Post Twelve: Coming to an End

Science Fiction (LIT2020) Coming to an End: 

This class was a great learning experience and taught me things about science fiction that makes the genre more interesting to me. As I stated in the beginning, science fiction never appealed to me and I never gave it a chance. This class changed my view completely. Yea, it’s not going to be my first choice when reading something, but at least now I won’t completely turn the genre down. Not only did I learn about science fiction its self, but also different styles of viewing the stories and writing about the context and problems displayed in them. Being able to write a good argumentative paper has definitely been a challenge for me, but it made me think in a way I never had before. After reading so many different short stories, I am much better at determining the “novum” and “Marx” throughout. Being able to read and understand what is going on in science fiction, definitely took time to get used to. It makes you think in a way that isn’t used in other genres, but by doing so I am able to find the problem and solution in the novels I read now.

Of all the interesting stories we read this semester, my favorite was “When It Changed.” I don’t know what it was about this story but it just held my attention all the way through, and I could easily pinpoint the power dynamics of relationships going on between the characters. I like how it describes that women can take control and live without men in their lives. They are strong, confident and stand up for themselves and families, which I think is very important for women to know.

 Overall I learned a lot about science fiction that I never would have learned if it wasn’t for this class. AP you did a great job educating each of us and it helped me in more ways than just understanding a story. I look at stories completely different now, and love that my writing skills have broadened. Writing a damn good a paper without just telling a summary of the story felt amazing, and I owe that to you. Again, thank you for being an awesome teacher and helping me when I needed it. Reading a science fiction novel or short story, can officially be checked off my things to do! J

Post Eleven: Setting

Setting:

After discussing setting in class, I have a better understanding why it is so important in a story. The setting is what gives the readers a better sense of the story, because it helps the better visualize what is going on and better understand the characters. Not only does it help readers understand but also can set the mood of the story, and ties the whole story together. The setting doesn’t always have to just emphasize on the time and date the story took place, it can easily tie in the uniqueness of the circumstances and environment where the story took place. Without the setting the story would not make sense and be a bunch of nonsense written down. When writing a short story it is a necessity to have a setting.

Between the two stories we read this past week, both have setting that is easy to understand and made it easier for me to follow along. The story that I decided to go into more detail about the setting is “Bears Discover Fire,” by Terry Bisson. This short story goes into great detail about the surrounding areas, locations, landscapes, and time. It lets us know that Bobby’s house over looks the interstate, and how they are so close to I-65, “that at night sometimes the traffic sounds like a waterfall” (Bisson 378). Although the time is short within the story it still helps with the perception. Development of the characters is another big part in this story. It portrays the grandma to be crazy. Also describes Wallace Jr., and how he may be young but still understands what is going on with his mom. All throughout the story it goes into great detail about the physical location and adjectives; smell, slow, seldom, sad, sound, weather, etc. You never feel like you don’t know where or what is going on in this story.

This story did a great job with the setting and definitely made me feel as the reader more connected to the story. I felt like I knew exactly what was happening and could picture everything they were doing, and seeing. I never really thought much or paid attention to how important the setting was. Once I had to sit down and write about it and actually think about it, I now see why it is so important! 

Post Ten: Nature/Environment

Nature: 

As we discussed last week in class, there is a difference between what we perceive “nature” and “environment” to be. The way I look at nature is it’s considered to be the outside life, living things, animals, the physical world, plants, and different types of landscapes. As for environment, it’s what surrounds us. Where we place ourselves, and things that we are around daily.

When I think about nature, I feel as if things should be done naturally. As nature will develop on its own, grow without adding chemicals or adding other things to it. Even for a person trying to lose weight doing it naturally would be working out and eating healthier or smaller portions, not by taking a pill or any other kind of medicine. The picture that I am referring to is the one about losing weight naturally by taking Collagen Protein. Losing weight naturally would be done without putting an extra chemical into your body. Just like adding chemicals, seeds and other sorts of things to a plant, you are not letting the plant/tree grow “naturally.” Like the picture you showed us in class of the Palm trees in the mall, those trees are unable to grow naturally and aren’t in an environment you would expect them to live. Their growth is determined by maintenance, and will most likely die quicker due to the chemicals they receive.  

When we talked in class many people had different outlooks on nature and environment, so it is all how you perceive it. I for one don’t agree that taking pills is considered losing weight naturally. Also in the story/article we read in class, it talks about how nature is not just human but also non-human things. Even though it is non-human, I don’t see pills or any kind of chemical to be natural. After reading the article it definitely helped me understand the terms “nature” and “environment” better. Now I understand the actual difference and can distinguish between the two.

Source:  Picture of Lose Weight Naturally With Collagen Protein

http://www.lifenatural.com/images/collagen-weight-loss.jpg

Post Nine: Karl Marx

Marx:

Karl Marx is known as a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. Not only did he play a huge role in social science but also the socialist political movement. His theories about society, economics and politics are what we know today as Marxism. Marx argues to bring about socio-economic change. He believed that socialism would eventually be replaced by a stateless, classless society called communism. During this section of the course many stories show Marx’s theories and relate to communism and socialism.

            The first story that comes to mind when thinking about the Marxism is “Dead Space for the Unexpected.” The computer at the company, rates the employees on their performance. Main character Jonathan, living a regular planned life gets rated each day he attends work. The same thing is done for Simon, unfortunately his scores were rated too low leading to termination. The way this computer operates it feels as if authority is constantly watching them. After Simon was terminated, Jonathan was sure to do his part in making the company successful. Machines and humans relate in ways that I necessarily don’t believe in or don’t want to think about just because it kind of freaks me out that our world one day could be taken over by robots/machines.

            Another story that may deal with Marxism is “Baby, You Were Great!” by Kate Wilhelm.” The world develops a type of entertainment where people with intense true emotions, place electrodes into their brains and people will purchase these helmets so they can experience the same emotional sensations. People watching each other like this, freaks me out. All this happens due to the technology where signals are sent out in the helmets and people all around the world can sit and watch this so called “reality show”. This story may not be as good as an example as “Dead Space for the Unexpected,” but they both show weird scenarios with technology. Karl Marx seems to have been an intelligent guy, his work definitely is something I liked reading up on.

            

Post Eight: Novum writing

Novum Writing: 

The thought of a novum when producing a story is creating something new and different in the genre of science fiction. Science fiction separates its self in many ways compared to romance, drama, horror, and mystery. It involves creating new invention, discovery, or something technological. The word novum is literally defined as new thing. Knowing what the true meaning of science fictions allows me to distinguish the difference between the genres much more easily.

Due to multiple people not knowing the true definition of science fiction, it always throws them off when watching a movie or reading, because they aren’t exactly sure what science fiction means. When writers write this type of story, considering it a novum is very important because it’s not only what brings the story together but also defines it, because you are creating something new. You have to think about all the major aspects in a story like characters, plots, themes, style, and language when writing a science fiction story..

Science fiction deals with a lot of new technology that has to be presented to our world today. In the story “Burning Chrome,” written by William Gibson, talks about hackers, and technology in ways that we would have never thought of, its amazing how technology can be used in so many ways. “Baby, You Were Great”, by Kate Wilhelm, goes into detail about the character John and how he doesn’t like to be physical he just likes to watch it. Also how technology allows for you to do so much more thank your actual body can do. Is that even possible in our world? Then there is  “The Algorithms for Love” by Ken Liu, which also deals with technology and how she creates her dolls. Talk about creepy. The Asimov’s “Liar,” and how all the doctors deal with robots and their insane intelligence. Can’t forget about “When It Changed,” by Joanna Russ, and how it’s all women who live on this planet, and use test tubes to produce children. Each of these stories creates something new and different, and use technology and science in ways that aren’t possible. That only applies to now, who knows what will happen in the future.

As you can see novum becomes a huge factor in all of these science fiction stories. There is always something new being created, or something having to deal with technology and things that have yet to be introduced to in our world. I can most definitely say that I most likely would have never known the proper meaning of novum without taking this class, and now that I know about it, its that much easier to understand why science fiction is so different than other genres,

Wow! Not that I didn't realize this before, but the stories we read are really really weird/bizarre/creepy/ and did I mention weird? ha (This crazy technology stuff gives me the creeps)

Post Seven: Close Focus Reading

Close Focused Reading:

For my close focused reading I chose to write on “Flowers for Algernon,” post 9 (April 20) and 11 (April 21):

“I didn't know what to do or where to turn. Everyone was looking at me and laughing and I felt naked. I wanted to hide. I ran outside and I threw up. Then I walked home. It's a funny thing I never knew that Joe and Frank and the others liked to have me around all the time to make fun of me. Now I know what it means when they say, "to pull a Charlie Gordon. "I'm ashamed.”

-Charlie

The same thing is being illustrated in this text from Charlie’s 10^th post. Because the experiment was to help increase his intelligence, he now puts two-and-two together that Joe and Frank were only out to embarrass him and were amused by it. Before Charlie could never understand what was going on, therefore it didn’t affect him. Now, its hurtful, rude, and makes him upset when they do these kinds of things. In this section he likes to be around Ellen, but Ellen is too into being “cool” to realize her feelings for him.  It’s a shame to see how people treat others, just because they are dumb and don’t understand things or have as good as an IQ as you. Making fun of someone for doing something stupid is shameful and rude. Charlie should be upset and offended by the way these two boys have been treating him. Now its time for him to show them up, by all the progress he makes.

           

 “I think it's a good thing about finding out how everybody laughs at me. I thought about it a lot. It's because I'm so dumb and I don't even know when I'm doing something dumb. People think it's funny when a dumb person can't do things the same way they can.” 

-Charlie 

Through out the beginning Charlie was always getting picked on and made fun of by other employees. Dr. Strauss decides to run an experiment on him to see if he can increase Charlie’s IQ level.  I chose this section of the story because it is when Charlie realizes how people really feel about him, and he actually understands it now. I’m going to do my best to explain what I think each sentence means, although the story was easy to read and understand, it is kind of confusing for me to know if I actually understand what he is saying.

At first when he mentions that he thinks it’s a good thing that he can understand why he gets laughed at, I think he feels like he is finely happy to know the real reason they are laughing and not feel dumb for not knowing. Even though being laughed at is hurtful and demeaning to him he would rather understand the reason behind it, than to be clueless. He finally realizes that they were never his friends and didn’t respect him. What the other employees didn’t know was that Charlie was making an incredible come back and was becoming smarter everyday.

           

            In conclusion, this story is very inspiring and enlightening to me, I love how he works hard to become smarter, and as you read you can see his progress. I enjoyed reading it, and there are multiple parts in the story that I could pick out to close read, just because there is so much going on and a lot of good points are made throughout the story. 

Post six: Interpretation

Interpretation:

I’m not quite sure how to explain my experience or reaction after reading “When It Changed” because everything came so unexpected to me. While reading this story it seems that men are the dominant one and women are not. The men try to come in and take over and rule their world, when the women are doing perfectly fine without them. Who cares about the society norm, if a women wants to be in charge she should be allowed to. I like how “When It Changed” is different from other stories. These women don’t believe in having men around, hence they consider them aliens, but also they depend on one another. The women of this planet know what they are doing and how to keep their world running smoothly. They have figured out ways to reproduce without using men, they raise their children just as they would if there were a man in the house, and they don’t care about the society norm. Because these women took control and believed in one another, made this story interesting to me, I like how it was not original and reminded me that there is no norm, we can do whatever the hell we want (well kind of).

Anyways, when the men come to their world and try to tell them that they need to have men in their lives, and need to reproduce the right way, it made me angry. No woman needs a man in her life, especially the women of Whileaway, because they have gone almost 30 generations without them. Needless to say this story at times did make me feel a little uncomfortable, but I liked it at the same time. It made me think outside the box more, and I wasn’t so quick to judge the women, because they had good morals and were happy with their way of living. Other stories that we have read these past weeks were just as good and interesting to me, especially “The Fact of Blackness”. Let me tell you, talking about that in class, was a bit weird to me. “When It Changed” for some reason just grabbed my attention the most, and changed my outlook on certain things. 

Post five: Gender Complexities

Gender Complexities:

Gender roles play a huge part in every day life. Over the years our society is slowly becoming equal but at the same time, there are still things that girls “aren’t” supposed to do or “look down upon” when doing. Personally I think it’s a bunch of bullshit. Why does someone get the ability to decide weather a girl can or can’t do something? If someone wants to be gay or bisexual so be it. If a man wants to do cosmetology or a girl wants to be a construction worker, they should be able to, without being judged by their gender. Our society functions off what we call the “society norm”, but what is normal nowadays? I mean what happened to, the guy is supposed to ask the girl or the moms stay home and be a housewife. Over the years so much has changed from what it used to be. Hello, normal doesn’t exist anymore.

After reading the stories this past week, Id have to say, “When it changed” relates to the controversy of genetic differences in gender the best.  The first issue to arise in the story is when the plague hit their planet and all men vanished. For about 30 generations there had only been women, until one day the “aliens” showed up (who were actually men) to tell the women that they needed to reproduce with real men, not test tubes. The women are in shock and don’t really know how to react because they are so used to not having men around. Janet plays the “male” role and gets very offensive when these men try to take over. Another issue throughout is the gender inequality, how is it fair that the moment the “aliens” arrive they have instant power? Janet feels threatened and doesn’t like what’s going on, so she grabs her gun and threatens to kill.  Going back to the society norm, these women were perfectly happy. They were raising kids, living the life, and everyone was equal. Janet would rather die then live life the way these males wanted her to. In a way I agree you should live the way you want, not how someone tells you to. 

Genetic difference in gender is a huge deal and will be for many years to come, this is a topic that I could rant on for days. I think a lot is unfair and still needs to be changed, but that’s just my opinion. All I have to say is hell if you want be gay be gay, if you’re a guy and want to wear make-up, do it! It’s your life, live it how you want to.

-Rebecca Jones 

Post Four: Reflection

Reflection:

As I stated in my first blog post, I never really understood the meaning of sci-fi not only because it means something different to everyone, but because I never took the time to actually think about it. After this part of the course my expectations for sci-fi have most definitely changed, I find myself enjoying more of the stories and theyre actually keeping my attention. Its weird going into this class I didn’t think I’d enjoy it, because sci-fi wasn’t my thing.

 Something I like about the stories we have read is how unreal they are but yet how realistic the author makes them. Our discussions in class always lead to more questions, like; could this really happen, did the person actually die,  to what happens next, and etc. I like how the authors make the stories tricky for us and have to make us think. After learning about the style, morals, climaxes, characters, tones, and themes, I have to say my expectations have risen. “Algorithms for Love” was one of my favorites to read because it was so weird and hard to relate to, but all the creepy, psychotic parts kept me reading. Writing my paper on it and going in depth and finding out more about the characters and tones, makes me like to read more. Now I actually think about the meaning of stuff and don’t just read the words. Although I liked that story I don’t think it represented sci-fi as well as some of the other stories.

 “ Burning Chrome” was definitely a good sci-fi story to me. It had a good plot and made me have to think about what was real and what wasn’t. Trying to figure out if Chrome was human are not aggravated me but I liked having to keep reading to figure it out. The love triangle made it seem realistic, and made the story more relatable.

 All the stories we have read turned out to be very helpful with my understanding of sci-fi. As the weeks go by I find myself enjoying the class more than I expected to. It also helps that we have a badass teacher, educating us, and showing us things we would never have come across without this class. I can’t wait to see what the next section has to hold. 

Post three: Theme

Theme:

This weeks stories were definitely both very interesting, and each had a theme that stuck out right away. The topic for this week is theme and after reading each story, “Take Your Choice” caught my attention the most. Although it took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on, once I realized what door he had chosen, it blew my mind. As we discussed in class the meaning/definition of “theme” is known to be a repeated purpose in the main story, or a subject or topic throughout. In “Take Your Choice” there seem to be multiple themes to choose from, but what fits best, would have to be the importance of decision making. I still don’t understand why he wouldn’t choose option one or two, when both lead to peace and happiness.  I do know that some people are risk takers and like to know what else is out there. If the main character didn’t choose option three, the short story wouldn’t have come together.  The man didn’t seem happy with his life to begin with, and was searching for something to make it exciting or interesting. Making a not so smart decision lead him to this scam where he would be able to see what the future had to hold. Every choice/decision we make has a consequence, unfortunately his lead to destruction. Yes, it gave him insight to the future and what was to come, but he had to holocaust and an empty city, is that really what he wanted?

            The reason I believe decision-making fits best for this stories theme is because we don’t just make one decision. Throughout the story, he had to make ample amounts of decisions to get where he was to begin with. Choosing option three may not have been the best, but he still got to see a glimpse of what the future had to hold. Every choice we make is a lesson learned, and has a bit of risk every step of the way.

            Its hard to read stories like this because you want the character to choose the right choice so bad, but obviously to make the point of the story they cant. I chose to do this one over “Second Variety” because it was easy to predict, I felt like I knew what was going to happen after reading a few pages.  They both portray great themes and morals and I like being able to pinpoint specifics while reading.

P.S ( Im not sure if I fixed the time template problem but this was posted at 2:55, haha sorry! just thought id let ya know (: )

Post Two: Conflict

Conflict: 

Conflict is a major factor in a story, and can tell a lot about a character. Before class I was definitely one to think that conflict was more about the plot, but it makes more sense no how it deals with more of the characterization. Each character in the stories we read had a conflict but the one the reached me the most was Elena. When you want something bad enough, some people will take extraordinary measures to get there. For Elena it was a child of her own. The conflict begins when Elena loses her newborn child, and finds out shortly after that she is unable to have any more children. I would consider the fact that she is unable to have any more children a “block “ to her desire. She is this woman who is madly in love with children and would live her life around them. This is when she decides to make dolls to resemble real life babies. At this point in time Elena is losing touch with what is real and what is not. She feels as if she has not felt pain, and that’s all she wants to find. She starts drifting from her husband, the real world, and herself. The making of these dolls has created Elena to pretty much become delusional and has lost touch with what’s human and what’s mechanical. Another block to her desire would be when she becomes suicidal, because at this point there is no going back, she has hit rock bottom. The resolution to the conflict is she thinks everything is an algorithm, and that her life is over. In my opinion if she would have just mourned over her child and tried to move on and live a happy life with her husband, her life would have been just fine.  She took the worst route and ended up destroying her life. Her character definitely produced a good conflict for the story.

            It will be interesting to read more stories and be able to know that the conflict doesn’t just have to do with the plot of the story, that it’s the character and its desires that make the conflict. I like how now when I read I actually think more about it and don’t just blow the important facts of a story off.  I like being able to point out key facts, and to describe the conflict in other ways than before.

Post one: What science fiction means to me?

Sci- Fi and You:

When I think about science fiction, the first thing that comes to mind would have to be how unrealistic it is. You have to use your imagination in so many ways, because it seems unreal to us. Its not like our modern day, with what we know is real. Science fiction portrays, futuristic technology, crossed with your imagination of outrageous ideas. If we didn't have sci-fi as an avenue for expanding our technology some of our modern day convinces may not have been invented. Sci-fi over the years has become more popular, and has moved from, movies and shows to computers and all different kinds of game devices.

I have never really watched or read anything a long the lines of science fiction, therefore all of this is new to me. I am glad I am in this class to help broaden my understanding of the sci-fi world. Looking at all of the different movies and shows that were on the screen the other day, helped me realize that there are a large amount of science fiction movies and shows out there. That shows I thought could be real, actually aren't. The thing with sci-fi is that it’s like its own little bubble, because you have sci-fi and then inside of it you have fiction or non-fiction. I think I will enjoy learning more about science fiction and actually know the meaning. 

I do enjoy reading, and taking this class is showing me that, there are other good books out there besides romance or mystery novels. After reading the short story “Liar!” I found that I enjoyed it, and wanted to read more. It held my interest and was easy to understand. It did a good job of going between the fake world and real life situations. All in all I think this class will help have a greater appreciation for the more imaginary futuristic realm.