LMST_345 Lit. of Horror，Fantasy，Science fiction

  This week I read the novel Dirt Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. It seems that the time line of this book is really messy, so that I didn't quite understand it when I read it for the first time. The author uses multiple lines of narration, with multiple characters appearing in turn. There is no obvious protagonist among them, and the time span is even from ancient times to now. The suspense of the story is properly hidden in such a large narrative structure, and is not revealed until the last moment. It feels like you need to summarize the two main timelines and then continue to summarize them together at the intersection of the timelines.   In this book the author uses the writing technique of multi-line narrative. In the past two years I read more and more foreign works have used this writing technique, I do not know whether now is popular, but I must admit, I really like this kind of narrative technique, especially the combination of such a tight time line and story line, i

  This week I read the novel  Oryx and Crake . In my opinion, this is a profound and meaningful novel. This novel contains a lot of discussion about humanity, sex, culture and genetic variation, and a lot of language about sex and biology. The chapters are very interesting, one chapter is about the present, one chapter is about the future, and the main plot is in even chapters.   In the novel, the author expresses her extreme concern about the misuse of biotechnology in the future world. Like so many western works of science fiction, the future presented in this book is a bleak, apocalyptic vision of human society: literature and art have been scorned as never before, and only science and technology have been favored. This is actually indicative of a trend that we now see quite clearly. To be more specific, all diseases will be eradicated, but the big companies that make drugs create viruses and spread them in order to keep people buying them. If anyone tries to blow the whistle on suc

  I read about Bloodchild this week. This is the shortest novel I have read in this class this semester. However, although this novel is short, it is really exquisite and charming, without any burdensome. The science fiction setting is respectively thrown out at the right time, which is about the parasitic organism and the alien host.       The story is about humans and the invasive species Tlic. Tlic rely on parasitic animals to give birth, injecting their eggs into humans and then taking them out and putting them into other animals after the larvae have grown a bit. In this twisted way, Tlic form a family with humans. The protagonist was selected as the breeder by Tlic, and even after witnessing the horrors of other breeders, he accepted the reality. I was a little uncomfortable with the details of parasitism and the eating of eggs, because it was so realistic that it reminded me of the sickening sight of countless Tlic squirming. I think the novel can be adapted into a film well bec

  This week I read an interesting and insightful novel   Snow Crash , which was my first in-depth encounter with the cyberpunk genre, and many of its Settings were familiar to me. For example, everyone has a unique avatar in the virtual space. When a character dies in a virtual space, he or she is forced to be disconnected and can't be logged in again for some time. The eyepiece that projects the virtual space onto the retina, just like the VR in the current society. But more familiar the novel is, the more surprised I feel because the successful prediction. Most of the other new technologies in the story are also being implemented now.   There are many cool elements in the novel, such as a hacker with a samurai sword delivering pizza, a skateboarder and a gangster killer. The novel adopts the classic "high tech, low life" mode, described a repressive, dim future. To be more specific, although there is not a technology of disaster, but the government has collapsed, the la

  I read the novel   The Left Hand of Darkness this week, and I think it is a very profound novel. The author describes an intersexual civilization on an icy planet called winter Star. Each individual in this civilization is not naturally male or female, but rather a snail like intersex, and at the same time their sex is cyclical and only impulsive for a few days in a month. The protagonist was very uncomfortable at first, because he was viewed it in a traditional patriarchal way, but as time went on, he slowly began to accept, and eventually to accept.   Since I am an earthling, the way of thinking is too deeply influenced by gender   when I was reading this novel, and because the author uses “he” in the story. It is always difficult for me to fully relate to that environment   when imagining the plot of the novel, and it is difficult to really fully imagine an individual with no particular gender orientation. I always subconsciously imagine Estraven as a kind of feminized man or vice

  I read the novel   The Martian   this week. Except for some technical terms, most of the words are not too difficult. I use to seen the Matt Damon’s movie version, which is probably the best science fiction movie of that year. When I am reading the book, I always compared it to the movie and I thought the movie is a really good adaptation. Especially when shaping the hero Mark's spirit of pursuing rational science, optimism and perseverance. Matt Damon is really my perfect choice for the role.   While living alone on Mars, the protagonist Mark had go through a lot of difficulties. Without the aura of the protagonist of the ordinary novel, without the blessing of good luck. Mark's sheer expertise, courage, optimism, and NASA's cooperation helped him survive. I especially appreciate that he can still play humor and make jokes when faced with problems, and deal with unexpected problems with a calm and rational attitude. At the same time, he makes a good represents of the hum