Ender's Game

So far, I have found the book "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card to be very interesting. This book is hard to put down just like everything else that we have read in Science Fiction class. The book is about Andrew Wiggins (who was given the nickname 'Ender' by his sister Valentine) a 'Third Child' who was sent into space for military training in case of another attack by alien buggers. In the novel, the government only gives families money to send two children through school except for special cases. Ender's sibilings were both geniuses but Peter was too cruel and Valentine was too sensitive, so his parents had a third child in hopes that he would be a perfect mix of both, and he was. I noticed a few things that reminded me of other pieces we studied in Sci-Fi. The rotating space ship reminded me of in 2001: A Space Odyssey when they did the same thing to stimulate gravity. Also, I notesed the usage of insects as an enemy. Although in this novel, these are alien buggers, but it is still a similar theme to short stories we have read like the Sandkings. I look forward to reading the rest of this book.

The Thing

This week in class we watched the sci-fi horror film, "The Thing". I thought this movie was disturbing, but almost comical. The effects looked really fake which made it kind of funny. I found the plot of the movie interesting. The fact that anyone can have a 'thing' living inside them is strange. A similar idea has been used in other pieces of science fiction, and the idea that people can be living among us with super powers like in the television show Heroes. Also when I was a kid I used to think that my parents were aliens and would un-zip their human exterior while I was sleeping, so this movie reminded me of that. The most memorable moment for me in this movie was when the man he was trying to recesitate's stomach opened up like a mouth and bit his arms off. Strange bloddy tenticals were everywhere and then the thing was lit on fire but the head dripped down the table onto the floor, used its tounge to move away from the flame and sprouted legs. I don't think I will ever forget that image. I also liked how the end of the film ended and you don't know what happens to the only two survivors.

Sandkings

I found the story Sandkings to be extremely disturbing, yet impossible to put down. At the beginning of the story I did not understand what was going on as he was naming strange pets, but the story only got stranger. When Wo first explained the Sandkings to Kress I thought that their abilities were interesting, that they create and live in their own complex community and have their own rulers. Their ability to worship and create intricate portraits out of sand on their castles was another thing that I found intersting. After that, the story took a strange turn. Kress became obsessed with creating wars between the Sandkings and became an evil god to them. What he failed to realize was that they hated him. They expressed this hatred in subtle changes in the scupltures of his face. I found it interesting that they changed the likness of his face with the way that they percieved him. They gave him an evil look because he was starving them and killing them. I thought it was stupid of Kress to kill Cath in the first place, but then he became a killing machine. It was disgusting to me that he kept feeding his friends to the Sandkings. It seemed as if the Sandkings were doing to him what he did to them, they left him caged up in the house without any food and forced him to go crazy. In the end, his cruelty was avenged when he was ultimatly killed by what he thought were the weak Sandkings.

Dinomania

In Stephen J. Gould's essay "Dinomania" he discusses the fact the differences between the movie Jurassic Park and the book. In previous essays that we have read by him, he disscussed how Hollywood 'dumbs down' books into movies for their audience. This is a reoccuring theme in this essay. He talks about how Stephen Spielberg gives Ian Malcolm a small role in the movie, and he talks about the chaos theory only a few times throught the film because this Speilberg thought it to be too complex an idea for movie viewers. This dumbs down the movie and changes the plot and the explanation as to why the park failed the way it did. Also at the end of the book, Hammond and Malcolm died and the park was destroyed but in the movie they both lived and the park was left entact. In the book Hammond was a greedy man, who only cared about money and his death was meant to be ironic, being killed by his own creations and what he fought for as being harmless as the scientists said otherwise. In the movie, Hammond made the park for the enjoyment of children and discovery and lived as a hero. In the book Malcolm was a trendy chaotician who gave long complex speeches about the chaos therory. In the movie, Malcolm was annoying and had few lines. A scene was also added where he places a water droplet on Dr. Sattlers hand, a dumbed down explanation of the chaos theory. Another topic that Gould disscussed is how he was thought of as strange as a kid because of an interest in dinosaurs, but now, dinosaurs are popular. I thought that this was an interesting point because I do not understand what brings along 'dinomania' at some periods in time but not others, or any trends for that matter.

2001: A Space Odyssey

I found the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey difficult to watch. The scenes were long and drawn out with little diolauge. It took me awhile to understand that the entire movie showed the evolution of man, which is why the movie started with apes. I thought that after the scene with the apes, and before the strange ending, that the movie was good. It showed typical science fiction elements, like the computer trying to take over and space travel. I liked the simplicity of H.A.L. being just a circle with a red light in the middle. After awhile this design somehow seemed evil with the glowing red that is always watching and the soft, calm, slow-moving voice given to the computer. The concept that a computer can rule everything even to the point of killing people is a scary concept because this could happen in the near future. This idea is also shown in the science fiction movie I, Robot where the supercomputer, V.I.K.I, manipulated the robots to become evil. Once the movie passed the point where Dave 'killed' H.A.L, it became strange. He landed his pod in a fourth dimension and saw himself age until death. Finally, he becomes the 'star child' and is shown as a baby next to earth. While watching the film, I thought this was weird and I did not understand it at all.

Jurassic Park: Book vs. Movie

I enjoyed the book Jurassic Park that we read in class but just like every book that is turned into a movie, the story line is twisted by hollywood movie makers. While I was reading the book I couldn't help but think of the movie the entire time, constantly comparing every scene and how it differentiates from the motion picture. In the novel, the main predator was the velociraptor. However, in the movie Steven Speilberg changed the villan of the story to the tyranosaurous rex. This difference stood out to me the most while comparing the pieces. I could not understand why Speilberg would want to make this change. Is a t-rex simpler for an audience to understand than a velociraptor? Is it scarier? Would chaning the predator from the sleek, vicious and inteligent raptor to a large and powerful t-rex really help the movie in the box office? I still cannot figure this out. It seems that all that movie makers care about is what will improve ticket sales so that they can make more money and they do not care if they change a piece of literature to do so. This is shown in countless movies and it is an issue we have disscussed in class from studying Frankenstein as well as reading essays by Stephen Gould. These issues put aside, I still enjoy both the book and the movie. While the movie keeps the audience captivated by the exciting adventure, action, and science fiction elements the book challanges the audience intellectually while still keeping you on the edge of your seat.