Mason Pocklington

As a graphic design major, I was pleased with this week's read. It was interesting to view the advertising world from another perspective. What was interesting to me in this read was the idea of the kind of global attention that the small snippets of mysterious advertising was getting. This rung true with me, because when the average person gets fed nothing all day but straight, to the point, quick advertising, the idea of a random, mysterious, unable to place snippet is watched. Will have to re-read when I get more time!

For this week I read the book Dawn, the first in the trilogy of this series. What I got from this author was a similar read to that of Bloodchild, a work we read in class that I thought was interestingly similar to Dawn. Some similarities were that of the obvious, a family / daughter in particular, struggling with her acceptance of an overlord alien species determined to mate with her and humankind. What I found different was that in Bloodchild, the village the main character lives in is repulsed by the alien living with the family. The daughter's inward struggle on accepting the egg of the alien in Bloodchild is the tension of the novel. In Dawn on the other hand, Lilith agrees to mating with the alien, but its' the humans that rebel.

Snow Crash has many interesting themes from the book, but one that I thought was interesting was language. Ancient Sumer is mentioned many times. What I got from the novel was the connection that using the right language can be a form of hacking in itself, where you're using words and language to manipulate other people. Especially in religions, which is also a big theme of the book. Through his research, the main character finds that the drug is actually hacking people's brains. The best part of the book for me was watching the character transition from studying on hacking things like Ai, computers and digital things to learning how to hack (or unhack) people!

The Left Hand of Darkness was an interesting read, as it dealt with the idea of sexuality and "choosing sides" in an interesting way. Through the main characters we see his distrust of the genderless people, because of his own inability to identify one specific gender per person. In turn, the genderless people innately distrust him. This conflict brilliantly highlights the current state of where we are as humans, where we have to decide how we will go into the future. A key idea of this novel is acceptance and understanding. Because Ai cannot accept that the people are not constrained by one key gender, his travels and experiences are more difficult for him. As this novel was published in 1969, we still have lessons we can take from the book.

I chose the Martian as my reading for this week, because I had seen the movie previously and thought it was interesting. I re-watched the movie and then read the book to see what was similar and different between the two. What I thought was interesting was how normally, a book and the movie made based on it are often-time very different from one another. I was surprised to see that the two were pretty similar as far as the movie plot and arc. The only big change I noticed was that the ending was more dramatic in the movie than it was in the book. Which makes sense, since movies often overdramatize to keep audience members on the edge of their seats. As usual, the book format of the story has more interesting details, and more small moments that aren't as "cinematic", which makes it a more interesting read than watch.

The idea of myth is shown in the novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane in the form of other worlds being present with ours, and the idea of memory. What I mean by this is, for example, is how he had lost memory of the event by leaving the area that it had happened in. This semi-pairs with the concept that magic, the supernatural and otherworldly events are exclusive. Citing a book like Harry Potter, where magic is also exclusive, but in a different way, this book follows the mythical idea of magic being only for the select few, or in a select area. Once he goes back to where it all happened, he starts remembering things by the duck pond. The other aspect is being how other worlds are present with ours. Of course, shown by the doorway into our world.