final statement

this class has been wonderful it was great to look into horror and sci-fi a lot more then i have ever before horror has always been a genre i was always afraid to get into because i am not much of a blood and gore kind of person even in books (i know weird). but i really enjoyed the books we had to read i liked monster island alot it was a book i found really interesting and a fun take on zombies though the second part i found underwhelming it really opened my eyes up to think about horror and zombie stories differently and i found that really wonderful. i only wish i could have watched more of the movies you had listed to watch but not having netflix and wanting to spend more time reading then watching movies i kinda lost track. but to get back on track this class like your other class has opened my eyes up to horror and sci-fi greatly and i have grown to really enjoy reading them more then before.

Firesign Theatre: I Think We're All Bozos on this Bus

I Think We're All Bozos on this Bus was very interesting and confusing thing to listen to while trying to work. but it was like listening to the future if it was made of clowns kinda like idiocracy but with clowns and in a theme park. which i kinda thought was interesting. bizarro fiction has always been a fun thing to read listen to or watch for me because it really is just whats happening around use the dumb things people do or say just super exaggerated and thrown into the future. like taking trash in idiocracy which is a problem we deal with and making them into mountains or that a company that makes a sport drink now goes to every water fountain instead of water and water is only for toilets. it makes these things feel so far head but yet really relatable and you can almost imagine these things happening and it makes you see things in another light. though i much rather enjoyed idiocracy over i think we're all bozos i found it enjoyable though sometimes needing my full attention.

THE AQUATIC UNCLE

The Aquatic Uncle by Italo Calvino was a short story about the shift of how things use to be to how they are now. in this story it is about living under the water and now how everyone lives above the water and the dealing with the mid point of the elders who still live under the water and the younger who live above the water. its an interesting thing to tackle and to look at because i see how this kinda happens now not with living above land or below the water but with technology and views of issues we are still kinda at a mid point between the two dealing with the struggle of these different view points and how both kinda cant understand each other. i mean to use we have laws that try to be passed censoring the internet which is physcally impossible  because of the size and complexity of the internet even if something is deleted it is on something anywhere and can potentially be accessed. though i digress about the story i found thinking about that interesting and enjoyed reading this story.

Bloodchild

Bloodchild by Octavia Butler was an creepy and interesting story with the relationship between the aliens and the humans that inhabit the land of these alliens. it is really a story of survival and how both truly need each other to keep the others species alive since the aliens use the human to carry there young and the aliens keep the humans safe. though these aliens seems nasty and human seem to by just things. this kinda story can be seen anywhere in life kinda like how the united states work the with the upper and lower classes though i will not say it is prefect and things could be better for the milld and lower class but without the two are government wouldn't kinda like this story. also i liked that you could tell what the aliens looked like and you have to put things together in your head to get the picture of them it added a creepiness to the story that i liked.

schismatrix bruce sterling

try as hard as i could i really could not get into schismatrix i read through half the book and finally gave up not because the stories where not interesting because they where anytime you have people going to a planet and they have to agree to the planets laws and the only law is if you want to die all you have to say is kill me and lasers will take you out i am sold. but the way it was broken up the story jumped around a lot and i felt we never stood in a would for any length of time and they would get blurred together in my head and i started to loose interest. though i liked the worlds it was set in they where all very paranoid to keep there places pure and not to have outsiders who could damage. also the gesha bank which the currency  was kinetic engery from sex which was a fun kinda twist on things. if i didn't feel rushed through these worlds and parts of the story i would have enjoyed this story and i am a little upset it didn't because i liked some pieces of this story but they where to few to keep my interest.

Babel 17

Babel 17 was a wonderful book to read with an interesting take dealing with language and extreme body modification past what is possible to date. though Rydra Wong is a little bit to prefect and seems that everything seems to fall into place for her i didn't mind that. i really liked how the book talks about understanding a language as a way to understand a culture and learning the inner workings. and like i said before i liked the extreme body modifications as what the sailors do when they are bored at port but not tattoos which gives it this wonderful twist as to i could see in the days of space travel sailors of these ships getting work done like a lions main or a tail to show off signs that they are powerful fearless and aggressive kinda like tattoos where and still are about with in the navy though that stereotype has been broken down no an extent now days. but really enjoyed reading this book and could over look some of the aspects of things being to perfect or expected because it did have a wonderful richness to it.

Lev Grossman, The Magicians

The magicians was a really great and fun take on the whole magic genre in away that harry potter never went. It really made magic feel more down to earth and something that was real rather then in this magic world but kids and people dealing with real life things and situation that teen go through with a magic twist but never in away that makes it seem fake. It also made magic seem similar to art school which we talked about in class and it makes a lot of sense because not everyone can create art that is able to manipulate and make you think and that it is a skill that you have to practice hard and even if you try your hardest you may never master. Also the in the magicians it has something similar to are art school the no smoking law though I am not a smoker it gave me a laugh. In all I sound this book really wonderful and fun to read though its not harry potter it stands on its own and if someone doesn’t like harry potter they may like the magicians 

Read J.R.R. Tolkien, The Annotated Hobbit

The Annotated Hobbit its been awhile since have read this book so I thought I would give it a reread to see if it was what I remembered but instead of reading the annotated hobbit in print I opted for the ipad version which adds images and also text read by J.R.R Tolkien. To be completely honesty when I first read the hobbit it wasn’t my favorite book back in high school and I found it quite boring for my taste and slow. But every time Tolkien read it had a rhythm and life and was less boring then when I was just reading it by myself and I truly enjoyed the story and it really had to do with I guess the inflections in his voice that for some reason I could not do as well in my head. And it made me wish I would have gotten the audio book version then just the ipad version with a few talking paragraph points. But it was nice to have that feature and without It I wouldn’t have liked the story as much. In the end I was happy I reread the hobbit and did in the end enjoy it more then the first time I read it some years ago though it is still not one of my favorite books I have a new respect for it.

stories and Studies of Strange Things by Lafcadio Hearn

Stories and studies of strange things by lafcadio hearn was a really interesting collection of what the title says strange stories of mostly ghost and monsters in japan. I found these stories to be really interesting because they aren’t like western ghost stories but of ghost who doesn’t live in another world but in are world and that are still living. These stories kind of blur the line because spirits are and myths are all intertwined in Japanese culture looking at one of the first stories where the man is about to get his head cut of by the samurai and tells all the men around his cussed soul will haunt them all horribly when he passes but the samurai tells him to try and bite the stone to show that the sprit will come back and the man did all the people around where horrified that the sprit would come to get them but it never came but just the shear though of it maybe coming to life horrified them to the point where they thought it was true it shows how engrained it is into there mind.

Monster Island

Monster Island was something I did not think I would have been into I am not normally a fan of zombie books. But the more I read the more I enjoyed this online blog style of a book. I really enjoyed its take on with Gary the only thinking zombie which is something I have really yet to see in most zombie movies or reading also that the zombies are all connected like when he told the fat trucker zombie to go die and the zombie went and died I found that interesting and I also thought it was funny that the zombie fighting him for the meat was a pretty stereo typical zombie the trucker/redneck zombie. Also I thought it was weird with the girl war lords who are basically the only group that seems to be maintaining there own laws in this lawless time and they are all very young and dressed like school girls and I don’t know it just was odd to me I get extremist groups using young children but the whole school girl outfitters was a little weird but I am happy the story didn’t go into a sexual way with that. Also I took a look at night of the living dead which I thought was wonderful and still a zombie movie today that holds up though some of the acting is not the greatest the lead African American actor really steal the movie for me and really adds a lot of depth and in parts really makes the other actors horrible acting better. In comparison reading a book about zombies and seeing them In a movie normally a movie wins for me but Monster Island is a book I think that can stand on its own against movie like night of the living dead because it gives you detail it gives you suspense in a medium that is hard to with zombies.

Frankenstein

Frankenstein was a book I had never read before this class thought I have seen the movies. But the book is quite wonderful it really makes you think about who is truly the monster is the creature is or human beings there is so much tragedy in this book even before the monster starts killing Frankenstein family and loved ones from the stories of the death of his mother and how the family never really got over it. it paints a dark image. Its also interesting how disconnected Frankenstein is to the world and seems to not notice anything even if its in his way to get to what he wants like marrying Elizabeth though he knew the monster would kill her once the marriage was over he does what he wants. Where as the monster who does commit horrible things really looks at the world and understands it and truly cares about the people though he is driven by rage that he is not apart no matter how hard he try’s to gain expectance for compassion and love he is shunned because of how horrifying he looks it shows kind of how people truly are we fear the differences in people no matter how similar we are if they look different then use they must be evil though the more you learn about him he isn’t evil. But this books shows the evil in men from the hanging on the young girl who had the image from they boy who was murdered in her pocket put there by the monster a girl who had done nothing wrong who family spoke out that she couldn’t have been the killer was hanged by a group of people who just wanted someone to be punished at the cost of someone who was innocent and I have a feeling that is what this story was about pushing the good and the bad because the monster was only killing because the man who had made him would not help him live in peace nor would he truly listen which was a horrible punishment of the creature who just wanted to fit in.

conventions of horror

• spook or way to make you jump
• long anticipation 
• creation of something not from this world
• musical scores for darkness
• fog
• the deformed assistant 
• castle 
• someone of wealth 
• painting with moving eyes
• thunder
• something seems to go wrong 
• some sort of female assistant or lover
• hideousness
• hidden passage ways