Shayna Cohen Literature Blog

This week we are attempting to distinguish between writing in genre and writing that may use elements of genre but that is essentially literary. Discuss this question in relation to the work(s) you read for this week. Do you think this is an important or necessary distinction, or not? The Distance to the Moon and Back is a story that isn't very mindful of genre, or at the very least doesn't really pay attention to typical genre archetypes. The story is technically sci-fi due to the fact that the idea stems from a scientific theory but in no way does Calvino try to make any attempt at making the logic of the story seem scientifically plausible. Obviously, if the moon was close enough to the earth that it seemed as if people could easily jump back and forth, life on earth would be in ruin due to the affects of the earth's gravity on the oceans, plant life, and so on. However, the idea is romantic and fun so it makes a compelling story. If anything, the story reads more like

1. What is your reaction to the text you just read? In all honesty I was very shocked by the subject manner within in this story. It would be an understatement to say that I never expected male interspecies pregnancy to be featured in a required reading for school but I can appreciate the oddness in a way. The story itself was actually pretty interesting in how the author choses to resolve the conflict and the large implications of that decision. When Gan is confronted with the awful truth of what Tlic impregnation does to it's host as well as the subjugation of the human race as a whole, he does not chose to revolt and kill T'Gatoi. He does not kill himself to escape as he considers, or even allow T'Gatoi to move the responsibility onto his sister. He comes to a realization that this is the price he pays so that his family receives  the necessary protection from T'Gatoi to survive on an alien planet. He also decides it would be selfish to transfer that act and wants

This story is about the dangers of immersive technology and negative impact that kind of escape can have on one life. This is particularly relevant as smartphone technology becomes so integrated in our daily life and tech companies experiment how to make virtual and augmented reality more immersive. In this short story theres a correlation between the breakdown of society and the success of ASP tapes. Parker has a promising and stable career a megacompany that he chooses to leave for reasons he no longer can quite remember. However, he mentions sneaking out during his indentured time to go to the Holodrome suggesting there might be a connection in that escapism. While this is slightly off- topic I find it scary how fast we seem to be moving towards that future where gigantic mega corporations that hold all the power and the only thing an individual can hope for is that they may be blessed with a job at one in order to live comfortable life in comparison to the majority of poor citize

Babel-17 goes in depth exploring the effects and power language can have on a individual and society. The author,   Samuel R. Delaney as a writer and poet was fascinated in the affect language had and took this book as an opportunity  to explore that in depth using an alien language as a prop to do so. Many of his protagonists were writers or poets of some kind and Rydra Wong is no exception. She's a linguist star ship captain, and the most famous poet in five galaxies reaching a stardom not yet seen. She's a vehicle to explore language as she leans to decipher Babel 17, she unwillingly starts to turn traitor and get caught in the groupthink of an invader species. The theory posed is that the shaping of individuals in a society is largely influenced by the language they speak. While I am not bilingual myself I know friends who have expressed frustration at not being fully able to translate an idiom or idea from their language without changing the meaning. Stereotypes of other c

What I found most interesting about The Martian was how it seemed to be one of the most plausible sci-fi books I've ever read. Rather than being set far off in the distant future, the technology of The Martian seems to be set sometime within the next 50 years, veering much closer to speculative fiction than real sci-fi. Discussions of space missions to Mars have been talked about heavily for the past couple years and that seems to be where the next frontier will be for the human race.  Science Fiction that's more in the range of Star Trek or Star Wars honestly veers a bit more fantasy in the way the science is explained away as being too advance to understand and working much more like magic than anything else. Andy Weir takes the time to try to explain the science. While it's definitely a little fictitious in some areas to explain away things that have not yet been proven to be possible, it is based on a factual foundation of knowledge that gives the story more weight a

Neil Gaiman as an author is well known for tackling mythology and reinventing it in many different ways for his own books. In Good Omens, he uses christian mythology to create a love letter to humanity. In American Gods, he asks the question of what exactly is sacred and why when the greek pantheon move to American and adapts to the times. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is no exception in the way that it utilizes the triple goddess from greek mythology and reinterprets it into three very English women who are old enough to remember the old country and do their various chores the old fashioned way. However, the biggest myth that Gaiman decides to break down in this book is the myth of childhood itself. A running theme in this book and quite honestly throughout Neil Gaiman's ethos as an author is that children and adults are not actually as different as we think. The first paragraph of the book brings this idea to light. The narrator tells  the audience the black funeral clothes