Revision: World War Z

One thing that's remarkable about all speculative literature, including horror, fantasy, and science fiction, is its ability to use its completely imaginary elements to help answer deeper questions about who we are as a collective human race, what it means to be human, and what value life holds. By being able to carry out problems we face past the bounds of the reality we experience, we can gain a greater understanding of them. A good example of this is the novel World War Z, written by Max Brooks. This novel has taken the rather simplistic myth of the zombie and used it to explore mankind's large-scale response to a nearly unstoppable force. Zombies were a great choice for this theme, as they present themselves as the perfectly unsympathetic enemy: they're already dead, they can't think, they have no sense of empathy, and their only motivation is to feast on the flesh (and brains) of humans. While a human in a zombie story will usually be some shade of moral gray, a zombie will always be pitch black, and thus the audience will feel no remorse when the main character smashes their face in with a shovel. This intrinsic property of the traditional zombie myth helps to foster a militant sense of moral absolutism in the characters. As the situation becomes more and more desolate, the measures taken to ensure at least some survival of the human race become more and more drastic and previously held moral values become less and less important. People in charge decided to use half the world's population as bait for the other half. Others resort to cannibalism to live. Brooks is trying to say that when our lives are on the line, a surprising amount of things we previously valued and viewed with high prestige become very trivial. While this message could also be conveyed in a regular war story, the question that a zombie story answers is slightly different. While a war story can answer the question, “How far have we gone?”, World War Z answers the question, “How far can we go?”

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Having seen the movie and read the first four books of the Hitchhiker's Guide series, I enjoyed the opportunity to revisit this story once again in radio form. It's interesting to compare the different formats of the story. They all seem to stick pretty close to each other for the first half of the series and drift off from there. Even the same auxiliary jokes are preserved from format to format in the first few episodes. One “addition” I noticed (I guess it's an omission, since the radio series came first) was the character Lady Cynthia Fitzmelton, who appears in the bar scene before Earth is destroyed. The humor did lose a bit of its charm though from the book, as a lot of the non-dialogue descriptions were simply not there yet, such as the digital watches gag (one of the better jokes from the first book, in my opinion). The radio version also seems like it has less channels to communicate humor with than the other formats. Radio misses out on the visual gags that the TV series and movie get (my favorite being the gags in the “Don't Think” sequence of the movie), and due to pacing/length, misses a lot of content that the book receives. These shortcomings aside, I enjoyed experiencing the root of the whole Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.

Oryx and Crake

Oryx and Crake takes a really interesting look at what our current society would be like if it was pushed not too much further from where it already is right now. The dystopia that the author creates is unsettling because of how closely it mirrors reality. I enjoyed what I read of the novel, since in addition to the overall world and concepts, the writing style and humor is enjoyable as well. One of the more clever puns in the story I enjoyed was the company name "OrganInc Farms". Another aspect of the book that I liked was how the inner conflicts in the characters was very believable. Snowman/Jimmy's desire for love/approval was handled particularly well. The only parts of the story that I would consider unsuccessful are just specific technical details about this dystopia that break the believability of the rest of the novel. An example of this is the games that Jimmy and Crake find themselves playing for fun. If Jimmy is being portrayed as a disenchanted and generalized example of American youth at that time, he would probably spend his time on games that incorporated immersive and real-time interaction rather than board games. Luckily, these parts don't occur that often within the novel.

Primer

It was cool how realistically Primer handled the concept of time travel, and how the film deliberately avoided dumbing down any of its technical aspects. Although the approach didn't always help contribute to the cinematic and storytelling qualities of the movie, the experience was very fresh. I'll begin by describing the more realistic elements of the movie that separated it from most science fiction films I have seen. The people who discover time traveling actually behave like people who might discover time traveling. By trade, they're really intelligent when it comes to logic and science, and the decisions and planning they make throughout the movie reflect that (their sense of morals and ethics is a different matter). Another element that adds to the realism is the limitations set on time traveling. Since only the objects inside the machine experience time travel, you can only travel back to when the machine was turned on. You're also limited by the supply of oxygen you can bring with you, so the movie sets the time travel window to around 6 hours. The movie also obscures many of the layers of time travel that occur in it, to put the viewers in a similar state of confusion as the main characters. While this addition was certainly an interesting experiment, I think that it ultimately caused me to lose any connection with the characters' thoughts or motivations. After reading some explanations of the plot online (it's nearly impossible to fully understand the plot structure upon first viewing) and watching the film again, the themes of control and greed become more apparent and you can start to see the statement the director was attempting to make. However, the mental model required to reach this understanding does take a substantial amount of time to comprehend, and loses some of the initial punch of the movie in the process.

Johnny Mnemonic

Johnny Mnemonic was pretty cool. It was a short story in the cyberpunk genre. It had a lot of cool things about it. One thing I liked about the short story was its pace. The story went at a really fast speed, and it built a rich and dense world for the story without needing any exposition. One thing I like in both fiction and nonfiction is “jumping straight into the action,” where the jargon of the world/subject is in full effect. When it comes to nonfiction, I'll usually consult additional reference if I get lost, but with fast-paced fiction, things usually seem to work out without outside resources. Even within the first paragraph, lots of cultural aspects of the world are established without being explicitly told to the audience. People are divided into “technical” and “crude” groupings. The protagonist falls into the technical category, but is making himself appear crude. He's prepared a shotgun that he's planning to take somewhere. Information can be stored in objects called microfiches. The meaning of all the terminology is clearly implied through its surrounding context, and any remaining ambiguity stays in the background instead of hampering the story.

Dune

Dune was definitely not a quick read. While I gave it a good try, I was not able to finish the thing. I don't really find myself drawn to reading politics, and that's what the majority of the portion I read felt like. The pace of the book was painfully slow, and although there were elements that seemed interesting that were going to be explored later in the book, it seemed as if it could take months or years to arrive at them. When the Baron was explaining the setup of the plot to his nephew, I. The worst example of pacing and politics I encountered during my reading attempt was when the Baron was explaining the setup of the plot to his nephew, Feyd-Rautha. I can understand why Feyd-Rautha was constantly growing more and more impatient in that scene, since I was waiting for that scene to end with greater and greater anticipation as well. In almost direct opposition to my personal tastes, the book spends an awfully long time on exposition rather than focusing on the present moment, and that scene highlights it especially. The Baron and Piter have a very extensive discussion about the politcs of Arrakis, and the only thing of real meaning revealed (given what we know so far in the story) is that Paul is in danger because they're plotting to kill him for political reasons. In my opinion, the specifics of the politics of a society only matter in a story when they directly affect the characters in a meaningful way. Even then, I feel it's only necessary to only reveal elements that pertain to the characters, and omit explaining the rest.

Starship Troopers

Woop gotta finish this!

Warbreaker

I wasn't particularly fond of the novel I read for the "Emerging Directions in Traditional Fantasy" week. The novel I chose was Warbreaker, by Brandon Sanderson. While it was great that the author was offering the novel for free, the story was written in a way that felt targeted towards quite a younger audience than college students, even though some of the content in the book was fairly adult. Admittedly, the story kept me reading page after page, but it took no effort in subtlety with its storytelling devices. It's difficult for me to specifically target things I didn't like about the book, since the list is so expansive. For starters, the characters lack depth (this was probably at its worst with the mercenaries), the color and breath symbolism is painfully obvious, the dialogue is hamfisted at best (example: "Would he take away her Breath?" from Chapter 6), the author demonstrates a lack of understanding of color theory throughout the book, the basic plot points and internal conflicts are drilled into the reader's head way too often throughout the course of the entire book, the general writing style is too simple for my tastes, the comic relief caused more forehead-slapping than laughter, and the book only seems to cover the internal conflicts of the characters at the surface level. It's weird though, because even with all of the above, I kept reading page after page. Being simple did help the novel immensely with reader comprehension, since it was very easy for me to keep a mental model of the story and they were able to keep more than four intertwining storylines going at once without any confusion occurring. I guess I was just expecting more from the book, considering the very high reception it's received from most other people.

Contemporary Urban Fantasy

I've never seen a movie that deals with identity as strangely or as in-depth as Being John Malkovich.  If I tried to explain the plot of the movie to someone who hadn't seen the movie before, they would probably think I was making the whole thing up.  It seems to explore identity in two ways.  The first is more of a sci-fi/fantasy exploration of the question, which is directly explored in the movie.  Given this portal that lets you experience the identity of another person, the movie decides that anyone who enters this portal will be integrated into that person's consciousness.  Like a little voice in the back of one's head, it is revealed that you can influence their decisions.  If you have enough manipulative control, you can even gain complete control over all their actions.  Trying to enter one's consciousness while it is already occupied causes you to enter realms of their subconsciousness.

While those concepts are interesting theoretical rabbit holes to explore, they remain purely theoretical, with no practical application or resonance in the viewer's lives.  However, the movie has the human aspect identity as well.  The main character is an exaggerated version of what many people have been at some point or another during their lives.  He becomes enamored with a girl at his workplace, and becomes someone else to gain her love and acceptance.  The main difference between the film and reality is that he literally becomes another person instead of just acting different.  This turns out to be a very poor decision on his part.  His wife, although a smaller focus of the movie, deals with identity issues as well, although hers focus more on gender identity.

Spiritual Education

Revisiting the novel The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman was an intriguing and somewhat nostalgic experience.  I was introduced to the story by my father, who rented the audiobook of it for me from the library.  The story was the first audiobook I ever listened to, and it fascinated me so much that I soon bought the book and re-read the story multiple times.  When I discovered that there were sequels to the book, I managed to quickly devour those as well.  The movie was somewhat of a disappointment, but that's another matter entirely.  Needless to say, the book had a large impact on me at the time, and probably still maintains some of its impact on me to this day.

I find it somewhat humorous – although completely understandable – that the book is situated in the category "Spiritual Education".  Seeing as how the book (and the rest of the series) denounce organized religion, it at first seems odd that the word "spiritual" would be associated with it.  However, even though the book does not look to religion to derive its morals and lessons on growth, it does include quite a few morals and lessons of its own.  Independence, questioning authority, and critical thinking are all values viewed favorably in the book.  While I didn't really pick up on the anti-religious sentiments in the book initially, those values came across pretty clear.  And looking at how I began independently developing games during high school and continue this practice today, I can say that at the very least the values of independence and critical thinking managed to stick.

Heroic Journey

As someone with more than a passing interest in game design, when I engage myself with a piece of media, I usually tend to attempt to figure out how aspects of that experience can be applied to games.  Ever since a text adventure version of The Hobbit was released in 1982, Tolkien's world has been translated to games commercially an additional 25 times.  On top of that, many unofficial games have been made based off of Middle Earth, usually in the form of Multi-User Dungeons and Roguelikes.  I thought that it might be interesting to take a deeper look at The Hobbit and figure out what it is about the series that compels people to reconstruct the stories in a virtual space.

After some analysis, I came to the realization that games are often made of Tolkien's world because game designers and Tolkien have generally similar goals.  Tolkien had a strong interest in creating deep cultural and linguistic systems.  Many game designers like having a deep, consistent aesthetic system to build their interactive system off of.  There are few better candidates for this than Tolkien's world.  It not only has a rich history, but also geographical mappings of the world, a variety of interacting cultures, and fully formed languages for the different races that inhabit Middle Earth.  The possibility space for exploration offered in his world is staggering, and will probably never fully be explored by game designers. 

Zombies!

For zombie week, I watched Night of the Living Dead and read World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.  It was really fascinating comparing how zombie stories today compare with the original tales.  While the intricacies and specifics of the zombie myth seem to be ever expanding, the base story is quite frequently nothing more than an exaggerated and distorted war story.  In a way, this is because zombies present themselves as the perfectly unsympathetic enemy:  they're already dead, they can't think, they have no sense of empathy, and their only motivation is to feast on the flesh (and brains) of humans.  While the humans in a zombie movie will usually be some shade of moral gray, a zombie will always be pitch black, and thus the viewer will feel no remorse when the main character smashes their face in with a rusty shovel. Zombies use this inherent evil quality to appeal to readers/viewers in two ways. First, the zombies help nurture a sense of moral absolutism, which for many people is a comforting thing. Second, the focus on fighting and survival nurtures people's innate need for conflict. For many people living in first-world countries now, living has become extremely safe and secure compared to several hundred years ago. The conflicts that the majority of the youth face now are anything but immediately life-threatening, so many people actively seek out conflict in other ways. Entertainment has been a common source of harmless conflict for quite some time, and zombies do a good job of pushing that conflict to its extreme. Take World War Z, for instance. It essentially takes a war story to the point where only highly unethical acts can be taken to ensure the survival of the human race. Unless half the population was used as bait, the other half would have had to live out the remainder of their days under constant, relentless attack by the zombies. Other humans resort to cannibalism to live. However, once again, it is only because we ourselves are not stuck in a true life-or-death survival scenario ourselves that we take interest in these narratives.

Horror movie tropes

Dark stormy nights
Mad scientist
Deformed person
Body organs and limbs
Living dead
Theme of death
Haunted castle
Graverobbing
Hidden passageways
Vampires
Electricity
Transformation (Werewolves, Jeckyl and Hyde)
Cutting the soundtrack on a long shot
Use of reflections / distorted reflections
Candlelit interiors
Vermin
Blood and gore
Anticipation and uncertainty
Establishing a threat
The black guy dies
Twist endings
Occult practices
Environmental warnings
No escape from the danger
Isolated from society
Ghosts
Posession
Curses
"Screamers"
Disturbing collections of things
Teenagers that have sex die
Excessive weapons / violence