week 11 respond

  The story I read this week is Johnny Mnemonic. It is a typical Cyberpunk story. In the story world, almost everyone is combined with machine or has body modification. The protagonist is a data trafficker whose job is basically save the coded data in his head and transfer to other place physically in order to prevent hacking. The short story is basically a show case of author’s imagination for the word in future. Each character has different modification on themselves. Molly has her finger with blade and the killer has the wire.

  The world in the story feels a lot of more chaos than right now. Everyone has the abilities to be physically powerful than others by changing their body part. The world is less secure than today. Every time I read the cyber punk create stress feeling for me.

week 10 respond

I read the Come To Venus Melancholy 1965 for this week. It is not really a new kind of story for me. The story is about a woman made into machine because of disease and then be sold to a planet station for resource. It is such a torcher for her and eventually she accidentally killed the partner who is working with her. The story is told in first personal perspective from the women who turned into machine and only form her.

   The main idea of the book is human could be turned into kind of machine and half immortal by removing the brain form body and put it in a “tank”. Then these “human” would able to control electronic stuff like doors and machines. The moral concept is similar to the AI(Artificial Intelligence). If we have AI which have a human’s thought, should we treat it as an AI or human? In the story, the woman is treated as an AI even though she is a human. She doesn't have the physical ability as regular human. She even loses the hearing and seeing ability after his partner smash all of the equipment. The story bring people concerns about the future and machined human.

week 9 respond

I read The Nine Billion Names of God 1954 at this week. It confused me at first because the book isn't connected to the space opera too much. Then I finished the story and actually there are several part in the book could be considered relate to the space.

  The story is simple. A Lama from Tibet acquired a “Mark V Computer” from a western company to print out the possible names of the god. It is a weird request but the lamasery is ready for everything. There is a deal and then two engineers are sent to the lamasery to do the maintenance. During the process they discovered that in monk’s religion, once they finish the job, the world will go to the end. There is nothing relate to the space for now but at the end, when the all the names are printed, “the stars were going out”. This gives readers lots of space to imagine what is actually happening out there in space. The short story kind of connect to the urban fantasy. Monk is buying a compute which is still sounds special today.