Hello friends and readers, I hope you find yourselves hale and hearty on this beautiful spring day. Unfortunately, Science Fiction Sunday will have to take a short break due to my impending graduation. Check back in a couple weeks for a new review!
Until next time: stay strange, my friends,
Dylan
Hello, dear readers! I wanted to start this week’s post with some interesting lists I found because who doesn’t love a good list!
The first one is a list from goodreads about the top 100 best love stories. I was very excited to see that most of the novels I have discussed so far have made the list. It also gave me new ideas for love stories that I need to add to my own list of books to read.
I also found a list from Reader’s Digest on The Best Love Stories of All Time . It was there that I found the book I will be discussing today: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.
Set in Russia during the 19th century, Anna Karenina is a timeless tale of what happens when duty to one’s heart and duty to one’s family collide. Caught between her two Alexeis, Anna finds herself torn to physical and emotional anguish. First, there is her husband Alexei, a rigid man who shows no love to Anna but dutifully provides for her and their son. On a trip to visit her brother (who happens to be caught in his own failing marriage), Anna is literally swept off her feet by the handsome Alexei Vronsky. She begins a thrilling love affair with Vronsky that leads to disastrous events, ending in tragedy. I hope I didn’t say too much; I don’t want to spoil the ending for my readers!
As I look back at my other posts, I realize that the love stories tend to have happy endings. Perhaps this is what makes Tolstoy’s novel so interesting-here is a love story without the happily ever after. No wedding bells and church aisles. Only whistles and train tracks.
But do not fret, my dear readers! For among the tragedy of Anna’s story, there is a love story with a happily ever after. Rejected by Vronsky, Kitty finds herself falling in love with Lenin, the man she once refused. Lenin is an honest man who promises to love and take care of Kitty, two attributes of a man that Anna unfortunately never sees. Their love story parallels with events unfolding in Anna’s life, but ultimately, Lenin and Kitty end up living happily ever after instead of Anna. Now I know I have either gotten you hooked or spoiled the ending. However, much still needs to be said and can truly only be said through the details and beauty of Tolstoy’s novel.
One of the most captivating elements of Tolstoy’s writing is the complexity he gives to each character. I have often been fascinated by his ability to keep track of so many characters and intertwine their lives so beautifully. How sad it seems that most contemporary novels do not bother with the tapestry of characters; readers tend to enjoy the simplicity. However, once you have been opened to the encompassing world of 19th century Russia with all its intricate people, readers, I assure you, you will forever long for the detailed character. And if you happen to be aspiring writers as I am, the desire to incorporate Tolstoy-like characters into your own writings will forever torment your mind. Thus, I encourage you all to read some Tolstoy, for he truly is a genius on the page. Anna Karenina is the perfect love story to start.
With all my love,
Moira
Image Courtesy: Wikipedia
Welcome, friends and readers, to another rousing rendition of Science Fiction History Theatre! This is a special mid-week edition of Science Fiction Sunday, so hold your hats and let’s dive into science fiction’s past once more.
Last time on Science Fiction History Theatre we learned about science fiction’s originators: Mary Shelley and Jules Verne. These two authors laid the foundation for science fiction in the 19th century; but, it wasn’t until the 20th century that science fiction found a market of its own.
Image Courtesy: Wikipedia – Gernsback signed first edition Amazing Stories
In 1926, Hugo Gernsback published the first magazine that was devoted entirely to science fiction: Amazing Stories. Before Amazing Stories, science fiction stories were popular, but published intermittently with other types of fiction. However, when Gernsback founded the magazine in 1926 he gave science fiction a market to grow to its full potential.
While Gernsback was the publisher of Amazing Stories, it was known for publishing stories that were both scientifically plausible and entertaining. Gernsback had the idea that readers should be educated while they were reading science fiction; but it should be enjoyable too. More than cultivating a captivating mix of entertainment and education, however, Gernsback is known for his inclusion of fan columns in Amazing Stories. These columns introduced a new level of collectivity between fans of the genre and led to the formation of science fiction fandom.
Image Courtesy: Wikipedia
Unfortunately, Gernsback was forced out of his role in Amazing Stories and the magazine changed ownership in 1929. Under new direction, the magazine published less scientific fiction and more impossible fiction. Despite new directions, the magazine is known for first publishing some of science fiction’s greatest—including Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Roger Zelazny. And, despite a short reign and being ousted, Gernsback’s impact on science fiction as a genre is undeniable. Amazing Stories was published, intermittently, even through the 1990’s—almost 80 years in publication.
That’s all for this edition of Science Fiction History Theatre, friends. I hope you enjoyed reading about science fiction’s pulp era. Tune in to the next edition for a look into the Golden Age of science fiction.
Stay strange,
Dylan
Hello, friends and readers. Welcome to an abbreviated edition of Science Fiction Sunday.
Originally, I had planned to write another Science Fiction History Theatre post for you today; but I’m on the end of the semester grind right now so things are a little hectic. Don’t fret, though—I’ll still be writing about science fiction history later this week. Today, we’re just going to change pace (and media). I read this post about whether Star Wars was science fiction or fantasy last week and thought it would be a great post to respond to.
Personally, I’ve always placed Star Wars in the space opera category. The emphasis in space opera is less on the science and more on—well, the opera. A good space opera is all about the drama.
So, is Star Wars science fiction or fantasy? Drop your comments below to let me know your thoughts and look forward to another Science Fiction History Theatre later this week!
Stay strange, friends,
Dylan
Yesterday we crammed a circus’ worth of clowns into a car and went rock climbing up near the Sierra’s. In between random singing seizures emphasizing how much I am all about that bass (and never that treble), we had an interesting conversation about the delineation between Science Fiction and Fantasy. In particular we had the question…is Star Wars Sci-Fi or Fantasy?
That might seem like a really obvious answer considering it’s set in space, has space ships, lasers, and wookies (that must make it sci-fi, right?) but let’s wait a second and come back around to that in a minute.
These genres go hand-in-hand in most people’s minds ,and pretty much every bookstore on the planet, but besides the fact that they both deal with wondrous elements, there’s actually a fair difference between the two.
Now I’m gonna get my brush out, the real fat one, and start painting some real…
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Since I have focused on some older classics the last few weeks, I decided to bring it back up to contemporary love stories this week. A few weeks ago, I received a comment asking me to discuss John Green’s novel Looking for Alaska. I have already looked at John Green a bit, but, as one of my favorite authors, I have no problem continuing to discuss his novels. Thank you, Maeve, for leaving a comment and making this suggestion!
So since we have already looked at one of his novels, we may as well look at three others! Green’s passion for love stories carries throughout the novels Looking for Alaska, The Fault in Our Stars, and An Abundance of Katherines. Looking for Alaska describes the adventures of Miles and his friends as they plan the biggest prank their boarding school has ever seen. Miles falls for the cigarette-smoking, sex-loving, book-collecting Alaska. Even after tragedy strikes, his love for her continues. The Fault in Our Stars features the drop-dead gorgeous Augustus Waters, with his cigarette metaphors, romantic dates, and high spirits despite the cancer that is slowly eating away at him and his girlfriend, Hazel Grace. With Augustus by her side, Hazel discovers a life worth living. An Abundance of Katherines, perhaps one of Green’s lesser known works, tells the story of Colin, a boy who has dated 19 girls named Katherine in his life. After the most recent Katherine break-up, he embarks on a road trip to anywhere with his friend Hassan. But the story truly takes off when he starts falling for his first Lindsey.
When searching for reviews of John Green’s novels, one will immediately see the divide between the hopeless romantics who adore his novels and the people claiming to be realists, forever bashing the illogical love stories. Who are we to believe? Do the books have any value to them? Of course, the answer lies in the eyes of the beholder, or in this case, the eyes of the reader.
But, perhaps looking at the novels from what Green is trying to achieve will give us some more concrete answers. Is there really an Augustus Waters out there, ready to sweep a girl off her feet with cliché metaphors, whimsical sayings, and dates that are so cheesy they smell of Dutch cheese…literally! Maybe not. But maybe there are people out there that love another person so much that their actions become poetic, their sayings turn playful, and their cheesy dates actually hold a much deeper romantic intimacy that only the couple knows. What Green highlights is the continuous journey of searching for love, finding it, and then falling head over heels for it. Love stories like these happen all the time; just look around you. Perhaps every love story is unrealistic in its own way-for sometimes a love that is so deep even death cannot triumph over it is so surreal that it cannot possibly be real. Yet, it is. Green does an enchanting job of conveying how unrealistic and how realistic, how illogical and how logical, how corny, how sad, how painful, and how extraordinarily happy love can be in these three novels.
For all my lovers of literary terms out there, we have found ourselves at the gates of a great paradox. Love may just be the most paradoxical paradox there is. If anyone can convey this, it is indeed John Green.
With all my love,
Moira
I just realized I have a slight obsession with Asian culture. This week I delved into yet another Asia centric story, Shanghai Girls by Lisa See. Which is pretty modern, at least for me, as it’s based in the 20th century during mass immigration from China to the US through Angel Island. See follows two girls and their pretty tumultuous journey to America.
The story opens to the upper class Chin Family. Their two daughters Pearl and May are clearly treated unequally, with pearl being the more heavily scrutinized one. Both of them are in love with the same painter and have dreams of marriage for love. These hopes are dashed pretty quickly as their father gambles away their fortune and must sell them to American men to help pay off their debts. May ends up pregnant and to cover it up they stalled on Angel Island until the baby was born and Pearl could claim it as hers. The rest of the book is centered on their transition into American culture and the hardships that they face hiding this secret from their respective spouses.
I really liked the book from a human perspective. I loved the intricate relationships that Lee developed. They really felt like a relationship that another person and I could share. The fights with her sister, the tryst with an artist, the strained relationship with their in-laws, all of them felt so raw and so realistic. I got swept up in all of it and had to remind myself that these weren’t real situations and real people. They were all products of their time though. All of their experiences could have really been felt by a young Chinese woman who was uprooted and was placed in a foreign land. The depiction of Angel Island was probably my favorite immigration experience. Lee describes the whole immigration experience in a confused haze and a purgatory where the guards played God and decided who could go onto a better life and who had to be sent back. I couldn’t think of a better description.
I couldn’t think of a better example of immigration to America. The experiences of the Chin girls, the loneliness, the anxiety, the strength. They are the epitome of survival in a strange land. I applaud Lee in her creation of such strong feminine characters. We really need more people like Pearl and May in the world.
Let’s take a quick break from the weekly look into so many enjoyable book plots and think, instead, of what exactly we picture as readers when we dive into the rich pools of plot. If you asked a million people, they would all be different. Would any of them be wrong? Of course not! That’s the wonderful skill that all readers hold; they all have the ability to picture a scene so unique from anyone else’s, and maybe just in detail, but it’s still their own. So one can understand the crime that movie adaptations commit when they decide to take matters into their own hands and create a cemented image that forces all readers that become watchers to reference when they choose to read that book in the future. No more detailed and specific blueprint of the book’s map; instead, only the bland setting to a B-movie.
It’s not only that dystopian (or any, but I’m trying to stay within my bounds) book-to-movie adaptations change the setting and let the rest go, they do so much more than that. They create lifeless and see-through holograms of the ideas you once had and practically steal the rights to your creative use of a novel’s imagery for the rest of your life because it will be all you can think of each time you read the book from that point on.
Even further than this, some of these movies rely on cheap star power in instances such as the movie adaptation in The Giver in which the generic rebranding of the movie’s plot on the silver screen relied on the appearance of Taylor Swift being a star for all of only a few minutes in order to reel in potential seats in a movie theater. It’s a shameless ploy that attempts to make readers like you and I out to be idiots interested in shelling out a few bucks to sit through something destroys something that we once loved.
Band together with me to escape the capitalist sellouts who choose to spend their careers ripping apart the plots of our favorite stories and together we can at least make box office sales a few dollars less.
Welcome to another Science Fiction Sunday, friends and readers. On this rainy spring day, we’re going to delve into a juicy review of Orson Scott Card’s Nebula (1985) and Hugo (1986) award-winning novel Ender’s Game. Beware: there may be slight spoilers ahead.
Image Courtesy: Marshall University
Card originally published his novel as a short story, also titled “Ender’s Game,” in the August 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. It wasn’t until 1985 that Card expanded his original story into the award-winning novel we know today. (Fun Fact: Card took a cue from the future when he published Ender’s Game in its entirety on the internet before Delphi held a print run—he was the first author to take that gambit).
Ender’s Game throws us into the near future, where Earth has already fought two devastating wars with the unstoppable “buggers”: an alien hive-mind that exhibits frightening tactical cohesion. In a desperate attempt to defeat the buggers once and for all, an International Fleet (I.F.) is formed. The I.F., in its desperate bid to prevent another invasion, creates the Battle School to train Earth’s most strategic minds—from the age of seven nonetheless—in the way of ruthlessness and warfare.
It takes a complex individual to contend in the Battle School. Andrew “Ender” Wiggin exudes all of its necessary qualities: ruthlessness and compassion, cunning and strength. Ender mortally wounds a classmate who torments him in the belief that he can only end the conflict by showing absolute superiority. When Ender explains this to the conniving head of the Battle School, Colonel Graff, he is granted access to the school’s elite ranks. Graff believes Ender has what it takes to end another war with the buggers once and for all—but does he?
Image Courtesy: Ender’s Game (2013)
Reader, you’ll have to read the novel if you want to answer that question. I can tell you that Card crafted a paradox when he wrote Ender’s Game. On the one hand, the novel is massively entertaining. It’s a fast and—I’ll be honest—completely enjoyable read. I devoured the book as a ravenous animal devours their prey: eagerly and with no remorse. In fact, the novel is a science fiction staple. It consistently wins accolades placing it as one of the best science fiction novels—ever. The book is fantastic.
But—there’s always a “but,” isn’t there, reader?—there are also some serious issues lying at the heart of Card’s novel. Ender is often the purveyor of great violence. Sometimes unwittingly so. And, in each instance, Ender’s actions are justified. He is commended for doing what is seen as necessary, for doing it with unfailing efficiency and ruthlessness. Ender is the perfect killer and he’s only a child. All of his acts of violence are morally justified—might is right, after all. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the book, however, is that Ender is committing real atrocities in the context of a game. See how tricky it gets when you start to consider the deeper implications of a novel, reader?
Tricky or not, I would unfailingly recommend delving into Ender’s Game, reader. Card’s writing is crisp and enjoyable. His plot compels you to the end; his attention to his characters is superb—Ender is the most likeable sociopath. All of the right pieces make-up this novel and perhaps its greatest success is that it evokes such critical thinking at its conclusion.
Tell me what you think in the comments below: is extreme violence justified in Ender’s context? Is it ever? Hard to say, reader. I’d love to hear your insights, however. Or, just let me know what you think about the novel; did you also enjoy it? I hope you found it satisfying.
Look forward to another rendition of Science Fiction History Theatre next week, friends.
And, as always: stay strange.
We have a special blog post this week! Moira and Emily have joined together to look at both the love and the history of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. In this novel, the five Bennet sisters are left with a predicament not uncommon of families of only girls of the time-they must marry in order to inherit the wealth of their father. Thus, the girls set off in search of eligible bachelors and end up tangled in love triangles that keep readers wondering who will end up with who. A brilliant novel filled with timeless characters will leave readers turning page after page of this beautiful classic. So here we go!
Pride and Prejudice’s historical aspects are impeccable. I mean this book is technically written as a present day novel during the period, but it is a joy to relive the days of balls and courtships, formal dinners and dressmakers, and aristocracy and mansions. It really encapsulates the early 19th century life of the upper middle class without shoving it into your face. Austen does a really good job of incorporating you into her world. You leave behind all of your previous notions of what love and life is all about and suddenly find yourself wishing that you too could get a new dress for the ball and dance with some handsome officers. The feminism in the book is also refreshing, while we do see the more stereotypical girl (Lydia) who wants a husband immediately, we also see Elizabeth and her resistance to anything that would limit her freedom (marriage). We see typical arranged or pre-approved marriages and marriages that are based on love, people marrying up in their social class, and the dangers of waiting too long. All of these things can and did happen commonly during this time period. It’s really a joy to peek back at what life was like, especially for women, during Austen’s life.
Within the historical context of the early 19th century, we see what love looked like in terms of marriage. Lydia, enveloped in her youthful fantasies of love, falls head-over-heels for Mr. Wickham. However, these feelings of affection are not reciprocated, and Mr. Wickham marries Lydia solely out of a deal to get his debts paid off. Turning to the love life of Elizabeth, she takes her romantic relationships slower, looking at all sides of what the prospect of marriage could mean. Austen brings forth some important questions about love and marriage that pertain specifically to the historical context. Can there be love within a marriage? Is there a difference between love and affection? The marriages of Lydia and Elizabeth are both marriages of convenience. Even Elizabeth, who seems to have a strong affection for Darcy, never admits to truly loving him.
So lets tie history and love together! Austen is writing her novel in the setting of a time period when love and marriage were changing. Arranged marriages no longer seem the norm, but neither does the idea of marriage for true love. So where does that leave us? Perhaps at a place where marriage was a means of financial security, of raising a family and of keeping the family’s wealth. In order to understand the love aspect of this novel, the history of the time period must first be understood. While love may be timeless, the implications of love and marriage have their set places in history.
With all our love,
Moira and Emily
Let’s take a moment to ponder the place that books have within our society; their impact is infinite. From wanting to understand just how to do your own taxes to having a desire to travel throughout as many worlds and timelines as you could possibly imagine, it’s books that allow you to do just exactly these things. But what if you didn’t have books at your disposal to provide you with the deep and rich adventures across all genres? What if your only source of entertainment was shallow and bland television in a world where you’re actually meant to keep up with the Kardashians? This is the world within Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451; a world where books have been outlawed and are destroyed if they are discovered, leaving its inhabitants with nothing to keep them satisfied except for the superficial television programs that rival the TLC network.
In this story, published in 1953, the narrative follows Guy Montag, a fireman in this post-literate society, but only by name. Firemen in this Bradbury’s world are not the same as the ones in ours – in fact, they are polar opposites. While the firemen that you and I are familiar with are in charge of putting out fires and doing general good deeds around the community, the Guy Montags of Fahrenheit 451 are in charge of destruction with fire. The destruction of books, that is, as the government in this dystopia are fearful of the knowledge that can be collected from them; exactly why the citizens of this land are given mind-numbing television instead.
Unfortunately for Montag, he is stuck in the middle of this world simply doing his job, until he meets a girl by the name of Clarisse McClellan, a strange girl that Montag runs into that teases him with the wonderful “evils” within their society. The main dynamic within this book is that Montag finds himself in the middle of two women: Clarisse and his wife. These two women represent the two different groups within their society; while Clarisse is interesting and dangerous, Mildred (Montag’s wife) is rarely seen doing anything but lazing around and watching television. It’s a dynamic that is easy to see and easy to interpret, but is all too interesting at the same time.
The book itself is very short in terms of what you normally find in this genre, which makes it an easy one to simply pick up and find yourself having read through it all in one sitting. It’s just that entertaining of a story. It’s fitting that this story begins with one of the greatest opening lines in the history of books, “It was a pleasure to burn,” because this work by Rad Bradbury sure is a pleasure to read.
The Blue Room 