TidesHaas-Lit

Read:   The Left Hand of Darkness  by Ursula K. LeGuin or  Babel 17  by Samuel R. Delaney. There are selected short stories on the course resource page. Post a response on your blog. Writing Assignment:  The readings for this week emphasize the fiction of ideas. What ideas or mind experiments were explored in the works you read for this week? What were some of the implications or consequences of those ideas for those of us living today? Remember to add a comment to another student's blog. Challenging Short Novel choice:  Read  Accelerando  by Charles Stross (available free). In Class Movies:  Dark City  dir. Alex Proyas ,  A Scanner Darkly dir. Richard Linklater (2006) Featured   Movie:  Farenheit 451  dir. Francois Truffaut (1966) or  Alphaville  dir. Jean-Luc Godard (1965)

Novel choice:  Margaret Atwood's  Oryx and Crake . Post a response on your blog. Alternate Reading:  There are a number of short stories on the course resource page that can be read for this week's assignment. In-Class Reading:  We will be reading two stories by Italo Calvino in class this week,  All at One Point  and  The Aquatic Uncle . Writing Assignment:  This week we are attempting to distinguish between writing in genre and writing that may use elements of genre but that is essentially literary. Discuss this question in relation to the work(s) you read for this week. Do you think this is an important or necessary distinction, or not? Is your experience of the text affected by these questions? Remember to add a comment to another student's blog. Featured   Movie:   Existenz (1999)  dir. David Cronenberg

1. What is your reaction to the text you just read? - This was the oddest thing I have read during my entire life. It was filled with weird undertones of fetishes. It left me feeling disturbed and honestly confused as to what the hell I was reading. The formatting and layout were fine but the overall story while interesting was just simply not my taste in writing.  The creature design while descriptive in the story was still unimaginable and honestly lazily wrote, I still have no idea what I am supposed to be seeing. A worm, a snake? what?  I believe it would have been better if we could have established the creature's appearance more so than just "it had a lot of legs". That was lazy on the authors part and while we did receive some interesting descriptions, that the creature moved like water or could cage people in. It was overall still underwhelming and more of a chore to read.  It all felt a bit forced like i was being made to read someones weird night fantasy? 

Read  the novel  Snow Crash  by Neal Stephenson or the novel  The Anubis Gates  by Tim Powers. Alternatively, read selected short stories on the course resource page. Post a response to what you read on your blog. Writing Assignment:  The sub-genres we are reading this week deal in augmented, altered or alternative realities. Discuss the types of reality rendered in the works you read and watched for this week's assignment. Describe the effects of these realities on the narrative and the implications for the presumed reader. Please remember to add a comment to another student's blog. In-Class Movies:   Ghost in the Shell II  (2004) dir. Mamoru Oshii;  Iron Sky (2012) dir. Timo Vuorensola, Blade Runner (1982)  dir. Ridley Scott Featured   Movie:   Paprika  (2006) dir. Satoshi Kon

The story   “The Drowned Giant” Has been one of the more interesting topics that I have read about simply because it is so detached from everything. It created a sense of unsettling wonder through its simplistic topic being literally about a drowned giant who’s corpse washes up on the beach. It is such an interesting and fantasy like the thing to happen yet no one seems to be in the wonder which left me with more questions than anything. I was more wondering why the people found this so normal? They didn’t have the same reactions as what I would expect a normal human to have and that created a wonderful sense of disturbing fantasy through the use of clinical detail and its detached tone. I found this one of the most enjoyable text, not just because of its short length but because it got me thinking and planning my own fantasy world. The weirdness of it all sparked the desire for me to create and that is what I think all work should do. Create a burning sensation t