Maria Caraballo: literature of horror, fantasy and sci fi.

Song in a minor key In this short theres little to more than a single moment. It feels like the space outlaw Northwest Smith is taking a break. It seems like a tiny character study about what this man really wants, to go back to his past. We see the contrast of the green earth and clovers put next to the thought of killing a man. For some reason  this made me think about the concept of an outlaw, expat, or anyone who has to leave their home in a forceful way. We see a lot of this in sci fi, a character that’s in a planet that’s not theirs. Or a character who’s planet is destroyed. It seems like getting kicked out is a part of sci fi. We can see this in some of the most recent star wars movies. 

The Oceans at the end of the lane This took me a really long time to finish, BUT I MADE IT! I personally love the overlapping of magical realism and contemporary fantasy. I’m less knowledgeable of Anglo-Saxon literature, than I am of Latin American, Spanish and European works. At my school we would read a lot of magical realis, works like 100 years of solitude and Isabel Allende. This book is kind of a mixture of magical realism and the classic fairy tales. The story is set in a more “believable setting”. Unusual things are happening to seemingly normal people. It’s when he meets Lettie that things start getting weird. The classic fairy tale elements are the different creatures like the fleas and varmints. The real part is the disconnect the protagonist has between his childhood and adulthood. It is suggested that his heart was eaten by the hunger birds, and its slowly growing back. This symbolizes the loss of purity and innocence when leaving childhood. Although The oceans at t...

This story is more of a conglomeration of moments than a regular narrative, it weaves together a spirit of memory and the contrast between reality and recordings. The tone of the story is very peculiar. The main character has just gone through a breakup, his girlfriend just left him and he finds a hologram rose, a postcard and an “Apparent Sensory Perception” tape. He breaks the postcard into pieces and then watches the tape, which has mostly been wiped out. This little short story reminded me a lot of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless mind. Mainly because we are living the memories of Parker, but through a more lens-y kind of view, instead of being there as a character. The whole memory erasing is very similar a concept,  it made me realize how some parts of that movie might fall into some sci fi genre codes. This part particularly stuck with me “Thinking: We're each other's fragments, and was it always this way? That instant of a European trip, deserted in the gray sea of wi...

I've read Phillip K Dick's work beforehand, and this is classic sci fi, throwing the reader into the story with no previous exposition. Phillip K Dick’s work tends to deal with hallucinations, group projections and the authenticity of humans. In Android’s we see this present in the humanity of the replicants vs the humans. What makes feeling and conscience exclusively human? While in this piece the struggle seems to be what is a real memory and fantasy. I like that without having to lift a single finger he is what keeps Earth safe from an alien invasion. His lifelong childhood fantasy manifested in his psyche and became a reality. I love how one act of kindness makes all of his past as a secret agent seem meaningless. Quail's childish thought of mercy made the aliens feel mercy in turn. The message seems to be a commentary on the senseless violence of war and how it fades away and moral solutions endure. The slow reveal of Quail’s past is also part of sci fi genre code...

What an awesome read. I decided to listen to this one, since one of the recordings had Olivia Colman in the cast. Dirk's own profession is reflective of this too, a holistic detective, he refuses to discard any possible scenario that could've led to a crime. His attitude towards how everyone perceives him is oddly positive and he seems to remain calm whenever he encounters someone who questions his job. Like the cyberpunk pieces, we get thrown into the world without experiencing much exposition of worldbuilding in the introductory chapters.  I was also left wondering where this fits in the sci fi genre, there's fantastical characters like Thor and Odin, yet nobody believes they're real. I guess this is the aspect where the time period is less important than the present moment that’s occurring in the piece. They’re present in the modern world, there are gods in the Heathrow airport, goblins chasing down executives. I really enjoyed this aspect of this piece, I kept laug...

 A Clockwork Orange.  I read it with a little background information on it. I saw the Kubrick movie when I was about 15. What stuck out to me the most was the themes of choice, and also the controversy of the last chapter. Alex DeLarge is a violent young man, he gets chosen for the Ludovico experiments specifically because he killed a man. The violence and rape is very shocking and hard to read, since Alex and his gang are not the only nadsats partaking in the old ultraviolence. The question the book presents about authority and violence is very hard to answer. Is taking away choice from evil? Would the Ludovico treatment ever work? Alex represents humanity's the right to choose even if its a twisted choice, if we take away the right to choose then what are we? an organic machine, but is that better for  the good of society? I particularly enjoyed the Nadsat. It takes an interesting approach when it comes to slang. Combining two languages and creating new words, this ha...

15 years: Honestly I am an irresponsible optimist. For me things are great now, but I come from one of the worst places on Earth, so whats great for me could be bad for a first world person. I hope everything will be great. I believe in humanity and the power of technology, and hey, maybe we could fix things. Most of the people I know are environmentally responsible, so I have hope things will be better. I hope the entertainment industry changes, that women are more represented. I still think we are far away from the classic cyber-human adjustments.. Stuff like Neuralink does freak me out... No thank you.  I hope by that point in time dictators will be gone, they just ruin everything. I really hope  we find a way to make dogs live longer. Electric cars will be the norm at this point, it won't be a luxury anymore. 50 years I hope my constant use of sunscreen pays off when I am 70!. I wonder how architecture would look like at this point....Phones, animals, laptops w...

The unusual bond between humans and Tlic is very strange. It seems like the Tlic are using the Terrans for their own purposes in exchange for not. They're not allowed to have any weapons and depend on the Tlic for protection as long as they need them. The protagonist, a young boy named Gan, seems to take the role as a reproductive slave in this alien society. Women are usually the ones being sexually exploited, but its not the case for this one. Humans seem to be bred for hosting purposes, they live in a specific place and have a  Tlic assigned to each family.  The Tlic have also eased the humans into actually believing this is their purpose, they don't hide what happens when the humans "give birth". In the end we have a human who questions the system, but ends up giving up to the system. Or does he? Gan says he wanted to keep T Gatoi for himself.  1- What is your reaction to the text you just read? Mainly disgust, the Tlic C section was really hard to read....

I remember when I first heard about this piece was through one of my old high school friend. She told me this was her favorite book because of Erin Morgensterns way of describing things immersed her into the world. I see how her style of writing and detail shine through,  Le Cirque de Rêves feels like a real place and it drags you in, the way the environments are described, it feels as if everything is essential and beautiful. Her writing style is very lyrical, intricate and elegant. The themes of children suffering the consequences of the corrupt older generations is very present. Marco and Celia could be considered victims of a broken corrupted, system of rivalry. They don't understand what the system and how they're going to be put up against each other. I see how this piece can be similar to Harry Potter, how  some of the main conflicts come from mudbloods vs purebred wizards and how that defines your role in society, imposed by the wizards that came before them....

My oh my do I love reading Tolkien, his writing has a sense of whimsy and wonder I don't really find in other fantasy works. We talk a lot about the hero's journey, but not enough about what happens before. The Hobbit speaks about conformity in our homes, but the home is never demonized or berated. It is described with love and beauty, Bilbo cares about his home because conformity is part of his identity. Before we embark on our own journey through life we are the same way. We want to stay at home and live with our family forever. That's not how life works. However, The Hobbit never demonizes the home, it is a part of life, a nest, our childhood home. The home has many memories attached to it, and its not something bad. Bilbo's conformity, also ties into his refusal to let new people into his life. Some of us have loud family members who every time they come over they rock our routine. At first, we find them annoying but later we enjoy ourselves, let go and be free ...

This book was quite a fun read. I was immersed in the magical, colorful Nigerian culture presented. I was more familiar with it because my own Latin American culture has African influences in it. So I did recognize a few parallels there. Like the masks and knives. There's no cloaks wands and house elves, it's a Truer "raw" witchcraft we can totally find in the world today.  A really cool element of this novel is how Sunny's power resides within her, we discussed it in class, but after finishing up the novel I noticed how present it was. Her name, her personality, her physical appearance, and her leopard self are all interconnected with who she is. Sunny, a being who's meant to shine bright, glow. Another reflection of culture is how the characters act. They are headstrong and mature, well all of them are leopard people, but this also is affected by the fact that the culture they grew up in is harsher. Sunny's father hits her, he's harsher on her than...

For this  I couldn't really decide which one to pick. We had some movies, graphic novels and I just couldn't decide which one to pick. So I tried watching two of the movies. An overall theme I saw within these pieces is the parallel between lust and vampires needing blood. In Andy Warhol's Dracula we see it, with the Di Fiore girls and Mario, in contrast to the count's obsessive need for blood, who in the presence of blood reacts like Mario does when he's with the girls. The Fearless vampire killers had more stereotypes than Andy Warhol's Dracula. There was a bunch of garlic present for a good chunk of the movie.Everyone's aware theres a vampire in town.  Andy Warhol's Dracula was different. Dracula was whiny and all he did was complain for a good chunk of the movie. Anton was doing the dirty work for him. It was also a strange class commentary disguised as a vampire movie... Dracula somehow represented the ultimate power in the household, since he ha...

When thinking about balance in nature, and life Shunkin and Sasuke's story reflects this concept the best. We start by getting background information of Shunkin's social class. The narrator lets us know they aren't normal by previous standards. They're pale, skinny and shut inside their homes, when supposedly they should be outside.  There's no stereotypical happy endings in these stories. Shunkin and Sasuke both die, they are never formally recognized as a couple. They never feel remorse for their children. It isn't up until both of them are blind, and one of them disfigured, that they find a sort of balance. When both of them make a sacrifice, mainly, a sacrifice that lowers them in the societal hierarchy. Shunkin only shows slivers of good temperament, she has complete control over a man. She is older, he is submissive.  Both of the characters break our western expectations, Shunkin is the complete opposite of the gothic heroine. It defied my expectation...

I’ve never quite read something like this. The most similar book I can name is Do android’s dream of electric sheep? And I can’t quite pinpoint why. One characteristic of this read that I found interesting was the coldness of the protagonist. We never know her name, and she slowly starts to reveal her personal life to the reader. I like the fact that we never find about the character’s names, it makes everything even weirder and creepier. This also parallels with how her opinions on her husband change. She thinks he is shallow in the beginning, but discovers that there was an inner life to him by reading his journal. I didn’t know if this counted as horror, since I wasn’t scared for most of the time I was reading this piece. As it went along, it became scarier and scarier. When she found the human cells in animals. The horror/thriller of this book lies within the conspiratorial and biological elements. The supernatural being the entirety of area x, its mysteries and what happened ...

This is my first time ever reading an HP Lovecraft story. At first glance, I can feel the gothic style of writing in this piece. I've read Frankenstein before, so the word choice and rhythm of the piece feel familiarly gothic.  As soon as I finished the piece, I immediately thought it felt like a dream sequence, not quite horror, just disturbing. The passage of time feels relative, I can't help but compare it to Frankenstein, in the sense that both main characters in these pieces have a desire for the forbidden. Victor wants to create life, Elton wants to go to a forbidden place no one has returned from.  The piece is also very straightforward with it's message.. It seems like Lovecraft was letting us know that pursuing pleasures and wonders is worthless. The melodrama of Basil fantasizing and thinking with such passion about the places he cant reach, again, comparing it to Frankenstein. Victor wants to do something similar, the impossible, play God. There’s recurrin...

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