Snow Crash

Snow Crash was my first experience reading anything in the cyberpunk genre and it exemplified the style and definition of the genre itself. You have technology being for the elite. This is shown in the metaverse. You have the different styles of avatar for different types of people. You have to be wealthy or smart (good at hacking) to have a good avatar. The novel even mentions the bargain store types of avatars you are able to have.  The way you get to the metaverse is through your  private “home” or if you can't afford it or don't have the skill there are public domain type of entries into it. This again shows a class distinction. This class distinction though does not translate into the real world. Hiro Protagonist (love the name) is living in an old U-Store-It in the real world and has his own mansion in the metaverse. It is no wonder that people take more worth out of the metaverse and spend more time there in this type of future. I did enjoy the humoristic elements in the novel. Such as the idea that one of the things American still does best in the world is delivering pizza. Also I noticed hat often these genres we are studying take an idea to its extreme. This is shown with the freedom in America being taken to its height.  I really enjoyed the double narrative from Y.T and Hiro, I thought that allowed for a nice difference in view points and it kept the story fresh. It is definitely a high velocity plot. There are a lot of anime elements to the style of cyber punk and this is reiterated with out protagonist in not only his heritage but also his use of weapons and in the fight scenes of the novel. Over all I am really enjoying reading Neal Stephenson’s work.

Cyber Punk

·      1980s

·      Definition:  technology is elite, everyone controlled by technology, post human, sub realities, virtual realm/ internet

·      William Gibson- “noir prophet” of the cyberpunk- cyber cowboys and adventure elements- data becomes more important than anything

·      Post Human- humanist construction of the world changes into the human just being a part of the system// a movement away from humanist preoccupation

·       Post human vs. fundamentalism (idea that there is an absolute and a truth as we know it)

·      Cyber punk as a style

o   Hackers

o   Dystopian view

o   Corporations rule

o   Money

o   Retro

o   Film noir

o   Cyber punk heroine – influenced by 70’s feminism- “ still has babe powers”

·      Donna Haraway- Cyborg Manifesto 

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Cat's Cradle is a dark comedy at it's very core with Sci-Fi themes layering over it. This novel deals with science and religion in an end of the world scenario. There is extreme foreshadowing through out the novel so the reader already knows that doom approaches. Yet the fresh wit of the narrative keep the story lively.  There are riddles and interweaving story lines that connect the dots of destruction, as it were, so that we clearly see how the narrator reached his fate. The rapture is a growing popular theme in science fiction and connects to the religious elements of the novel. Martyrdom as well reinforces this theme. It is very well written and a captivating read. It also presents the idea of accepting the end of the world and in what way different people handle it. It presents a dark reality with the concept of Ice 9 and the possibility of man's self districting nature. Great read but be warned, do something happy after you read it.

Narratives from the Multiverse

Notes

·      Interested in the development of humans

·      Dune film directed by David Lynch

·      Odd tone to the movie- melodramatic

·      Bedouin references

·      Genetic “death clocks” biochemical clocks

·      Life extension qualities and what it takes

·      60s and 70s Sci-Fi deals with life extension and mind expansion

·      Fiction of ideas vs. fiction of technology

·      Paranoia

·      Women Writing Space Opera

·      C.L. Moore- original space opera writers //30s and 40s// focuses more on the internal lives of her characters, psychology, intuition, emotion

·      Esp is very big for fantasy heroines

·      Leigh Brackett- The Big Sleep

·      Lois McMaster Bujold- Aral Vorkosigan and Cordelia Maismith- family sagas

·      Catherine Asaro- combines the romance novel with the conventions of science fiction- heavy science

Aye and Gomorrah by Samuel Delaney

This short story does a wonderful job at captivating its audience right away. It is shown through a very interesting viewpoint, that of a spacer.  “He” is a spacer, a genitally mutilated astronaut of sorts. I like that this story didn’t out right explain anything to the reader. It just starts off and through the events the narrator goes through we are able to understand the world he lives in, to an extent. I was thoroughly surprised at the subject matter in the work but that is also why it was so fascinating.  The characters, no matter how briefly they are mentioned, all seem unique and interesting. The interaction between the girl” Frelk”, in Istanbul is a very interesting interaction because it really allows us to see how our narrator thinks and understand a little more about him.  This is definitely a look at the development of humans both mentally and sexually. Body modification is a casual subject matter here as well as our protagonist seems at peace with his becoming essentially an androgynous a-sexual character. The issue of population control also arises for a moment in the story to help justify what has happened to parts of society.  By the end of it nothing is resolved but it definitely gives the reader something to think about.

Fantasy

Kiki’s Delivery Service

·      Matriarchal society

·      Initiation

·      Female mentor

·      Beta men

·      Maternal figures

·      Nurturing, the setting being a bakery

·      The city isn’t terribly welcoming or receptive

·      The roots of female power are rural

Position of Women in Fantasy

·      Archetypal story telling

Illustrated Horror- women in horror vs. women in fantasy

·      Frankenstein- damsel in distress

·      Posing language and the general composition- vulnerable, wearing white- innocent thing

·      Same posed used- paperback book of the 50s- lurid covers

·      Bride of Frankenstein- interesting concept- kind of occurs in the book

·      “ Always with the neck”

·      Idea of Dracula as a seducer

·      Seduction- all about the denial of female sexual experience

·      Against contraception – they will be out of control

·      Dracula’s Daughter- female desire out of control in the other way- fem fatale

·      Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde- all men are two faced- the civilized and the real guy underneath (The Wolf Man)

·      The Mummy- all about male obsession for the female

·      Invisible Man- stalker

·      Edgar Allan Poe- Mystery an Imagination- abstract art

·      Cat People

·      Victim or fem fatale- not a lot of room for safe sex so to speak

·      Cultural clutter over the top of the genre

·      Women spend their lives rediscovering sex

·      Women being anxious

·      Women waiting to be victimized/ frequently tied up or just laying their (fainted)

·      Overt sexuality- “ bondage liberates you”

·      Weird tales

·      Woman who runs with wolves

·      Sex and violence

·      Misogyny – horror in general is a very misogynist genre

What does fantasy do?

·      Women up the pedestal that they aren’t real

·      Virgin Mary quality

·      How dare they have their own set of sexual desires and real lives

·      Attempt in contemporary fantasy to make it more real

·      Still dealing with misogyny- Twilight

·      Kiki- admirable in the ways that she is rooted in real female power

·      Positive model

·      Disney is all very “mans world”

·      Is a princess movie an anecdote?

·      Worshiping the object of desire which is the status

·      Warbreaker

·      What about gaming? – what is happening there and what are those girls like?

·      Pans Labyrinth brings politics to the front of fantasy- fantasy does this in general Pans Labyrinth just pushes it right to the front

·       Pagan  

Foucault Reading

·      The imperfect was the earth- everything else was increasingly perfect- heaven should be more perfect and so should the moon- but it wasn’t

·      If everything we know is wrong????

·      Layers of perfections was incorrect

·      It didn’t stop

·      Space

·      Time- relative- not anything you want to base your cosmology around

·      When you disturb hierarchies in this way

·      Sites- place- sacred-

·      Heterotopias- mirrors

·      Cemeteries

·      Virtual space

Urban Fantasy

Class Notes

Coraline

§  Loses track of where one is

§  Henry Selick (Tim Burton Producing)

§  Staged

§  Not a very natural flowing dialogue

§  Hint of Gaiman in the dialogue

Anansi Boys and Gaiman Video

§  Takes mythology and weaving a contemporary story

§  Mythic story bones

§  African mythology

§  Central assumption of the work differs from most novels, he assumes all the characters in the work are black unless otherwise described

§  What is Genre?

§  A sense of assumptions between a creator and its audience

§  Book shelf 

§  Places not to look that is the simplicity of book shelving, telling you what nto to read

§  Sturgeon’s law is a law that said 90 percent of fiction is crap but then 90 percent of everything is crap

§  Genre- is not subject matter

§  The story is within the genre as long as it doesn’t leave the reader feeling cheated at the end

American Gods

§  Detective spun out to a mythic tale with Scandinavian mythology mostly 

Mirror Mask

§  Unsettling

§  Dream world

§  Valentine 

§  Mirror world/ masks/ through the looking glass

§  Things aren’t explained until later

§  Different narrative