Week 13: The Aquatic Uncle

The short story I chose to read for this week was The Aquatic Uncle by Italo Calvino. If I had to put this work into one genre, that would be very difficult to do as it does not so obviously fall into any category in particular. I do not necessarily think this is a problem, as we do not always need to categorize art in order to appreciate or learn from it. Like we have discussed in class, genres are essentially sets of expectations. Readers who are familiar with genre tropes can go into a work with a relatively good idea of what sorts of ideas or characters might come up. I did not have any preconceived notions going into The Aquatic Uncle, however it was still a very interesting read with an unexpected ending.

This story seems to be very much an allegory for the way older generations struggle to adapt to the changes of society and the customs of younger generations. I am sure basically everyone has family members who the great-uncle in this work reminded them of. Many older people have been staunchly opposed to change for centuries, as we know from documented accounts from Ancient Rome and other cultures. However, what was surprising in this story was the choice made by Lll, the main character’s fiancée. Lll embodies everything great about being an evolved land creature. The main character views her body as being an example of a perfect adaptation. He even described his great-uncle, a fish, as being a “monster” in comparison. In spite of this extreme contrast, Lll ultimately chooses to leave her fiancée, return to the water, and marry the great-uncle.

This ending was certainly sad and strange. It leaves the main character questioning his own identity and where he belongs on the chart of evolution. As something that exists somewhere in between aquatic and terrestrial, this character does not feel completely at home in either of the two settings. I believe this short story will bring about really interesting class discussions about generational differences and personal identity, and I’m looking forward to discussing The Aquatic Uncle even more.

Week 12: Bloodchild

1. What is your reaction to the text you just read?

            I had a very visceral reaction to this text, and honestly I just had to sit and look at the wall for a minute after I finished reading. This story is nightmarish to say the least. It definitely plays upon the fear that a species more advanced than our own could one day overtake humanity. Based on the descriptions given, I imagined the Tlic species as resembling giant centipedes, which definitely made the visuals in my mind worse. I was particularly disturbed by the Tlic’s use of “eggs” as a drug to sedate and control people with. It seemed to be a way to extend human lives while simultaneously keeping them dependent and suggestible. The main character, Gan, began receiving eggs only a few days after he was born. Even Gan’s older brother who distrusts the Tlics always indulges in the eggs when available. This use of control and addiction immediately made T’Gatoi seem more sinister to me.

2. What connections did you make with the story? Discuss what elements of the story with which you were able to connect.

         At first, I assumed this was an alien species that had invaded earth and taken over. However, as the story continued it was revealed that humanity had fled the earth and ended up on the planet of the Tlic. In the situation, humans are the actual aliens. While I was horrified at the role humans played in the lives of the Tlic, the thought did occur to me that we do similar things to other species here on earth. While we don’t grow our children in other animals, we do contain them, breed them, and raise them to slaughter for our food. Its just something to think about. The only reason humans can do these things is because we are the top of the food chain, but what if we weren’t anymore? I have personally been struggling recently with the morality of eating certain things, and this story definitely made me think even harder.

3. What changes would you make to adapt this story into another medium? What medium would you choose; what changes would you make?

            If I were adapting this work, I would probably choose to make it either a short episode in some kind of horror anthology or extend the story into a feature film. If it were to be adapted into a movie I would picture something like “Annihilation” with very interesting creature and world designs. When I was reading, I kept picturing these home scenes (where all the kids are laying around tripping on eggs) with low, fluorescent lighting. This story would be very visually dynamic on film. However, I think the narrative would need to be continued from the point that Butler left off on. In order to appeal to a large audience, people would want to see some sort of triumph or liberation of the human characters. I imagine this may undermine the authors intention for the message of the story, and therefore this might not be possible.

4. Gaming is, at the very least in part, a narrative medium.  What do you think is the relationship between the gaming and the concept of literature?

I think that long form story telling and gaming go very well together. Viewers are able to stay invested for 60+ hours in a story, because they are the main character who is responsible for moving the narrative along. Relationships with other characters feel very personal. Victories and defeats are up to the skill and decision of the player, and therefore hold a lot of weight.  I have personally completed a number of stories through games and getting to the end is extremely satisfying, especially if the narrative and characters are written well.

Week 11: Fragments of a Hologram Rose

Fragments of a Hologram Rose is the first published work of William Gibson, a man who many consider to be the father of the Cyberpunk genre. I did a little research into the origin of this short story, and apparently Gibson wrote it in 1977 for Unearth 3, a science fiction magazine. He was only paid $27 for it. This story, while brief, gives us a look into a bleak future through the eyes of a downtrodden man living in the sensory recordings of his ex-girlfriend.

The main character, Parker, was indentured to a Japanese megacorporation when he was fifteen. Despite the promises of stability and security this job provided, he decided to escape and never look back four years into it. Now thirty, Parker lives in an America that has crumbled. Any sense of unification is gone, and people live lawlessly in slums and shantytowns. There are scattered remnants of a war around, such as the image of a burning tank that exists in Parker’s memory.

In this world, there exists a form of media known as ASP, which stands for Apparent Sensory Perception. It allows people to experience what are essentially tape recording of people’s memories, with all five senses included. It is not far off from the technology being developed around virtual reality today, although it is more advanced. Parker’s girlfriend has left him. Like Parker leaving indentured position as a teenager, Angela never looked back when she decided to go. However, Parker still had some of her tapes, and eventually he becomes dependent on them to fall asleep.

This is a very melancholy story, and like the title indicates, the narrative jumps around through different fragments of reality, recordings, and memories. It is somewhat hard to follow at first, and there is benefit to rereading the beginning of the story with full context once you finish. This story raises many interesting questions about how technology like this would affect our world and relationships. Would we become dependent on it like Parker? At one point he ponders if watching Angela’s memories makes him closer to her, or her more real. This work examines the blur between what is true and genuine and what is artificial. “But each fragment reveals the rose from a different angle…” The holographic rose Parker destroys becomes a symbol for this blending of his life with technology, as every individual shard comes together to define who he is and what he has experienced. It is all a part of him now, the tapes, the memories, and his current existence.

Week 10: Comes to Venus Melancholy

There were so many short story options on the resource page this week. I decided to chose one at random and ended up reading Come to Venus Melancholy by Thomas M. Disch. And it was definitely melancholy. The story is being spoken by a female cyborg on Venus to a listener who may or may not (more likely not) exist. Initially, the reader is thrown in with no context as to what is going on. However, over this story’s eight pages we learn who this machine is, why she is there, her history, and the absolute despair of her current situation. The android, whose name is Selma, has been in complete isolation for over fifteen years. In her early life, she was a human diagnosed with leukemia, who chose to be striped of her body and placed into a cybernetic tank of some kind. She is attached to a house on Venus, and it was her purpose to keep a man named John company while he lived there in isolation. John’s job was to collect slugs for some unknown power to use for some unknown purpose, and Selma reveals that she was in love with him at one point. However, one day the two got in a fight. John destroyed her hearing and vision, and abandoned her. At the present time, Selma feels as if someone may be in the house with her, but she cannot know for sure. She begs to be destroyed and set free from her prison, however no release seems to come.

This story felt as if it could easily have been inspiration for an episode of Black Mirror. That show spends numerous episodes exploring the idea of combining human minds with the immortal bodies of machines. Many episodes feature characters who are trapped forever as digital copies of themselves in technological prisons. Both these works explore themes of isolation, sanity, and the ethical implications of such advancements. The main character, Selma, would probably much rather had died of leukemia if she known what fate awaited her as a cyborg. The way this story is written gives the readers a tragic look into Selma’s mind, and shows us the psychological horror of being blind, deaf, and trapped forever. All Selma has to entertain herself is the ticking of the clock in her abdomen and the poetry she has memorized. This love of poetry seems to be the main thing she retained from her life as a human. One thing I also found interesting was her description of being a cyborg as a form of “afterlife.” Unfortunately, this afterlife is much more of a hell than a heaven.

Week 9: The Stars My Destination

 Last week, I decided to read The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. I did not realize until our class discussion that this story is roughly based around The Count of Monte Cristo, and although I am not very familiar with that narrative, I do know that it is a revenge tale. I wonder how knowing about this connection beforehand may have affected my expectations of Bester’s book. Before I started reading the story, I was expecting there to be a lot of space travel, advanced science, possibly violence and romance. The Stars My Destination certainly provided all of these things.
          Despite the monstrous actions of the main character, I actually quite enjoyed falling into the future envisioned in this book. The most fascinating element to me was the teleportation ability humans have. It is referred to as jaunting. The author does a very thorough job of exploring how this instant traveling would effect the economy, the transportation industry, crime, and society in general. He explores what it would mean to not be able to jaunt in this world, and how extreme of a disadvantage that would be. This careful world building made jaunting more believable as a possible next step in the evolution of humanity. It is essentially explained as a sixth sense that was in humans all along, it just needed to be awakened. I definitely appreciated the detailed timeline that explained how jaunting went from an accident in a science lab, to something everyone could do at will in only three generations.
          In The Stars My Destination, there are civilizations all across the solar system, each planet, asteroid, and satellite having its own culture. The main character, Gully Foyle, even ends up on an asteroid full of the descendants of an old spaceship crash. These children all have frightening tattoos on their faces, and they inflict the same on Foyle. However, other locations are very different, from the dark prison to the high society. This variety of different places to explore and people to interact with is what really kept the story engaging for me. Each new part of the narrative introduced fascinating ideas and characters. I think this is one of the main reasons science-fiction and space stories are so popular. It really lets authors’ minds run wild with exploration and amazing ideas, all held together by familiar (albeit advanced) technologies and characters for us to enjoy.