Dynamic Kick!

Giant Robot Squids and More and the Matrix

2010-12-01T06:54:00.000-08:00

I'll be augmented with so much tech, I'll look like the villain from wild wild west. Everyone will probably connected to one single network via some orifice in our body .Exercise will be a thing of the pass because who needs exercise when we have augmentable limbs and android women. Robots will be thing of daily life cause humanity will be too busy to make a sandwich. Long distance space travel will possible and the moon will be a holiday resort. Our wars will be fought by giant power suits and the thing more dangerous then a nuclear bomb will be a hacker. Everyone will be reliant on interwebs. That might be the possible future for us unless we all get blown up by a nuclear war. Or an astroid.

Giant Robot Squids and More.

2010-12-01T06:46:00.000-08:00

15 years from now, everybody will be living in tubes and the nuclear family will be dead. Population growth will be controlled because we are running out of space to put people. Ventures of going up to space and living on the moon will be made possible and interplanetary colonization will be likely. By that time also, Asia and the West will be running under two different respective flags and industrialization, and advancing technology will be the main priorities of both sides. Integrating technology with humans will be a common thing for it is necessary for an fast efficient life style.

Giant Robot Squids.

2010-12-01T06:38:00.000-08:00

I believe immersive media technology will start taking hold in households everywhere. Im talking halo decks, virtual reality head sets, and little ear pieces that links your head up to the interwebs. The entire international community (except for North Korea and Burma) will be linked together on one big channel of communication via the interwebs. But instead of just laptops or computers, I dare say we might go as far as chips even. The human race is advancing at a alarming rate to a new technological age. And it won't be long before us humans will start integrating machine tech into evolution's design scheme. Dare I say it Ghost in a shell might be an accurate view of what could be us in five or even more years.

Blood child

2010-11-26T17:36:00.000-08:00

The process of birth is a very painful process, from what I have heard. But also getting your own rib cage opened with rending claws is also on par too. BloodChild by Octavio Butler is an scary book. The human race is in small numbers and sharing a planet with a snake like Alien race that uses humans as incubation pods.

The experience of reading this short story at first was a intriguing ride through an alternate world. As I kept reading, I began to realize that the humans aren't the most dominate species around. And that most of the men are used as living incubation pods. Its interesting non the less though : due to unknown cataclysmic reasons the human race has fled and cut a deal with a dying race of aliens. The plot follows a boy living on a farm with his sister and brother. His time to do the service of becoming an incubation pod draws close. The story explores his turmoil of staying human and living life or committing himself to a deadly service. He learns of the two sides that plague through two characters: his brother and his father. His brother is against becoming a incubation pod for the Aliens, due to the fact that he saw whole process of how the alien young are extracted from humans thus scarring him. His father on the other hand is somebody who has taken on the task several times, literally scarring his entire body. The boy sees his brother as a rebel and his own fears makes his brothers ways more inviting. While he see his father as a mysterious figure and can't quite grasp why his father would put himself through such an ordeal.

Soon the boy is treated to seeing the birthing process of the Alien babies up close and he is horrified. He soon pulls out of this obligations and starts to resemble his brother a bit in actions for example, thinking of using his father's hidden gun on his alien friend. But after a brief while the boy is horrified to find that the Alien is going to impregnate his sister instead. He then took it upon himself to take the burden on himself again. He is impregnated by the Alien later at night and finally comes to understand the meaning of sacrifice and service to ensure the survival of both species.

The Homunculus.

2010-11-26T15:26:00.000-08:00

So I finally got around to reading Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. It was an interesting take on story telling with its use of written letters from a sea captain to direct flashbacks of Victor Frankenstein. I really enjoyed the first person point of view throughout the story: it provided a up close view of what was happening and provided a immersive reading experience. For example, Shelly into in depth description straight off the bat in the first few chapters in describing the discovery of Victor in the snowy landscape.

It was also fun to read of how Victor went from a budding science student to be a man obsessed with playing god. From graving robbing to visiting the slaughter houses to collect the necessary bits and pieces, reveals to readers the extremes Victor is willing to go to for his science. At first I was expecting a big rampage after the monster is brought back to life: tipping women's rib cages open (like in that time traveller movie) and snapping necks everywhere BUT I got something else. The monster escapes and becomes a complex character. Trough his experiences with other characters, he finds himself as a sentient being rather then a living science experiment. His stay with the De Lacey family is where he found himself and the horrible truth that he can never be a part of society because he is a 8 feet tall super humanoid thing. ANYWAYS it was a interesting ride to go through the monster's thought process and how his efforts to be more human fail every time due to his "father" surgical actions. It gets to a point where the monster can't take the truth of his uniqueness and decides to seek revenge on his "father". He devises a plot to rid Victor of all his closest friends rendering Victor like the monster too: alone.Everybody around Victor starts dying mysteriously. First news of the murdered child and then the De Lacey family. The revealing of how the young boy was truly murdered surprised me even. An intricate cover up scheme to frame and take out two of Victor's relatives shows how the monster has inherited his father's smarts.

In the end, Victor starts on his quest to destroy his own creation which takes him to the farthest reaches of the Artics, where he is found by the ship and where his story begins. The book overall was a good adventure for me. It delivered something new to me with the Frankenstein story. The book changed my views on the monster. Instead of a mindless killing machine, the monster was a complex character who was alone in the world and a being with emotions that was made to suffer for his father's own demented pursuit of science.

Convetions of Sci fi

2010-10-20T06:12:00.000-07:00

Exploring the Unknown

The discovery of good things and bad things

Facing adversity in a really unfamiliar environment

Exploring alien or even supernatural worlds

Dilemma of using new found things for good or evil

Stopping Aliens from destroying earth

Earth is number one

Earth is gone so characters look for new home leading to shenanigans in space

The Golden compass!

2010-10-13T21:12:00.000-07:00

I read this book in high-school so I had to re-familiarize myself a little bit here and there. The plot to me in general seemed to be the fundamental tolkien-esque story. Lyra is the young heroine that sets off on a epic journey to find her kidnapped friend. The interesting parts are actually the elements In the story rather then the story itself. The book has a very rich platter of characters and a magical world. Each character has a Daemon: a manifestation of a person's soul in a form of a animal. Its like your conscious is your Pokemon. And there are Armored polar bears. That is awesome.

I found it interesting that Lyra sorta disorganizing anything she comes into close vicinity with : She travels to the town where Lorek was kept captive and through a turn of events she gets the bear to turn the town inside out. After that she drives Lorek to disrupt the hierarchy of the Armored Bears by killing the king in a dual. And then she heads over to the science base and then incite an skirmish between the Gyptians and the Science base's security personal.

To me this seems like a regular story that follows the hero's quest quite closely. Lyra is the hero on a journey to save her friend from the kidnapping and along the way she comes across an assortment of characters that soon become her travel companions. And another thing I noticed is that as the story progresses it evolves from a simple rescue mission to a much more bigger problem. Lyra soon discovers that the baddies are actually plotting to conquer the known multiverses and that her own farther Lord Astrid plays a role in this. That's a massive priority gap between saving a few children and stopping the conquest of the multiverses. From that I can tell that this story is going to transform from a normal hero's journey into an epic trans-dimentional adventure.

All in all this was a good read and I hope to soon get my hands on the next two books which I never really got around to reading. Looks like I got something to do for christmas.

学校の怪談 (Ghost Stories)

2010-09-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

The reading of Kwaidan gave me an interesting of J horror at its best. Each story is a eery telling of an the follies and the will power of humans with a paranormal twist. From my reading, the tales all start off calm and subtle just like any other story. But then things take either a dive for the worst or a twist that keep you wondering and wanting more exposition...which you don't get.

The thing about this book that got me thinking of horror in a new way is that each story is so different from one another. From age “when I could watch horror movies” all I have seen is blood and knives and blondes getting murdered. The western idea of horror seemed like “ghosts will murder you” or “people pretending to be ghosts will still murder you” to me. As a kid I predominantly watched a lot of western material because I had been exposed to western culture at a young age. I believe like only 4 years ago I started reading and getting into Asian horror. Ok back on track : each story is different. How so? Some tales have ambiguous endings, some just leave you wondering and others may educate you about the history of a land mark in japan (the tree trunk temples, grave stones of the flying head goblins). An example of an ambiguous tale is the tale of Mimi Nashi Hochi. A minstrel under the treat of a angry samurai spirit. He looses his ear earning him the title Hochi the Earless (Mimi Nashi Hochi). But the story end with him leaving on his way after getting his ear ripped off and being a wealthy man. Honestly, I was expecting an exorcism to get rid of the bad spirit but no, it just ends with both characters leaving on their way. It left me wondering and going “huh?” at the end. An example of stories that are informative are the stories of the Rukuro Kubi or the Ubazakura. The story of the head goblins tells us of a family of goblins trying to devour a ex-samurai monk but fails fatally. At it's ending it tells of us of the tombstone marking the actual location the story took place in. Ubazakura was a story of a very loving caring nurse maid who passed away but leaving her spirit and love in the flowers of the cherry blossom trees. This folktale gives us the background on why the cherry trees blossom at the times it does. One of the creepier stories with the “dive” ending is Jiu Roko Zakura: a story of how a certain cherry tree blossoms at a certain time. This tale came to start with a subtle intro were a old samurai is just tending to his garden and planting a cherry tree. Soon after he commits hara-kiri. That just caught me off guard. But the spirt of the man enters the tree causing it to blossom on the sixteenth day of the first month hence the name Jiu roku Zakura (the cherry tree of the sixteenth day). Some stories contain great twist too. The tale of the snow queen was one of them where the plot twist in the end caught me off guard and left me wondering this “Hows this guy gonna raise 5 half snow ghost half human kids by himself now?”. While other stories just leave me feeling nothing, such as the story of O-tei, where death can't keep apart two lovers. Honestly ,I was expecting O-tei to return eventually after all the characters the husband comes into contact with dies conveniently.

Anyways. From the collection of stories from the book that I have read I get a sense of the purpose each story is trying to covey. Its main purpose was defiantly not to scare the reader but to entice the reader with how the paranormal world comes into play with our world and that it isn't always about killing or scaring. This book (and the movie “Ghost”) shows me that human love can transcend boundaries such as death (O-tei, Snow Queen). Also shows me the humorous values when the paranormal and the human spirt comes into play (Diplomacy). Basically, from what I have taken away from this book is that J horror isn't always about the scare or the death scene but more about integrating a paranormal element into our daily lives and making things more interesting.

The paranormal Is that spark in the story draws in the reader. In the book Kwaidan, the paranormal spark is used in many different ways to make its tales of love stories, folk tales and tales of the far out a much more interesting read. I had a fun time with this book and now time to read me some J.R.R Tolkien.

Interview with Brad Pitt.

2010-09-08T07:40:00.001-07:00

Interview with the Vampire.

I saw it as an interesting take on the Vampire lore. The Introduction of a undead character struggling with moral choices made for an interesting read. The typical vampire story nowadays could be easily described in a nut shell as “I suck your blood! Oh no! A stake! Blah” and the end. With this story we see what a recently transformed character dealing with the adaptation to a new predatory life. Louis, a plantation owner in 1791, is distraught over the loss of his brother. He meets a vampire known as Lestat and ask him to kill him to end his grief. Lestat turns Louis into a vampire a make a buddy out of him. Louis at first finds it hard to deal with living of human beings and lives of animals instead. It very cool that the book plays on things such as social bindings over animal instincts. Louis could have easily found nutrition in his slaves but his past life as a human being in southern America still has a control over him. He obeys human laws which don't apply to him anymore. Lestat is the anthesis of Louis : he kills slaves freely for food and is a merciless creature of the night that will turn on his own companions (example: Killing Madeline and Claudia to spite Louis). It wasn't long before Louis succumbs to his darker side and ends up aiding Lestat murder everyone on the plantation.
To me it seems like Louis is slowly loosing his humanity. From the turning to the feeding on animals to the killing of his own workers, his decent into the vampire lifestyle is taking speed. The pinnacle point where he embraces his vampire side is when he feeds on the child Claudia. But he regains a bit of his humanity when Lestat turns the child into a vampire as well. He finds comfort in taking care of his new found pseudo daughter which symbolizes his effort to stay still human. Another point where his human side reaches the surface once again is when he and Claudia attacks Lestat in order to escape from the truly undead. This event, to me, symbolizes that Louis and Claudia are trying to salvage what remains of their humanity by separating themselves predatory bloodletting figure Lestat. It is like civilized humans trying to distance themselves from the beast. The two character's search for further companionship in other vampires also shows that they are still clinging onto their humanity. A tragic ending closes the story as Claudia and another vampire called Madeline is murdered by Lestat, leaving Louis alone in a world of humans.
All in all it was a good reading for me. The fight to hold onto one's humanity as a running theme was characterized very well with both vampire characters. The tragic ending was a good close to Louis's story where he ultimately embraces his vampiric predatory side as he live a lone wolf life in the woods of Louisiana.

Why are Zombies fun?

2010-09-01T07:26:00.001-07:00

The Zombie genre is getting popular is because we can see ourselves as the monsters. Zombies are the personification of what the base human form is : a animalistic, unrelenting, ruthless killing machine. Years and years of evolution has hidden away this fact and now has resurfaced in the form of the "undead". This fascination with what we were and still could be is embedded into everyone. Some embrace it wanting to see what we are really capable off and if the evolved and modern versions of us can survive our base instincts. Some deny it, hope to hide away what brutal monsters we were back in the early days of man. Strangely enough there are more of us who want to face our selves in the from of the "undead". Plus I guess its just wanting to if oneself can actually survive in a undead apocalypse situation and we get the allowance to shoot and maim a large number of fellow human...who are dead already so its ok.

Monster Island book 1.

2010-09-01T07:25:00.000-07:00

Simply put : I like this book a lot. It was an interesting experience that let me experience a zombie apocalypse from two points of view. The characters are rich, the atmosphere of the book is immersive and heck I have been a fan of the zombie survival genre for six years so this was just a fun treat for me.

The plot follows two characters. Delkalb, a former UN weapon inspector working for a rogue Somalian military group to ensure his young daughter's safety. And Gary, a doctor who has somehow rendered himself a living dead that might be the smartest dead person on heart. Both characters, in my opinion personify the main human emotions that will probably engulf a person's mind during a zombie apocalypse : Delkalb represents hope and fear, while Gary represents survivalist instincts.

Delkalb at the beginning of the story to me seemed like a unfortunate character. His daughter is in the hands of dangerous people, he is doing scavenger work in a dangerous infected zone, and dealing with overcoming his fears of the new dead world. Several points in the story point out this apparent fear and lack of hope. He never fires his weapon, he constantly lags behind the somalian child soldiers due to his overcautious nature, and he left three of the child soldiers to perish in the hospital when the undead attacked. Other character react crassly towards his scared nature. Infayah, the commanding officer of the child soldiers do him little respect and that attitude reflected on her cohorts too. Aayaan was the only one that gave Delkalb a chance to embrace his fears. Delkalb would later become a leader figure after Infayah is bitten by an undead. At this point he embraces his fears and takes up the mantle well, leading his new soldiers to safety and also taking up the fight against the dead with rocket launchers.

Fear is what keeps us humans alive. Without It nearly the entire world would be on skate boards flying off ramps on 40 story buildings. Delkalb's fears are what saved him from being a meal in the hospital. He acted on his instincts and survived. He ran instead of taking on the dead in close quarters (which is a very goodidea according to Max Brook's Zombie survival guide). The child soldiers however are the anthesis of Delkalb: unmoving and trained to be fearless machines of war. They show no fear when the hordes of dead attacked and fought hard for their survival. Yet still some perished due to “fight” instinct instead of following the “flight” instinct. I suppose when we are all at a point where there is an choice offered on weather we live or die most of us would choose to live. In Delkalb's situation he could become the leader or just abandon the girls. When Delkalb finally accepts his fears he became a beacon of hope. Where many have perished and joined the ranks of the dead, he is able to lead and survive.

Gary is the personification of survivalist instincts. He does what needs to be done and then rationalizes it to be practical. His first and major deed to ensure his survival was to commit suicide and join the ranks of the dead. How his brain remain intact I have no idea. His character traits are later shown through the various deed that we too may also rationalize as necessary in a doomed world : eating rotting food, trying to eat a fly, fighting over food (with an undead) and finally eviscerating the still living Infayah. It seems that Gary develops or rather un-develops from a perfectly well rounded smart dead man to a creature of base instincts. His thirst for life and meat consumes him gradually and it later too full control of him. I believe that getting shot in the head was the only that that brought Gary out of his blood rage and returned his mind to some semblance of normality (Im reading the second book too). Human will do anything to survive and Gary's actions show the extreme lengths that a person will go through to ensure his survival.

The great thing about this book is also the writing. The desolate scene described at key locations in New york city helped me visualize because I have been to some of the places. Also using one of New York city's big problems, heavy traffic, as a means to create a deadly maze of zombie death traps made me chuckle. I also loved the fact that the point of view vary between the two characters. The first person view with Delkalb is personal and relatable. We can sense the fear and regret in his words. And it makes him more human. Gary's third person narration is more impersonal and seems like a typical writing style. The narrator's words between out reading and Gary's experiences helps keep us distant from the character. This device actually works because with Delkalb being the human character we get to see the world through his eyes, while with Gary being a living dead is given a narrator to mediate him and the reader making him removed from the reader. Also if the writing style is the same between the two characters it's going to be super confusing.

The first book was a good read and has got me pretty much hooked on the trilogy. I hope to read summore of this trilogy.