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Week 14: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I’ve read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Restaurant at the End of the Universe a few times before, but it was interesting to hear the audio drama version of it. Arthur Dent seems like a much more heroic character in the radio version, while I remember him in the books being very unassuming, almost meek as he gets thrown around the universe with various other people at the helm. Even his voice in the radio version is much more confident and bold than I would’ve imagined Arthur Dent to be. There’s also several events in the radio version that I have no recollection of, so I’m assuming at least some of them aren’t in the books. Still, in terms of tone and theme, the radio version is very much the same Douglas Adams style humor, and I don’t feel as if he changed any of the core elements of his story radically when he went on to write the books. He has a very particular blend of witty one-liners and somewhat depressing views of the nonsensical chaos of the univers
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Week 13: Oryx and Crake

Blog Post 13: Oryx and Crake I’ve gotten halfway through Oryx and Crake, and I’m planning on finishing it over winter break. Margaret Atwood is of course an author I’ve heard of before, but strangely I’d never gotten around to reading any of her work until now. She has a really interesting approach to novels, a tonal blend of serious literature and science fiction that I can really get behind. Her writing is very internal, very introspective, which is the way I like my books. I’m the kind of person who’s always living somewhat in their own head, and Atwood’s writing seems to feel very comfortable and natural for me. Even though her character doesn’t share many attributes with me – I’m not a mentally disturbed man wandering around in a post-apocalyptic world where everything is hybridized from a variety of different genes – it feels like I can really understand the character’s mind. Atwood manages to talk about the most horrifying topics with a careful balance between
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My Guesses for the Future

50 years of technology 10 years down the road: Right now, there's some semi-cutting edge technology coming out allowing us to create an edited video to make it look like somebody is saying something they're not really saying. It's a lipsync technology that will likely be touted as perfect for dubbing movies in other languages. There's also a technology coming out which allows you to sample a person's voice and create totally new dialogue that mimics that voice. Combined, these two technologies will be able to effectively create a video clip of somebody saying something that they never said. I think it's very important that we don't advance on this combination of technology, but I know if we try to suppress it, it's only going to start coming out in the worst sorts of ways. It has the potential to be used to create fake videos of politicians making statements they never actually made. It can be used to blackmail just about anybody, in fact. I'd sa
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Week 12: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago

I got out of hand for this week. I read Dawn in time for class, then took advantage of Thanksgiving break to finish off the trilogy with Adulthood Rites and Imago. Octavia E. Butler really crafted a clever set of books, here. It’s clear she’s deeply invested in the world she’s created, and there’s a certain kind of pleasure that comes from throwing away your preconceived notions of sexual dynamics to see out her trilogy to the end. The first book was certainly the most harrowing and tense, while the last was most experimental and un-human, with the second serving as an admirable bridge between the two. There’s a satisfying completeness in it being a trilogy, since the world of Xenogenesis is populated by three genders: Female, Male, and Ooloi. In Dawn, we explore Lilith’s horrible position, caught between humanity and Oankali. She ends up hated and wronged by the humans, just as she is misunderstood and wronged by the Oankali. Each seems to think they know what’s b
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Week 11: Johnny Mnemonic

I didn't have much time this week, so I read a short story instead of a book. Johnny Mnemonic was an interesting little read, and I think it did a pretty good job of covering the aspects of cyberpunk even in its limited span. We have the powerful femme fatale character saving the male protagonist, a nice reversal of roles which is common in cyberpunk. The woman is upgraded with some kind of cybernetic enhancements for fighting, as these types of cyberpunk women often are. I really liked the concepts within this short story, like the veteran dolphin who was hooked on drugs, the moving, pulsating killing floor where the story reaches its final battle, and the way “Johnny Mnemonic” himself was essentially selling his brain for encrypted storage protection. It was the nice blend of grimy underworld and futuristic technology that cyberpunk is often characterized with. The story wrapped up rather abruptly – following the defeat of the hitman, the protagonist quickly
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Week 10: The Left Hand of Darkness

This may be my favorite book I’ve read yet for class this semester. I know Ursula K. Le Guin’s work from when I was a child, and I believe I read A Wizard of Earthsea around the time I was 8 or 10, though I don’t remember much except for the fact I liked it. The Left Hand of Darkness has a really interesting setup, since it has a familiar concept: an alien comes down to a planet as an emissary to space. Le Guin then messes with this premise until it becomes something fresh and unrecognizable. The alien is actually a human, and the planet is icy, with a culture based on snow and divided starkly between two major nations. Instead of a thriller, the alien’s arrival is all very businesslike, and he spends most of his time in politics trying to convince people to officially join the conjoined group of planets and peoples that he represents. Nobody really seems to listen to him, and he foresees it taking years to get the job done. The biggest divide between the emissary
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