Week Ten: The Fiction of Ideas - The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuinn (# 5 points)

The story is science fiction that unfolds with the people who don’t live on Earth, but I think <The Left Hand of Darkness> tells about humans, ourselves. Many emotional exchanges take place and narratives unfold in this story.

Ursula K. LeGuinn’s <The Left Hand of Darkness> was quite difficult to read at first. It’s a total of 20 chapters, and each chapter is a mixture of the story in first-person and in the third person. Even in the first-person story, the speaker ‘I’ is Genly Ai, and in some cases it was Estraven, so it took some time to figure out who this was. For example, ‘I’ in Chapters 1, 3, 5, and 8 is Genly Ai, but ‘I’ in Chapters 6 and 10 is Estraven. The report, written by an investigator in Ekumen’s research team, explained the characteristics of the people on the Winter planet, and helped me to understand the overall framework.

The Gethenians in the novel have no sex. Their sex changes every 26 days. The protagonist boy Genly Ai visits Gethen alone to join the Space Union that seeks the peace of mankind, but Genly who has a man’s appearance continuously is seen as a pervert in Gethenians’ eyes. Due to the severe cold as well as cultural differences, Genly faces several difficulties. The main story of this book is thinking about how to achieve peace and communication while overcoming these difficulties. Genly himself as well, experiences confusion by encountering Gethenians. Since the Gethenians have no sex, Genly had no idea how he should treat them as a woman or a man. Furthermore, the feelings toward them were very hard to determine whether it was friendship or love.

At the end of the story, Genly encounters an unfamiliar feeling and new confusion. He began to question the way he was in the world whether he had to share a gender. And this question is something that the readers can ask together.

Genly Ai came to the Winter planet alone, to understand each other through a personal relationship between individuals. The story makes me think about what we have to do to understand and accept each other, who is very different and unique.

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Week Eleven: Cyberpunk and Steampunk - Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (# 6 points)

The shock of using VR devices for the first time is still unforgettable. It’s still a little closer to the virtual side than to the real one, but it was still amazing. Since then, I have been interested in virtual reality and augmented reality, and have started to read related articles and books. It was difficult to fully understand, but I was convinced that the technology would gradually focus on making virtual realities more realistic. VR appeared in the mid-2010s, but there was someone who came up with this concept 20 years before this. It’s Neal Stephenson, the writer of ‘Snow Crash’, and the novel ’Snow Crash’ is a book that enables us to approach the world of virtual reality more easily. Considering this book was published in 1992, I’m really surprised that the story described in this novel is almost close to the world right now, where a lot of Internet-related technologies have made remarkable development. ‘Metaverse’ the virtual place that the computer made t

Week 1: Frankenstien by Mary Shelly (#6 points)

I have never read Frankenstein before, and just known Frankenstein as a Halloween character, a monster with bolts on the sides of his neck. So I was quite surprised that Frankenstein is the doctor who creates the monster by sewing together parts of bodies stolen from graveyards. Another thing that caught my attention was the part that made me feel like the monster which is usually portrayed as a hideous and ugly creature, was almost like a baby. He admires the warmth of sunlight, a bird chirping, and the beauty of nature. Seeing people getting along with each other well, he thinks he wants to interact with others like that. Because of his appearance, I thought that the monster would be vicious and have no sensibility like humans. However, the monster was a more sensitive and emotional character than humans. He felt torn about seeing people frightened by him. He cannot be beloved by anyone. The relationship between Frankenstein and the monster was harmful to each o

Week 2: Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice (#6 points)

I grew up watching movies and was enthusiastic about Vampires, invisible men, wizards, and goblins, so they are like childhood friends in my imagination. Among these imaginative creatures, my favorite is a vampire, because they have special abilities surpassing humans. Furious power, and immortal ability to live forever while maintaining youth. They can sustain life only by drinking human blood. This vampiric act may be scary, but also feel like a fatal temptation. They are attractive because of their distinction, but at the same time, I like vampires due to their familiarity. The fact that they have the same appearance as humans (except the colors of eyes and skin) and that they were humans in the past make vampires more intimate. They can fall in love with a human, and they can even make children with a human. These characteristics of vampires make me feel that they might exist. Louis, who unwillingly became a vampire by the vampire Lestat, couldn’t accept his fate

LITERATURE OF HORROR, FANTASY & SCI-FI

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