JP Schiller: Lit of Horror, Fantasy, and Sci-Fi

Semester Total:  118 points  (14 + 82 + 2 = 98) + 20 = 118 Zoom Classes Attended:  14 out of 15 classes  (14 points)  Full Reading List:      ( Links directly to the blog post are embedded as well)      * = JP's Absolute Favorites Official Readings:  (82 points total) * Frankenstein  by Mary Shelly  (6 points) -  Week 1 Interview with a Vampire   (6 points)   -  Week 2 A Wild Sheep Chase   (6 points)   -  Week 3 * Annihilation  by Jeff VanderMeer   (6 points)   -  Week 4 * Akata Witch  by Nnedi Okorafor   (5 points)   -  Week 5 * The Hobbit   (6 points)   -  Week 6 The Night Circus   (6 points)   -  Week 7 Ananzi Boys (6 Points)   -  Week 8 * The Martian   (6 Points)   -  Week 9 Babel-17   (5 Points)   -  Week 10 Bloodchild ...

"Sketch Two" Writing Prompt on Week Activity Page (2 Points) When the automatic lights begin to flicker on and my phone emits soft morning tones, I know I'm doomed to be conscious. I try to cling to it, the soft darkness of sleep, but it slowly recedes and the soreness in my joints returns. I crack my eyes open and take the ceiling and wall with blurry vision. The rounded edges of my living quarters and soft metal tones all feel sophisticated, which was why I picked this unit. A sense of class when living in a tin can, but that's to be expected when space had to be rationed. I blink rapidly, trying to clear the gunk around my eyes. I could hear the low buzz of the floor heaters turning on, and my slippers being placed on the floor by my HEST1A droid. A "helpful, economical, self-sufficient caretaker" robot, which was an older model market by its 1A status, but by far still my favorite version of the machine. The humanoid versions they had now these days stil...

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Radio Episodes (6 Points) Out of all the things I wish existed from this science fiction work, I think the Babel Fish would be the first. Although I'd be much more worried about cleaning my ears and this is the one device I think humans might be able to make with their own language in the next fifty years, I find the concept of being able to understand anything from anyone at any given space quadrant is an incredibly useful tool. Well, besides a towel. I think a guide to the galaxy would also come in handy if traversing time and space and found the whole premise of Douglas Adams's work to be, well, novel!  This audio drama shared some roots in the animated "Yellow Submarine" film by the Beatles if Doctor Who was taken along for the ride. A lot of the nonsensical and frivolous details of a story being delivered in a nonchalant deadpan always gets a laugh out of me. The sci-fi elements are serious in their construction and feel very ...

  Trail of Lightning (5 Points) What incredible work! The writing, setting, world-building, and characters are all deeply intriguing and I caught myself chasing the story once I had read the first page. I'll try to collect the thoughts a little more throughout, but I'd love to start with the world.  As I've said before, I've always loved the concept of what the world could be after society-shattering events and this book creates a very compelling idea that the majority dies out, and a once minority carries on. I found it very realistic as well that while this book focuses on Native American culture and enhanced spiritual powers that come from the end of the world, it still maintains much of what people are familiar with in terms of where they live and how they operate on a structural level. The language and culture are neatly interwoven into the background of a world that survived massive flooding, and then reintroduced powers and abilities for those who have originated...

  Zone One by Colson Whitehead   (5 Points) I know it's really hard for people to consider extremely grim and grotesque futures like zombies and even plagues, (which really hits too close to home these days) but I also think they bring up the fascinating scenario of pushing humanity to its breaking point. I personally adore the concept of the apocalypse not for the suffering or for the trauma, but the exercise of worst-case scenarios and how our society would cope. I'd never want the world to experience such tragedy, but I believe the disassembly of the modern world is a great exercise for writers to figure out how to put it back together again. I think Whitehead does a really graphic and human reinterpretation of how individuals fall apart and have to continue one without trying to make it feel like a Hollywood film with heroics and saving the world. Our main character, dubbed Mark Spitz for reasons later discovered in the novel, very well knows the world is fucked, and has a...

All Readings (5 points) Fragments of a Hologram Rose by William Gibson  (1 point) I found this work to be a little jarring and confusing just in terms of the general jargon related to the use of immersive sensory technology, but once I had re-read it a few times it was easier to understand the context of the world and the character within it. I do hope that someday technology could progress to this level of recording the human experience and then allowing others to participate in that sensation through a recording of it. In some ways, it reminds me of the mechanics of The Giver by Lois Lowry where you can take and receive memories or experiences from others and experience them yourself. I like that it also utilizes the concept that not all recording memories will be pleasant and could also record very dark or tragic moments in people's lives. Rock On by Pat Cadigan (1 point) Okay, a lot more clarity on this one, even if it took me a second to jump from religion to mu...

  (Blood Child by Octavia Butler - Reading Assessment ) 1. What is your reaction to the text you just read?     Shock is a pretty good descriptor in terms of my first reaction, as the story was so different from anything that I've ever read. I'd consider myself an avid reader and have encounters some strange elements in stories, but this takes the lead in the most bizarre. While the story brought some interesting elements into the narrative, it also felt incredibly disturbing and grotesque when the implications of the alien and human relationship had come into focus. I will say I was intrigued by the topics that Butler explored, but the overall concepts of male pregnancy and oviposition are pretty overwhelming topics to a common reader. 2. What connections did you make with the story? Discuss what elements of the story with which you were able to connect?     The main connection that I made to the story was when the protagonist, Gan, was talking about how it fee...

  Artemis by Andy Weir (6 Points) After reading "The Martian," I was pretty intrigued by Weir's work and decided to double back during the jump into Cyber/Steampunk to see what this moon-based book was all about.  I'll start by saying that I have mixed reviews overall of the novel but let's start with the bad: I genuinely believe that Weir gave their own best effort in writing a strong female protagonist, and absolutely flunked it. It basically felt like his character, Mark Watney, had put on a woman-of-Muslim-descent-suit and then traveled out to a moon colony. Many of the interactions, dialogue, and overall emotional responses of the main protagonist, Jazz, just never felt genuine as a young woman surviving on a diverse moonbase, let alone a human being sometimes. Like, she would get close, and then immediately swerve into an over-exaggerated and overly-testosteroned version of what she could have been as a character: strong-willed, independent, and incredibly s...

Babel-17 (5 Points) Alright, there is a ton to unpack here. Firstly, I was completely blown away to learn that this book had been written in the 1960s, and went into the reading believing that it was a contemporary work from the writing alone! (Sure the beauty of the main character being described as "Oriental," children playing marbles, and the phrases like "coal scuttle" should have given it away, but I'm fairly bad at distinguishing these things.) Overall the book was a bit in an out for me and felt very much that I was trying to decipher the language of the novel just as much as the main protagonist was trying to learn about Babel-17. While I found the world-building and spectrum of alien characters to be incredibly fascinating, it was also all very terribly confusing. Which lead me to think that this book was published closer to our current time with its explorative and innovative writing techniques. It definitely didn't feel like a realistic science fi...

 The Martian (6 Points) What are the three things I enjoy about survival stories? One, I like a character that stares the statistically chances of death in the face, shrugs their shoulders, and continues trying to live. Two, I enjoy a setting where the environment actively work against the main characters survival, but still hold hope to save the main character as well. Three, the reuniting of an isolated character back into society with other humans that provides the audience with relief as well a delivering satisfaction. Other key factors to the enjoyment of survival stories is creating realistic scenarios (or at least making it sound believable enough to the audience that they can suspend their disbelief) for the character to survive, as well as how admirable a main character reacts under pressure. This story pretty much had it all, as well as an incredibly funny and relatable main character who the audience roots for from beginning to end. But let's get to the Sci-Fi of it: Thi...

 Anansi Boys (6 Points) Well, I'd certainly say the Gaiman has woven quite a story here, and like many other works of his that I've encountered; these stories always defy the norms of typical fantasy genre by creating a harmonious and often humorous balance between the aspects of the real world as well as the fantastical. I think a lot of the ways that Gaiman seems to deviate from the standards of fantasy is that the real world remains very present and tangible throughout the story, and even characters, places, or objects that are imbued with magical influence or knowledge still have a very tangible feeling to them. I also enjoy that Gaiman doesn't waste time explaining too much of the magic or writing the main characters actual feelings or thoughts, but instead lets their actions throughout his writing speak for itself, and even conversations the characters are brief and succinct. When the fantastical elements are presented by Gaiman, the characters in the world and the au...

Midterm Total:    61 points Zoom Classes Attended: 6 out of 7 classes  (6 points) Official Readings:  ( 41 points total)  ( Links directly to the blog post are embedded as well) * = JP's Absolute Favorites * Frankenstein by Mary Shelly (6 points) Interview with a Vampire   (6 points)  A Wild Sheep Chase (6 points) * Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (6 points) * Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor (5 points) * The Hobbit (6 points) The Night Circus (6 points) Extra Credit Readings/Viewings:   (14 points total) Frankenstein 1931 Film   (1 point) Gothic: A Lecture   (1 point) * The Haunting of Hill House   (5 points) Nosferatu   1922 Film   (1 point) * Uzumaki Vol. 1 & 2   (6 points) 

  The Night Circus (6 Points) The prompt for this week's novel will be my focus, as I feel I spoke much of my opinions and general thoughts during the zoom class. So, what values are being expressed within this work? Morgenstern is not as clear cut about how her magical world works when compared to the works of J.K. Rowling, and I believe it is entirely for the better. But it doesn't make my job to deciphering what kind of values Morgenstern wants to impress upon her audience. There are no magical houses or forces that show the black and white sides of good and evil, but rather Morgenstern's circus contains both colors as well as the shades of grey in between. Only upon writing this now did I realize that the colors of the circus could also be a representation of Morgenstern's intent to depict a world that is no so simple as to be good versus evil. In fact, this story doesn't really seem to hinge on a true moral dilemma other than the fact that there is an ambiguous...

  The Hobbit (6 Points) I had always felt like a liar when it came to talking about my fondness for fantasy. Especially when it came to Middle Earth, where I had only ever gained any knowledge about it from the films. I'd stubbornly tell myself that I would read all the books when I'd see the film playing or when hobbits came into the conversation. All throughout middle and high school, I'd pick up the first volume of "The Lord of the Rings" Trilogy and open to the first page, and then my thoughts would drift away from the book and back into the real world. By junior year, I had sworn off trying to read the books out of frustration when I just couldn't grasp that the ink on the page was words. I was pretty confused at the difficulty digesting the prose provided, as I was an avid reader with relatively high reading ability, but had been drifting farther and farther away from it in time.  So when I received this assignment, it was with a lot of dread. Even thoug...

  Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor (5 Points) Although there were a lot of similar concepts shared alongside other magic-based fictional books, this novel absolutely blew me away. I want to talk about the story itself, the main character, and the structure of magic. I was pleasantly surprised that this book was within the young adult genre because I had never seen or heard of it before and would love for this book to be shared among younger generations especially within the African American youth. Because it was a young adult, this book also did very well at getting to the point quickly and not lingering on less important elements, which made the story feel much easier to digest and understand. Even though I am entirely ignorant of the culture of Nigeria, it wasn't too difficult to keep up with specific references or terms because the main character was very accommodating in her explanations that both provided information without completely overloading the story. Okorafor also di...

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (6 Points)   Now, this is the type of horror/science fiction/alteration of humanity storytelling I'm into! Overall loved this book and it was the first time in a while where (as I listened to the audiobook retelling) I looked up from my seat working to realize that I was unsure how much time has passed and what was going on around me and was instead engrossed in the story. Which was awesome! (Well, aside from my instantaneous panic of thinking I'd listened so long that I'd missed my class when in reality I'd only listened for an hour or two.) I've never forgotten a book that has don't its job so well in transporting me into a different time and space, and I truly hope that I'll never forget this one. To start off, this book was very inventive on how the storytelling didn't always follow a linear pattern and established that this was written in the style of a recollection, rather than a regular narrative that is constantly ...

Uzumaki Vol. 1 & 2  (6 Points)   Well, I'll start by saying that I don't think I'll ever look at snails the same way again. But what an incredibly horrifying read! To preface, I really enjoyed the two volumes overall and was very happy to be so utterly disturbed by graphic novel works. I had previously been recommended the volumes by many friends and colleagues before, but our deep dive into different horror novels gave me enough courage to dive into Ito's evocative works. I have no regrets after reading the series (besides regretting trying to eat during a few chapters) and found it to be a much more suspenseful and haunting read than A Wild Sheep's Chase . There's a ton of things I'd like to touch on, but I'll try to maintain some brevity so whoever is reading this doesn't end up staying all day for it. To start, I want to consider the characters and the town. I felt a huge and obvious difference right off the bat in the sense of cultural tradi...

  A Wild Sheep Chase (6 Points) Haruki Murakami's novel was a very strange reading for me and unlike anything I'd ever read before. Whether that's a good or bad thing is very much up for debate, but I will say I'm glad I read it nonetheless. Truth be told, I'm not sure I was able to glean much satisfaction from reading the book at all and found much of the dialogue and descriptions of the settings and events very hollow and empty. Of course, it also did feel very intentional in terms of the writing, and I understood the book a bit more after our discussion in class.  Concepts such as a "hollow person," the loss of self-identity, and isolation were all very prevalent concepts in this book, and I feel like much of my discomfort with the novel was that it reflected on a fear that is much more realistic and existential than I had ever anticipated from the reading. Not many people like to dwell on the meaning of their lives or realized just how lonely they migh...

  The Haunting of Hill House (5 Points) The sheer promise of terror was what propelled me to read this book, alongside watching the Netflix adaptation that loosely followed the book and being relentlessly recommended the tale throughout my college career, and it did not disappoint. At first, I thought the book tended to drag on in its introductions, but I appreciated the character building and establishment of the setting. I also really enjoyed the introductions and descriptions of each character at the beginning of the novel, as it made each of the characters more notable and set me up to root for the protagonist, Eleanor. As the book progressed, I felt the tone of the story was very normal and almost cheerful and Eleanor put behind her life of caretaking for her late mother for a new prospect in Hill House with Dr. Montague's invitation. The characters also had a lot of amusing chemistry upon socializing with one another. I was also fascinated that although Luke, Theodora, and El...

  Nosferatu (1 Point) I have to admit upfront that this film was not my first encounter with the death bird Nosferatu. I actually first saw the being in the Nickelodeon children's television show "Spongebob" and for those who saw the episode, this character became a childhood legend in comedy. I'll leave a link to a youtube clip of the episode here .  This fond memory along with this week's exploration into vampires ultimately spurned me to watch the film with a few friends, and it was a fun evening event. I found myself very impressed with a film of such age to still be able to frighten me and my friends based on his appearance alone, which was then enhanced by his slow movements and fun film effects. I was genuinely unnerved by Count Orlok's demeanor, expressions, and strange vampiric abilities, and even though we found much of the film to feel rather silly and overdramatic at points; most of us were very much enthralled in the plot of the film and wanted to...