Megan's Lit of Horror, Fantasy, & Sci Fi

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...

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 ...

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 ...

I’d seen the movie before reading The Martian, and I enjoyed the movie. Perhaps for the first time ever, I actually find myself liking the movie better than the book. Weir wrote The Martian very much like a screenplay, and without the visual elements of the movie tying things together, it felt like a portion of The Martian was missing. I knew intellectually that Watney was on Mars, but I never got very strong descriptions of what he saw, smelt, and felt while he was there. I wanted more introspection from the protagonist. I wanted to feel his pain and his joy. I loved his black humor, but I wanted a full range of emotion, one which really dwelled as much on hope as it did despair. I feel like the movie did a very good job in adding that epilogue which is sorely lacking in the book. Weir’s The Martian cuts off abruptly, satisfying neither its protagonist’s nor its reader’s desire to be at home once again. Where’s our touching reunion with the family? Where’s Watney’...

American Gods is a hard novel to discern. It feels like a relatively long journey that’s been stretched even longer by the author for reasons I’m not sure I agree with. Between every chunk of main story with Shadow, we’re given a side story of another piece of American mythology. At first I endured these by carefully reading them and remembering the content, expecting them to intersect with Shadow’s story later. After a few, I realized they wouldn’t ever meet up with Shadow’s story, and my interest waned. I still enjoyed some of those stories a lot, like the one with the taxi driver and the djinn. Others, I read while only looking forward to being one with. I have a hard time connecting to these short stories, and part of the reason is that when I read them, I really just want to know more about Shadow. His journey is already wandering enough without interruptions, however well-written they may be. At about the ¾ point of the novel, I haven’t really changed my mind...