Urban Fantasy & American Gods

'American Gods' by Neil Gaiman reinvents myth by taking the 'Percy Jackson' route (or rather, inventing that route?) and putting classic, historical gods into the modern world. Like 'Percy Jackson', 'American Gods' put logic to the gods existence by saying that humans belief in them is what makes them exist and what gives them power. Unlike 'Percy Jackson' though (where just the influence of the Greek...

The Martian & Space Opera

'The Martian' by Andy Weir has been dubbed some of the most accurate sci-fi to date, and it's film adaption (which is pretty accurate) is considered the most scientifically accurate sci-fi film ever. It's overall an entertaining read, even if it can be heavy on space-science explanations, but the way it's told makes up for that. Another interesting part of the story is the tropes it combines. The...

The Future

Honestly, I'd love to be optimistic about the future but it's rather hard to. I mean, theres the obvious fact that climate change is going to change our life for the worst in our lifetime and no one with power will do anything about it, and also the terrifying parallels to America's current leaders politically with some horrible moments in history, mixed with the technology that would be amazing...

The Fiction of Ideas

'We Can Remember It For You Wholesale' by Phillip K. Dick (which is the inspiration for the film 'Total Recall', apparently) focused on a technology where someone could pay to have memories implanted of a adventure, one they would not know was fake. As the story goes, a humorous series of events shows that the requested fake memories of the main character were actually repressed memories that he...

New Weird

Weird, defined as 'suggesting something supernatural; uncanny'. In modern days, I think we associate the weird less with the supernatural, and more with the alien. Both as something actually extraterrestrial and as something unfamiliar and foreign. Uncanny, still, but now rooted some in the possible. This is the new weird.  In the suggested content this week I read/watched, if you look...

Tan Tan and Diverse Sci-Fi

Nalo Hopkinson's 'Tan Tan and the Rolling Calf' is interesting as a sci-fi because it takes advanced technology and merges it with Caribbean mythology and vernacular. It makes you as a reader question why sci-fi (and fantasy while we are at it) are so focused in on white cultures and languages, particularly when the very genre is one that anything can happen.  The most notable part of 'Tan...

Literary Speculation: Do We Need Genre?

I very rarely go into a story because of the listed genre. As a whole, I honestly feel like genre as we know it is on it's way out. If I think about the genre too much when searching for new books, I often am bored of everything because I'm assuming it's going to follow the genres to a T. For instance, one of my all-time favorite stand-alone novels is 'More Than This' by Patrick Ness. On Goodreads,...

Steampunk and 'Leviathan'

The steampunk elements in Scott Westerfeld's 'Leviathan' were very promenient, though perhaps not fitting for the real-world time period he chose.  Basically, the world follows the beginning of World War I, but instead of just Germans versus allies, the sides are broken up more clearly as Clankers vs Darwinists, respectively. The countries on the Clankers side have their technology based in...

'His Dark Materials', the Beauty of Original Sin, and Adulthood

There are tons of books aimed at children that educate them on life's complexities. The most popular example is 'Harry Potter', which teaches children the importance of found families and hope during dark time. Along with that, there are other amazing series that are also wonderful educators, such as 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' (which teaches that life is not fair nor is it always happy, but...

'Bloodchild' response

1. What is the reaction to the text you've just read? It's a pretty disturbing story, obviously an allegory for slavery and/or of women being forced historically to breed and suffer childbirth. Mainly though it seems to be about the complexity of consent, choice, and bodily autonomy.  It was pretty sad reading the main characters reactions to the centipede, because he was obviously groomed...

Enough with the sexy vampires

I’ve never been very interested in vampires, as a kid I never found them very scary and as an adult I never found them very sexy. It seems the attraction to the genre comes from one of those two (often with a sprinkling of fascination for immortality, which I also find intriguing but authors rarely have a good way of going about it). Most modern authors have completely leaned away from the scary vampire...