Cozette’s Corner, LMST 345 Fall 2020

 My reaction to this story is that it is somehow familiar. Not in the way that Butler stole from someone else her idea, or that this story has been rewritten ad nauseum. I mean it in that Gan's story is something that is very familiar to the average consumer of period romance, and maybe even at some level, the female-hindbrain. This is an arranged marriage between Gan and T'Gatoi, something that was practiced for a majority of human history, across culture and era. T'Gatoi being a literal alien isn't even that strange in this context - humans use that word to describe 'foreigners' after all, and cross culture marriage for the consolidation of power and resources was an extremely prevalent reason for arranged marriages.  Gan's equivocation over accepting T'Gatoi before ultimately accepting is interesting to me. He doesn't care as much as he thinks he does about becoming T'Gatoi's 'bride,' but he is afraid of hosting her young. He's...

Some of the moments in Herland  are absolutely hilarious - the boys being asked if virgin is a word applied to men as well is a double standard that still rings true to this day. But Gilman, though visionary, is very much a product of her time, and her 'utopia' reflects that. For starters, that's not actually a utopia - its a monoculture, much like Japan. Everything is homogenous and stable, with no member thereof actually acting under her own agency; it's a fragile culture, where everyone only acts to the benefits of society as a whole and not for themselves. There is no 'individual,' which obviously comes from Gilman's infatuation with socialism as a concept, and her disillusionment with the gender roles of her time. That's fine and all, but not the solution example she actually thinks it is.  Sometimes when fighting for survival, you're no longer fighting for a right to live but other people who just want to make ends meet. Other people who strugg...

 This book is hilarious when you stop and think about it. The plot is less a story and more a complete dissection of communication and it's plasticity, but it's a book that's carrying the discussion. Thinking about it, the sparsity of Babel-17  is probably a deliberate echo of the apparent epigrammatic language itself. Like, we get only glimpses of the geo-galactic-socio-political background, and absolutely nothing about the 'Invaders' beyond all the connotations behind the word itself. Language is really fascinating, especially when you need to describe  it and its mechanics, because it's like having a mirror try and reflect itself, which gets complicated. Too complicated for the average level of linguistic understanding most people have, which is sad, because the more you understand it, the less you have to use. It compacts on itself even as the meaning behind it expands - paradoxically logical.  English is pretty much one of the most complicated to learn lang...

Total Points: 86 Classes attended: 7 Points: 7 Extra Credit completed: Week 1: The Gothic A Lecture, by David Punter, Week 1: Frankenstein 1931 film, Week 2: Nosferatu 1922 film, Week 3: Best Lecture Series: Godzilla and the Making of a Global Icon, by Dr. William Tsuitusi, Week 4: Cabin in the Woods (2011), directed by Drew Goddard, Week 5: The Witches (audiobook), by Roald Dahl, Week 6: Three Tolkien short stories. Points: 10 Books read: The Picture of Dorian Gray  by Oscar Wilde, Dracula  by Bram Stoker, Perdido Street Station  by China Mieville, The Golden Compass  by Philip Pullman, Akata Witch  by Nnedi Okorafor, Lud-in-the-Mist  by Hope Mirrlees, Trail of Lightning  by Rebecca Roanhorse, Kwaiden  by Lafcadio Hearn, Sirens of Titan  by Kurt Vonnegut, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms  by N.K. Jemison, Warbreaker  by Brandon Sanderson, Soulless by Gail Carriger, and Dune  by Frank Herbert. Poin...

 The past becomes the future is I guess the idea here. And Rebecca Roanhorse brings in a perspective I've never considered and am the better for reading. I actually found it extremely reassuring that the end of the world is a natural process that's happened before. Sure it's chaotic and violent, but that's what change is as it's happening all at once; it eventually settles. Peace returns. People adapt, and stories are passed down. And that's basically why we tell stories, write books and watch movies. We have things we can learn about ourselves and our lives from the experiences of those before us and those different from us. The current market of port-apocalypse young and new adult fiction is distinctly lacking the tradition and pathos of Trail of Lightning. The best  post-apocalypse story I've ever read was Station 11  by Emily St. John Mandel, and it is the other kind of return to tradition. It follows the intersection of lives as touched by art and liter...

 Herbert obviously had a lot of thoughts when he wrote Dune , and now I have a lot of thoughts as well. And it's not really like he did anything new per-say, just extrapolated and taken to their extreme. In the strangeness of prophetic reclamation and centuries of eugenic cultivation under intergalactic imperialism, the humanity of the characters lends us readers a foothold to place ourselves in as we journey through Dune . I kind of get the feeling that Herbert mixed past present and future ideas in creating his world. Feudalism and religious centrism, the natural gas fuel crisis, space travel. Everything stretching and growing into a singularity that can no longer sustain itself and where even in subverting is reinforced. Dune  reads half like a traditional novel and half like a history book, which I feel is fitting for the purposes of this novel. Dune  could have easily been a satire in how it exposes this flawed organization of human priority, but it's not, because th...