Week Fifteen: Revision

Revision of Week Nine: Space Opera

This week we talked about the genre of space opera. The space opera was a landmark of the progression of human history as shown in popular culture and literature. The same principles of storytelling, the 'hero's journey', all wrapped up in a line of sight pointing straight towards the future-- best represented in the mid-1900's by space travel and the promise that outer space holds for the future of the human race. Everything that people thought that the future would hold, they projected onto the literature and media that they created. The common vision of the future was shaped by science fiction; and I think that in a way many of the advancements and things we have invented in this day and age came from our classic vision of what the future would be. Still today we are trying to create hoverboards!

This sentiment is one that I think still holds true... for example, the lasting effect that space operas like Star Wars and Star Trek holds even in our culture today is undeniable. Though, I think that there is a part of these stories that determines their timelessness that separates it from the rest of the genre and helps propel it so far into the collective consideration of what is a 'classic'. Movies like Star Wars cater to the viewer's emotions, and feel relatable. Even though the story is taking place on alien planets, with unimaginable circumstances, the viewer can relate to the troubles of the characters because the language of emotion never changes, even in a strange context. Many of the stories of this genre-- The Stars My Destination for example, which I read a bit of this week-- kind of fall back into the darkness because of this. The subject matter is so strange and alien, and without the heavy emotional relateability, the story is not one that is going to make it too far into pop culture.

Take for example, Interstellar, if you've seen it yet-- it's a big-budget sci-fi movie that plays hugely on the sensation of human emotions and humanity's undefeatable will to live and survive as a whole. It was hugely successful! And I think that is why-- after Star Wars, we learned that the most lasting works in the space opera genre are those that we as a whole can project onto and learn from.

Space operas are, as a whole, a glossy, flashy vision of what many of us perceive to be a perfect adventure. Strong, mighty-willed characters, evil villains and all sorts of troubles that the hero finds they are able to overcome with the power of love. They're totally unrealistic, but even after in later years we moved onto more gritty, realistic science fiction, we just can't quit the space opera. For years to come we will be seeing more space operas, reboots and new stories alike.

Week Fourteen: Science Fiction Parody and Satire

This week, I had quite an interesting time listening to I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus, by the Firesign Theatre. I can say that it was pretty hard to keep up with this one... at first it seemed to be some sort of convention or class for people with big, honking noses, then turning into an abridged telling of the creation of human, and all sorts of weirdness after that. It didn't even follow a usual way of storytelling, rather, it seemed very candid and like it was happening as I listened to it (I suppose that's normally the way a radio play goes? I get them mixed up with audiobooks a lot of the time).

When a genre reaches the point of being satired, often it has reached full circle. This does not necessarily mean that new and amazing works of the genre will not still be produced, but rather, that the genre has been around for so long that many of its characteristics are easily recognizable. So much so that the point that if they are parodied, the viewer or listener can still identify the story as making fun of the tried-and-true genre in particular.

I enjoy satire a lot, and I think it's a particularly attractive outlet for comedy, done correctly that is. Even aside from the comedic aspect, parody can also be a way to point out what's wrong with our world and draw the viewer's attention to the problem. Hopefully this can help make the viewer more aware of the situation on a wide scale.

Week Thirteen: The Aquatic Uncle

1. Are there any prominent symbols in the story-- if so, what are they and how are they used?
I think some of the biggest symbols in The Aquatic Uncle lay in the plot device of the younger generations being more 'progressive' in terms of literally progressing onto land with their new paws. A big central theme of this story is the clashing between the younger generation that has moved onto land and their stubborn great-uncle, who is embarrassingly set cold in his old ways and in the tradition of his people. The story uses the very literal plot device of 'land vs. water' to exacerbate the argument between the narrator and his uncle, and to drive the point home of the narrator's incredulousness when his fiancé leaves him to be with his uncle in the water.

2. What connections did you make with the story? Discuss elements of the story with which you were able to connect.
I'm definitely able to connect with the sensation of not being able to see eye-to-eye with older members of my family (namely, my parents). I feel for the narrator and I can relate to his stress, frustration and embarrassment over the ridiculous nonsense his grandfather spouts. I also have a lot of contention with my family members over subjects with which they feel are a part of their tradition or simply is just 'the way they are' according to how they grew up and how popular culture was at that time. I definitely feel for the narrator and his incredulousness at his fiancé leaving him and rejecting his way of life to be with his old-fashioned uncle... I can't say I'd take to that too well, either.

3. What changed would you make to adapt this story into another medium? What medium would you use? What changes would you make?
I personally think that this story would make a great children's book. The ideas and imagery presented are not too complicated, but are still connected to an important real-world sensation that would be good to expose to a child early on. The imagery of using a fish-granduncle and his land-footed descendants is also perfect material to interpret cartoonishly and make quite visually appealing to any young kid.

Week Twelve: Diverse Position Science Fiction

This week, we spoke about emerging diversity in science fiction authors and the different POV's that these stories are starting to take with the inclusion of different demographics. Right off the bat, I want to say that I definitely think that science fiction (and storytelling in general) has become much more diverse and more subgenres have branched out since authors of different demographics have become more mainstream. In particular, Bloodchild by Octavia Butler brings themes and questions to the table that I think would never have been written about by a white man. I believe that it's almost impossible, or that it's quite futile to try to separate the art for the artist, as people say. The art you make (or words you write, in this case) come directly from your experiences and represent what you think and feel as a person. It would be foolish to think that you couldn't diversify the type of fiction we experience by hearing stories from different demographics of authors.

Bloodchild is a very interesting short story exploring a scenario far in the future where humans coexist with insect-like aliens who require a host body for reproduction. The insect aliens (who are sentient and can speak with the humans) use the humans as their host bodies, and it is treated as a special task and a great honor. Another special circumstance is, because the aliens need the female-bodied humans to stay alive so that they can keep the human populace going. Because of this, the aliens only use males to reproduce, and only male humans need undergo the horrific process of birthing one of the alien children (one that involves cutting open their whole body to extract the maggot).

It's an interesting scenario that provided an equally interesting in-class discussion. A lot of men get really touchy about female-bodied exclusive subjects such as childbirth, menstruation and those kinds of things, and I thought the story was a good catalyst for getting everyone to think about situations like that. In general, I think that things like menstruation and childbirth would be taken more seriously and be a lot less the butt of jokes if they happened to men, as well as many other things. Much of the stigma would be very different and probably translated into a point of pride for many men. It's an example of a valuable conversation that women and non-white people can bring to the table in the world of fiction.

Week Eleven: Cyberpunk and Steampunk

The selected reading for this week was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. The story itself is the one that the movie Blade Runner is based off of, although it is a bit different. The topics of discussion this week deal with the subgenres of cyberpunk and steampunk, and the idea of alternate realities.

Cyberpunk stories are usually always set in the future, and are, much of the time, dystopian or following a great World War or apocalypse of some sort. They usually always deal with the possibilities of what could be following a tragic event like this, or sort of what horrors humanity would have to deal with if all of this went sort of wrong. Much of the time cyberpunk explores the idea of technology gone wrong, specifically designed to help humanity but always ending up turning on us in some way.

In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? the story is centered around Rick Deckard, who is given the job of 6 man-made androids gone rogue. The world he lives in has been catastrophically ravaged by a nuclear war, and much of the environment lays in waste. It's a status symbol to be able to own a living animal, and much of Deckard's ennui in the story comes from the fact that he is only able to afford a malfunctional electric sheep instead of a real, living animal like his neighbor. The story itself holds a large amount of angst as opposed to the movie, and Deckard experiences a lot of existential crisis and struggles to find meaning in his life. Living in a world without animals, whom humans experience great empathy for, as well as having to coexist with a type of human who doesn't experience empathy at all (androids) seems to be very difficult for the average person to cope with emotionally. I think that was much of what Dick was trying to explore in this book, and what much of the cyberpunk genre tries to explore in general. That is, what circumstances may we have to live under if we let technology and war get too out of hand? How will the human experience be if we don't take care of our planet? The genre continues to raise questions about humanity and our future, even today.

Week Ten: The Fiction of Ideas

I believe I missed class this week, but I was able to read through a bit of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly, and I do have some thoughts on this subject of discussion. This week is about 'the fiction of ideas', or the exploration of where the science fiction genre began to go in the late 60's and 70's after the initial high-adventure, hero's story space tales had been run through. Many authors began to write darker, more dystopian stories, and essentially explore the negative side of what could happen with the possibility of all the advanced technology coming out.

A Scanner Darkly is a story about drug culture and abuse. The main character, Arctor, lives a double life living in a house full of drug abusers and also as an undercover agent given the task to spy on the household. While on the job, Arctor becomes addicted to Substance D, the fictional psychoactive drug mainly portrayed in the story. As the story progresses, Arctor becomes progressively more and more incapacitated by his drug use, and it comes out that he has become unable to perform his job because of his addiction. He is sent to a rehabilitation center called "New-Path", and the reader learns that the police had wanted to infiltrate New-Path all along. They had intended Arctor to become addicted so that they could have a way into the rehabilitation center, and essentially ruined his life trying to get the job done.

The story raises a few questions about the real trustworthiness of law enforcement, and the extremes that they are required to go through in this day and age, where infiltrating a place or finding the source of some mysterious funding may not be as easy as it might have been 10 or 20 years ago. In the age of artificial intelligence and super-drugs and incredibly easy to access information, it has been made undoubtedly harder for law enforcement to bust people as they get smarter and more difficult to penetrate. What really is the worth of one person in the face of the greater good? In the presence of dangerous new super-drugs, is it really so bad to sacrifice one guy in order to help stop a drug more deadly than the world has ever seen before? Many of these stories raise questions such as this, questions not bothered to ask in the high-adventure scifi stories of previous, where the greater good has always been cut-and-dry and good and evil is clearly identified. These scifi stories have become more realistic and more sophisticated in the way they raise these questions. They become less of a complete escape and more of a way to invoke thought about the real questions one could be asking about this world.

Week Nine: Space Opera

This week we talked about the genre of space opera. The space opera was a landmark of the progression of human history as shown in popular culture and literature. The same principles of storytelling, the 'hero's journey' and all that, all wrapped up in a line of sight pointing straight towards the future-- best represented in the mid-1900's by space travel and the promise that outer space holds for the future of the human race.

This sentiment is one that I think still holds true... for example, the lasting effect that space operas like Star Wars and Star Trek holds even in our culture today is undeniable. Though, I think that there is a part of these stories that determines their timelessness that separates it from the rest of the genre and helps propel it so far into the collective consideration of what is a 'classic'. Movies like Star Wars cater to the viewer's emotions, and feel relatable. Even though the story is taking place on alien planets, with unimaginable circumstances, the viewer can relate to the troubles of the characters because the language of emotion never changes, even in a strange context. Many of the stories of this genre-- The Stars My Destination for example, which I read a bit of this week-- kind of fall back into the darkness because of this. The subject matter is so strange and alien, and without the heavy emotional relateability, the story is not one that is going to make it too far into pop culture.

Take for example, Interstellar, if you've seen it yet-- it's a big-budget sci-fi movie that plays hugely on the sensation of human emotions and humanity's undefeatable will to live and survive as a whole. It was hugely successful! And I think that is why-- after Star Wars, we learned that the most lasting works in the space opera genre are those that we as a whole can project onto and learn from.