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.