a brief fling.
- Nobody Says Anything: The main antagonistic characters are extremely cryptic and won't tell anybody what, who, or where they're from.
- Advanced technology: The main antagonistic characters have a huge variety of advanced technology, like the symphony machine that shows music. The other being the EMP-like device that is used to hurt the antagonistic characters staying inside the house.

That's about all I can think of at the moment to list off for this.

Anansi Boys - Writing Response ~

So I read through Anansi Boys, and I actually found it pretty interesting and a fun book to read, despite the first small chunk seeming a little tedious with details. The humor of the book definitely sold me over into wanting to continue reading! I really enjoyed how the myths were occasionally linked back into the ancient, old world (like when spider first tricked tiger), and then brought back into the modern world when it came to dealing with the problems again.

Another thing I really enjoyed with this book is how 'casual' the myths/mythological creatures were sort of weaved into society. Fat Charlie didn't freak out nearly hard enough at him and his "brother" basically being gods, or the ghost of Maeve just sort of casually flitting about doing her business in order to get back at that one boss that I don't remember the name of. All of these things combined sort of made the myths more believable, in a sense, to me, because they were so easily related to the modern world and were just sort of casual in their existence, not like some grand pedestal thing that was rare for mortals to ever even see.