Winter Term Sci-Fi

2004-01-27T10:31:00.000-08:00

Class 13

Today we discussed different types of SF and what we learned about SF. Many of us didn't realize that the genre was so large and that it encompassed so many different things. Many of us thought that SF was only for geeky Star Trek fans, but we were wrong. Many people enjoy SF, and I have gained a new appreciation for it.

2004-01-23T13:05:00.000-08:00

Class 12

Today we discussed the short story "Getting Real." I enjoyed this story and thought it was very interesting. I didn't consider it much of a SF story until we discussed it class and applied the rules of SF to it. We then used dreamweaver and worked on our webpages more which is something that I really needed time to do. Dreamweaver is becoming easier to use and I enjoy using it.

2004-01-22T12:42:00.000-08:00

Class 12

The short story "Burning Chrome" was much easier to understand than Gibson's Neuromancer. It was more simplistic and I enjoyed it more. Trekkies was an extremely funny movie that brought up many points throughout life in general. The fact that people wanted to express points such as all people should be treated equally were good points, but I couldn't get past the fact how different these people were from me and people that I know.

2004-01-21T12:48:00.000-08:00

Class 11

Today we discussed Neuromancer. The book became clearer and I understood it more when we broke it down into different topics. Everyone's opinions of what different parts of the book meant and how they interpreted different events helped me to understand what exactly I had read. This book was hard for me to understand and I'm glad it's done. We also discussed different aspects of the Matrix and how it related to Neuromancer.

2004-01-21T12:45:00.000-08:00

Class 10

Today we discussed chapters 1-16 of Neuromancer. This book is really confusing to me and I don't understand it. It jumps around too much and I never know who is talking and what is happening to who. We then watched The Matrix and many similarities became clear between the movie and Neuromancer.

2004-01-16T13:18:00.000-08:00

Class 9

Today we worked on our short stories. Ours is about destruction of Earth and impowerment of the homeless. Don't want to go into too much detail and ruin the story. We really didn't do much because it took us forever to think of a topic for the story. Before the stories we took a quiz and discussed the short story "Bears Discovered Fire." We had to figure out the point of the story which was almost impossible because there really wasn't a point.

2004-01-15T13:28:00.000-08:00

Class 7

Men in Black dealt with the issue of race and SF. Everything in the movie dealt with being black because everything was black. The issue of originally having two white males as the lead roles and then having Will Smith was interesting to see in the movie. Gender also fit into the movie as we have previously read about as the coroner woman was initiated into the MIB in the end.

2004-01-14T12:52:00.000-08:00

Class 7

Today we further discussed the movie Star Trek and then discussed the short story "Boobs" and an artcle about gender in SF. We could have discussed gender in SF for days on such topics as the styles of writing SF that women use, their characters, and their status among the men in SF. Many topics did not want to be approached due to the sensitivity of the matter such as making women seem inferior. The article about gender mainly focused on the movie "Alien" and the short story "The Left Hand of Darkness." The short story "Boobs" was interesting in the fact that it focused on a female character yet she transformed into a wolf. Previous traditions of a warewolf transformation focused on a male character making the transformation, but it was interesting to see it switch to a female.

2004-01-13T13:21:00.000-08:00

Class 6

Star Trek is a SF movie dealing with space travel, cyborgs, time travel, and other civilizations/worlds. The Borg tried to take over the enterprise and most of the movie was spent battling the Borg. This movie did ask "what if" and did give examples of possible futures. It is an easy to follow example of SF that is most commonly thought of when most people think of SF.

2004-01-12T18:02:00.000-08:00

Class 5

Today we discussed our short stories, which out of all of them I enjoyed Blood Music the best. It dealt with a topic that could very well occur today. A team of organisms that breaks out and takes over Earth rapidly is not at all far from possible. I think I enjoyed this story more since it was more realistic. We also worked on dreamweaver which I think will end up being a fun project once I pick a topic and start working on the real thing.

2004-01-12T17:49:00.000-08:00

Class 4

Blade Runner was very boring to me and did not hold my attention. It was, however, interesting to see L.A. in the future as it probably will be, dismal and polluted. The story line of the movie was not very interesting, but it did depict SF. Everyone on Earth was moving away to Off-world places because they had basically destroyed Earth and the movie focused on Deckard tracking down and killing four replicants on Earth since it was illegal for them to even be there. This does make me think of what would happen if cloning were made legal since the replicants were basically clones of humans, but were used as slaves. That topic proves that SF is used to create possible futures, also. So one good point of the movie is that it helped tie some of this SF stuff together.

2004-01-08T13:03:00.000-08:00

Class 3

The topic of technology was brought up in class several times today. An interesting concept of our ignorance to the capabilities of technology also arose. We, as people, tend to take technology for granted, but it can lead to distructive things such as in the case of "There will come soft rains" by Bradbury. In the story of "Robbie" by Isaac Asimov, the portrayal of attachment to technology by humans was expressed by a little girl named Gloria having a best friend that was a robot. These two stories brought a realization our lack of realization of how much we do use technology.

2004-01-07T13:11:00.000-08:00

Class 2

Today was an interesting class. We discussed our short stories by Shelley and Poe that we had read the previous night. Discussing them in depth in groups and as a class allowed me to understand the material better and I thought that it was a really good method of learning the material. Class is starting to get interesting, though there is a moderate amount of reading to do. We began to learn how to use dreamweaver today which confused me, but once we get into it more it should be easier. Hopefully, tomorrow we will talk about the material again so that I can better understand it.

2004-01-06T11:35:00.000-08:00

Class 1

This class sounds like what I thought it would be now that I am actually in the class. It seems like it would be interesting, but we'll see once we get into the class more. I like the fact that we are only reading short stories and that we get to watch some interesting movies. This is very different from any class that I've taken here at Elon so I'm about to experience something new.