Log #15

I cannot believe Science Fiction class is almost over!  I am really glad that I chose to take this class and got to experience this great genre more.  The literature and films that we have watched have definitely broadened my mind about the wide range of works that are considered “Science Fiction.”  Among some of my favorite films that we have watched are Inception, Jurassic Park, Gattaca, and Young Frankenstein.  I especially enjoyed Gattaca and Jurassic Park because of their connections to biology and genetics, which I think I may possibly want to major in.  Inception had a very interesting plot, and I loved how it left you hanging at the end.  As for Young Frankenstein, that movie is just hilarious.

I also really enjoyed both Ender’s Game and Jurassic Park, and think I will likely read the rest of both series.  It was very hard for me to get into both novels, but once I did, I couldn’t put them down.  While I would normally pick up a straight fiction book for pleasure reading, this course has definitely opened my eyes to the world of sci fi, and I think I will continue exploring the genre through books and films.

Log #14

We recently finished watching “Contact,” a film directed by Carl Sagan, and are in the middle of “District 9,” directed by Neil Blomkampp.  Though they are extremely different films, they share a common theme of aliens, and I found the differences in the way they portray extraterrestrial life very interesting.  In “Contact,” Dr. Elizabeth Arroway detects a signal coming from outerspace.  Throughout the film, Arroway fights to be the one to try to visit these extraterrestrials, but is barred by the fact that she is not religious.  She finally gets to go in the end of the movie, but what seems like an 18 day journey to her lasted just a few seconds according to viewers on Earth.  She is isolated and made to look stupid when she stands by her 18 day journey claim.

In “District 9,” aliens inhabit the Earth, among people in District 9.  Tensions are extremely high, and the film includes a good deal of violence.  Main character Wilkus van der Mewre is infected with alien fluid, and his arm begins to transform into an alien claw.  He escapes from the hospital, where they planned to do experiments on him, and ends up taking refuge in one of the alien internment camps, and befriending one prawn who may be able to help him fix his arm.

One of the major differences in “Contact” and “District 9” is the depiction of the alien race.  In “Contact,” the aliens appear in a form that seems pleasant to whoever visits them.  In the case of Arroway, she saw her dad, who has been dead since she was a child.  In “District 9,” the aliens come to Earth, and are depicted as grotesque, bug-like creatures.  Overall, I enjoyed both movies, but could have done without some of the violence in “District 9.”

Log #13 (Film Log)

Today, we finished watching “Vanilla Sky,” the second film for our project, and I thought it was a pretty good movie.  We had started watching it last week, and after only watching half of it, I wasn’t sure how it fit into the science fiction genre at all, but the ending provided quite an interesting plot twist.  Daniel Aames, the main character, falls in love with a girl he meets named Sofia.  Unfortunately, his crazy ex-girlfriend, Julie Gianni, drives him off a bridge, killing Julie and leaving David with an extremely disfigured face.  He wakes up in the street and sees Sofia after getting drunk at a party, and they start a happy life together.  He later finds out, however, that he signed a contract with Life Extension, a company that freezes people and puts them in a “Lucid Dream,” where they can be happy and later be awakened.  He discovers that his entire life since waking up on the street that morning is part of his “Lucid Dream,” and that everything since has happened of his own imagination.  He then jumps off a building to end his lucid dream, and the last scene is just an eye blinking.

This ambiguous ending to “Vanilla Sky” is similar to the cliffhanger at the end of “Inception,” the other film we watched for the project.  After doing some research online, one possible explanation of Vanilla Sky is that the entire movie was one dream, as evidenced by the sticker on David’s car that says 2-30-01 (February 30^th does not exist), and the “Lucid Dream” was a second dream within a dream.  This is very similar to the main concept in inception of multiple layers of dreams.  On the whole, I was very glad that we did this project and got to see these two films. 

Log #12 (Film Log)

My group for the film project has decided to watch the movies “Inception” and “Vanilla Sky,” both of which have a common theme of sub consciousness and dreaming.  Today, we watched “Inception,” and I found it to be a very exciting film.  In order to implant an original idea in a target person’s mind, the team of experts that Cobb compiles must go deep into the subconscious mind of the dreamer.  To do so, they must go into multiple layers of dreams, or a dream within a dream within a dream etc.  The movie is a thrilling action film because the team only has so much time in each dream level to complete the task and arrange a “kick” to take them a level back towards reality.

The ending of “Inception” leaves you hanging, wondering if they have returned to reality or are still in a dream.  Each extractor carries a totem that helps them differentiate between dreams and reality.  At the end of the flim, Cobb’s totem, a spinning top, is spinning but wobbling, and you do not get to see whether or not it falls.  I feel I would have to view the film again before I could really take an opinion on whether or not they have returned to reality.  Overall, I thought it was a very interesting film and I would definitely want to see it again to understand things that I may have previously missed.

Log #11

Now that I am about halfway through the Groves Science fiction course, I definitely feel I have gained a much greater respect for the genre as a whole.  The broad range of topics covered by science fiction – from space travel and aliens, to gruesome insects, to futuristic technology – is incredible and in my opinion unparalleled by any other genre.  The different topics of the books and films we have covered in just the first five weeks of the term are extremely diverse.  Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton explored the cloning of extinct species from dinosaur DNA found in the blood of biting insects trapped in amber.  “The Day the Earth Stood Still” conveyed the idea of more advanced races of human beings on other planets and interplanetary peace.  “Sandkings” by George Martin was a story of exotic creatures that grew out of control.  No two science fiction works that we have read or viewed have had exactly the same elements of the genre, and I think that makes the genre that much more interesting.

Because science fiction is so broad, however, encompassing a wide range of themes and topics, I think it is definitely possible to like some elements of science fiction and not others.  For example, I really enjoy time travel movies like the “Back to the Future” trilogy, but really do not like horror movies or insect-ridden works.  Overall, though, I am extremely glad I took this course because I have been exposed to a number of new perspectives and have grown a newfound appreciation for the genre.

Log #10

This week we finished watching “Jurassic Park,” the film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the novel by Michael Crichton.  “Loosely based” would be more like it.  As Stephen Jay Gould points out in his essay “Dinomania,” Spielberg changes many things from the novel in his film, and even inverts some of the major themes from the novel.  One major change that Spielberg makes is ignoring Crichton’s colorful rendition of dinosaur looks.  Spielberg instead reverts to the scaly green-brown look that the general public imagines of dinosaurs, trying to appeal to his audience.

The central theme of Crichton’s novel is the idea of chaos theory, and the unpredictability of a park full of extremely powerful extinct animals, which ultimately foreshadows the island’s destruction.  In the film, however, Ian Malcolm, a mathematician in the novel but “chaotician” in the movie, seems to be a less central character and chaos theory seems to be a minor addition rather than a central theme.  Though I thought the film was good of its own merit, I felt it was a poor rendition of an outstanding book.  Even with the effects of realistic animated dinosaurs, I felt that the images Crichton put in the reader’s head were so elaborate that the film actually skewed what I had imagined while reading the novel.

Log #9

Carved faces on castles, flamethrowers, shamblers and maws.  The short story “Sandkings” by George Martin really does sound like it’s from another planet.  Simon Kress, the main character, is very fond of exotic pets, and decides to get a colony of sandkings from a neighboring planet to amuse himself.  He becomes so obsessed with making his new pets war that he starves them before adding a small amount of food to their tank and watching the ensuing battles over the scraps of food.  The sandkings take over his house, and he ends up offering up his friends as sacrifices to keep the maws, the leaders of each of the four colored “tribes” of sandkings, content.  Simon Kress runs away in the end, only to find the fourth castle of the orange tribe, which he had thought to be dead, and finally falls to the same fate as his friends.

I enjoyed the story “Sandkings,” though the idea of exotic pets making castles all over someone’s property was a bit difficult to imagine.  I thought Kress deserved what he got in the end because of the cruel way that he treated his pets, starving them to make them fight, and the sacrifices he made of his friends.  I thought it was also very clever of the author to use the sandking’s carvings on the castle walls to portray their feelings toward Kress as well as his feelings toward them.  By describing the changes in the carvings, Martin shows how the sandkings and Kress’s perception of each other change over the course of the story.