Anyway, Here it is. Enjoy
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
FINISHED!
As the title suggests, I am done with my paper. I wound up cutting out the comparisons between "The Island, " "Spar," and "Mongoose." Simply put, I bit off more than I can chew (there's a pun in there some where, dealing with my paper topic). I had forgotten how much I liked doing physics stuff.
Moon
So this contains spoilers in case anyone's waiting until the very last minute to watch the movie, but there was just something that I found very interesting about Moon that I thought would be interesting to discuss here.
From the minute the movie started and we were introduced to the Kevin Spacey-voiced GERTY, I was SURE that GERTY was going to ultimately be the villain of the piece. It seems to me, that whenever there is a 'character' like GERTY in sci fi works, such as HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the chimp in The Island, they end up being quite villainous in some way. So I was quite surprised when GERTY actually helped the 'Sam's. I thought it was really interesting way to take the usual 'robots are bad' technique and flip it. In this case, the humans on Earth seemed much scarier than GERTY, who was only programmed to help Sam and all of his later clones however it could. I just thought it was very clever of Duncan Jones (original story writer and director).
From the minute the movie started and we were introduced to the Kevin Spacey-voiced GERTY, I was SURE that GERTY was going to ultimately be the villain of the piece. It seems to me, that whenever there is a 'character' like GERTY in sci fi works, such as HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the chimp in The Island, they end up being quite villainous in some way. So I was quite surprised when GERTY actually helped the 'Sam's. I thought it was really interesting way to take the usual 'robots are bad' technique and flip it. In this case, the humans on Earth seemed much scarier than GERTY, who was only programmed to help Sam and all of his later clones however it could. I just thought it was very clever of Duncan Jones (original story writer and director).
Baxter gives a little insight
So trying my best to plug it out and get this paper out of my head and onto the screen has been harder than I ever thought it would. It might be due to my recent bout of apathy for all things school-related. I promise it will be done on time. I work best at night so I'll finish it later, no doubt.
Anyway, I was perusing the interwebs for things that would help me figure out the math sides of "Formidable Caress" and Inception, and I stumbled onto Analog online magazine (where "Formidable Caress" was originally published).
The link in the title of this post will take you to Stephen Baxter, the author of "Formidable Caress" and many other sci-fi books/stories/etc., giving readers of Analog a little peek into the inspirations and ideas he used when creating Old Earth, the world in which this story and some of his others take place.
As when we picked Andy's brain a bit in class last week, I always like finding out what the author was thinking when they were writing something.
Anyway, I was perusing the interwebs for things that would help me figure out the math sides of "Formidable Caress" and Inception, and I stumbled onto Analog online magazine (where "Formidable Caress" was originally published).
The link in the title of this post will take you to Stephen Baxter, the author of "Formidable Caress" and many other sci-fi books/stories/etc., giving readers of Analog a little peek into the inspirations and ideas he used when creating Old Earth, the world in which this story and some of his others take place.
As when we picked Andy's brain a bit in class last week, I always like finding out what the author was thinking when they were writing something.
1984 and Little Brother
As I work on the paper that is due tomorrow (ah!) I'm seeing more and more parallels between Doctorow's Little Brother and Orwell's 1984. Some of them are quite obvious- the title Little Brother is in itself a literary allusion to 1984. Other names are parrallel too- Marcus's screen name w1n5t0n is reminiscient of Winston Smith, the main character of Orwell's novel. (This one actually took me quite a while to realize...).
The more I look at these two novels, the harder it becomes for me to not think of Little Brother as a blatant warning that our country is getting scarily close to becoming Airstrip One of Oceania closed tightly in the Party's fist.
Also as I reread Little Brother I find that I am becoming more paranoid. I emtpy out my cookies and cache on the internet whenever I leave a public computer, and sometimes even my computer at home. I've started using cash more often than my debit card. I don't know if this was an intentional side effect, but the book has certainly made me more aware of how easily trackable I am. Marcus's spirit of jamming has gotten into me!! However, I still haven't deduced a way to get into the parking garage without swiping my act card and having my picture taken...
The more I look at these two novels, the harder it becomes for me to not think of Little Brother as a blatant warning that our country is getting scarily close to becoming Airstrip One of Oceania closed tightly in the Party's fist.
Also as I reread Little Brother I find that I am becoming more paranoid. I emtpy out my cookies and cache on the internet whenever I leave a public computer, and sometimes even my computer at home. I've started using cash more often than my debit card. I don't know if this was an intentional side effect, but the book has certainly made me more aware of how easily trackable I am. Marcus's spirit of jamming has gotten into me!! However, I still haven't deduced a way to get into the parking garage without swiping my act card and having my picture taken...
Sunday, October 3, 2010
A peek into my world...
So I know I've briefly mentioned before that I've been actively involved in countless text-based roleplaying game websites. I wanted you guys to take a peek at this online phenomenon, especially those of you who are interested in roleplaying or even just writing. There are millions of these sites out there, and I'm not talking about World of Warcraft or Evony or those kinds of things. I'm talking purely text. Story writing, but in the form of a game of sorts. You create your own character, throw them into this world on the site. They range from all kinds of movie/book/tv/game-based sites to original ones that people just make up themselves. Normally you flesh out your character with an application process where you lay down his/her history, quirks, habits and personality. A team of site administrators will accept your character or ask for a few more details, and then you're free to play!
It's like acting, but improvised and in text-form. You get to come up with these scenarios for your character to be plunged into and then whoever you choose to play with throws their character's reaction in. You respond in turn (usually in no less than 600 words on most advanced literate RP sites), and the madness begins. For example, the other day a character's dog got loose on the streets of Wonderland, the fictional town where one of the sites I currently RP takes place. My character, the motorcycle-driving, James Dean wanna-be, is just going about his business when this dog runs out in front of him. He swerves to miss the dog and wrecks. Then the other character comes over reacts... It goes on until both players either get bored or decide that subplot is finished. Most sites like this have an umbrella plot that all players work under, this one is Disney-based (yeah I'm lame), where every person in the town has a different Disney "spirit." So basically to create a character you pick a Disney character and model your person after them to an extent. I currently play Kovu the lion, The Mad Hatter, and Jock the dog on that site.
If I've bored you to tears, I'm sorry. But if you're interested, Caution 2.0 is a site that acts as a data base where RPers can advertise their sites and find other ones to join. MANY of these are sci-fi based. For example, here's one based on Transformers. Resident Evil. X-men..... There's pretty much anything you can think of.
Also if you notice, many of the creators of these sites have a lot of talent in the graphics and coding field. Some of them are pretty incredible just to look at. Some of the best writers I've read have been on sites like these. Sorry for the novel of a post I just made.... I get too excited sometimes.
It's like acting, but improvised and in text-form. You get to come up with these scenarios for your character to be plunged into and then whoever you choose to play with throws their character's reaction in. You respond in turn (usually in no less than 600 words on most advanced literate RP sites), and the madness begins. For example, the other day a character's dog got loose on the streets of Wonderland, the fictional town where one of the sites I currently RP takes place. My character, the motorcycle-driving, James Dean wanna-be, is just going about his business when this dog runs out in front of him. He swerves to miss the dog and wrecks. Then the other character comes over reacts... It goes on until both players either get bored or decide that subplot is finished. Most sites like this have an umbrella plot that all players work under, this one is Disney-based (yeah I'm lame), where every person in the town has a different Disney "spirit." So basically to create a character you pick a Disney character and model your person after them to an extent. I currently play Kovu the lion, The Mad Hatter, and Jock the dog on that site.
If I've bored you to tears, I'm sorry. But if you're interested, Caution 2.0 is a site that acts as a data base where RPers can advertise their sites and find other ones to join. MANY of these are sci-fi based. For example, here's one based on Transformers. Resident Evil. X-men..... There's pretty much anything you can think of.
Also if you notice, many of the creators of these sites have a lot of talent in the graphics and coding field. Some of them are pretty incredible just to look at. Some of the best writers I've read have been on sites like these. Sorry for the novel of a post I just made.... I get too excited sometimes.
Duncan's Story/Paper Progress
So I forgot to mention something in class last week that I think we briefly touched on: how sci-fi did you really see Andy's story? I didn't get as much a sci-fi as ghost story/fantasy feel to it. (That being said I loved it... don't fail me. And I'm serious. I really liked it.) I don't know much on the subject of geo-caching, and I think Andy said something about the fact that it's what made the story really "sci fi." Does anyone who knows anything about geo-caching know how realistic that was? Or is one of those "near-future" things? And does anyone else agree about it being more fantasy? I know Andy mentioned that it was actually up for a fantasy award.
And, as I have been looking at a few articles for my paper ("The Coldest Girl..." vs Twilight) I have found some pretty cool stuff related to the vampire/zombie phenomenon we talked about in class. Here's just two of the articles I've read that are pretty cool (and pretty scholastically legit btw):
http://www.decentfilms.com/articles/twilight.html
http://www.temple.edu/newsroom/2009_2010/08/stories/vampires.htm
Have fun but not too much. Work on your papers! And if you're interested you can play on Google too :)
Working on the paper...
I must say, it is really convenient that the science fiction world has abundant information on the internet, namely in the form of blogs. I'm working on my "As Women Fight" paper and the author's blog has been quite helpful, not to mention interesting.
Other science fiction thoughts for the weekend...I caught a bit of a movie on SyFy on Friday. It was crap. Is anybody with me when I say Syfy movies are decreasing in caliber? Maybe I just don't watch enough of them to get a clear idea of how good they are.
Anywho...good luck to everyone while paper writing and movie watching. I'm sure I'm not the only one sitting in the living room working on the paper for this class right now :)
Other science fiction thoughts for the weekend...I caught a bit of a movie on SyFy on Friday. It was crap. Is anybody with me when I say Syfy movies are decreasing in caliber? Maybe I just don't watch enough of them to get a clear idea of how good they are.
Anywho...good luck to everyone while paper writing and movie watching. I'm sure I'm not the only one sitting in the living room working on the paper for this class right now :)
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