Both presentations today, the presentation mimicking a future unveiling of a new and improved Google database and the presentation on hybridity in zombies, were very interesting. When we first started reading about werewolves in class, I wrote a blog post on the hybridity of vampires, and for my first paper I also wrote about the notion of the monster in novels such as Never Let Me Go. Continue reading
This paper intends to analyze the potential socioeconomic effect of the transhumanist enhancement technologies hailed by Ray Kurzweil and others. Although Kurzweil argues that a market stimulus effect and the exponential rate of the growth of technology will allow for these enhancements to quickly become universally accessible, I would argue that because advances in technology are generally made available first to the wealthy and because concerns of genetic enhancement are typically not the concerns of the lower and middle class, enhancement technology would continue to widen the gap between the rich and the poor. Continue reading
Smith’s presentation on Cindy Jackson and all of her plastic surgeries seemed strangely familiar to me – I felt that this presentation and Cindy Jackson’s responses to her surgeries reminded me very much of Stone Gods and the emphasis on beauty and outward appearance that we saw in that novel. Continue reading
I’d like to start first of all by discussing William of Palerne and the many disguises used throughout that story. In the story, William and Melior first disguise themselves as white bears, then as a hart and a hind; we also see the queen disguise herself as a deer, and Alphonse’s werewolf form can, in many ways, be seen as a disguise because of the way he is able to use his appearance to, at first, help William and Melior without being noticed, as a human would have been. Continue reading
I have to say first of all that I have been fairly pleased with the turn in class focus towards werewolves and medieval literature, mostly because I love these types of stories filled with curses, superstition, royalty, and courtly romance. For this class, it is especially interesting because I never thought of werewolves as particularly posthuman. Continue reading
Many ideas of humanism are challenged in Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake, but I think the one that arises the most is the idea of sexual norms. We are introduced, perhaps not always blatantly, to the sex lives and the ideas of many of the characters, and the sexual norms as perceived by these characters tend to separate the characters in many ways. Continue reading
So far in this class we have talked a lot about what our technology may do to us in the future, most specifically in terms of robots and the post-human. We see a lot of this, obviously, in The Stone Gods through Spike’s character and through MORE’s idea of using robots to make decisions because humans have shown they aren’t capable of making the right decisions. And in that world (based on what I read and on what was portrayed), I can’t say I would really argue. In a world where decisions can be made either by an incredibly intelligent and capable robot or the human race, whose primary concern is when genetic fixing should occur,….I might go with the robot. Continue reading
Ever since class on Tuesday, I have been thinking about Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and our discussion of how the students are raised at Hailsham. Specifically, we focused on the way students were taught creative trades and how they were encouraged to be artistic and to take pride in their work. At Hailsham, Kathy tells us, it was a big deal to have work chosen for the Gallery, even when they did not actually know the true intent of that gallery. It was not the revelation that art is an indicator of possessing a soul in this novel that stunned me, rather, it was the awareness that everyone seemed to agree on such a point in what I presume would be a rather scientifically-based community. Continue reading
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, at first glance is fascinating because of the idea that, in the future, humans will actually be harvested for their organs (an apocalyptic warning I have been hearing from various places since my early childhood). To me, however, the more fascinating issue is how these children have been raised so as not to question their fate. Years ago, it seems (when I was still a communications major), we talked about hegemony – the idea that things are the way they are….simply because that’s the way they are. Continue reading
Greg Egan’s story “Learning to Be Me” had a particularly indescribable effect on me as a reader, and I would therefore like to look at this story through a writer’s standpoint. Egan, through relatively few words, outlines an entire biography of his protagonist character, and this depiction of the character allows the reader to become sympathetic with him. Starting at the beginning, Egan is able to build tension in the story which stems directly from the thoughts and feelings of his characters. Continue reading