What does your life look like in 10 years?

I would have seen almost all the places that I would want to travel 10 years down the road. My accommodations would include living comfortably somewhere in the west with a steady job. The changes will include new cures to unsolvable sickness although I would not be sure if we would have to negotiate some sort of deal for population control. Fast food and other restaurants would be healthier but more expensive than every and I think by then we will be having to pay for much more like water.

50 years from now, my career will hopefully slow and become more relaxing I will still be teaching on and off whilst traveling more and more. If I had money I would get more involved with people perhaps charities. My brother and I would be in close contact after our parents pass away. We are both going to be in good health. Transportation would become more Japanese engineering such as perfected cars, trains, buses, and planes. Food will come in tablets along with over the counter pills that fix sickness and bodily pains on the spot. Birth control will be voice activated from a chip that releases estrogen on the spot when told on command.

100 I would be a decaying dead body. No kids. No offspring of any sort. Biggest social problem is perfecting living in harmony with robots and humans

Software by Rudy Rucker

 

The code of life for robots, simplified to say the least. I, Robot had this code too which was one of my favorite movies even though I have not read the book. I am getting interested in cyberpunk and specifically robots intertwined with human existence. These sort of plots go horribly wrong in creative ways. The human race attempts to play God and create these laws so the robots cannot surpass mankind and we will have ultimate convenience while living in harmony. It seems that whenever codes and laws are developed for robots they evolve and gain a sense of free will, there for creating consequences of trying to gain it; as God gave to man the gift of freewill. In our universe where all living things have free rein of choices, we as imperfections can never create the 'perfect' being.

So not so much an apoctoliptic sci-fi novel, Rucker goes deeper and questions if the 'hardware' really matters anymore. Does it matter if we are body or machine and what advantages will that bring us? Such big ideas actually made me cringe on from my conservative background and being opposed to the whole idea of it but answering 'what if' questions. I thought this book was successful to my taste to bring up theoretical issues of ideas he invents and my perfect perception of a personalized utopia. Thoughout reading this short story, my head was spinning with certain questions that were coming into play such as: Has man kind reached so far into epistemology that we are now crumbling our idea of reality? Will this now open up a new chapter of behavior as humans that we will have to be reborn into a whole knew way of self value and the world around us? If this were to happen to us, would knowledge destroy us instead of giving us power? Rucker did a great job incorporating his ideas of his 'futurist philosophy' in this book, and I would be interested in reading more stories by him. This book fit perfectly into the category for actual possibilities of our future which does not seem impossible for long.

Serenity

This movie took no time in diving right into action packed scenes full of savvy humor and kick ass fight scenes. I gave this movie 4 out of 5 which is very good in my book because space flicks lose my attention easily. On a side note, I enjoyed seeing 2 of the actors from other crime scene series that I watch. Mal is an enjoyable character with a little bit of cockiness mixed in. I enjoyed the snappy comebacks the characters did for the comic relief of a battle movie.

I don't think I can ever get past the cheesiness that this genre brings. I think that these types of movies are extremely difficult to act profoundly in because so much is make believe but I think certain 'catchy' phrases from the 80's can be left behind.

I did not enjoy Rivers character at all, she was all sorts of annoying during the film. Her and her brother could have had tweaked personalities come with their intense background but they were overly dramatic which brings back my opinion of the corniness factor. Overall these two characters just reminded of every other anime series where the characters act stone cold due to a 'horrible' past.

I give a full on bravo to set design and special effects. Absolutely stunning! The individuality of sets through the film were always interesting and the make up was done nicely too. The film did well with fast moving fight scenes paying careful attention to detail and the ships looked well down in the fight scenes. Over all it was not a gory film but Serenity was not afraid to show injuries either (especially the carcass stained exterior of the ship part way though made me laugh). Set design and funny dialogue made this film very successful.

Samuel R. Delany, Babel17/Empire Star

Normally slow moving plots even bore me which goes for movies as well. I kept up with reading this short novel was for a recent project I had to create out of linguistics inspired by a Syntax art show in Tampa. I will admit there were points in Empire Star where I was getting the authors intelligence mixed with boredom.

Babel 17 we are introduced to a woman who indulges her ability to decode a foreign language for military espionage. As I started reading I was poking fun at the description of the main character; beautiful, talented, smart, well known. I think that the character description was typical and too disney princess, it was really unnecessary.

I can understand Delany's desire to get the audience interested in the slow paced philosophical area, and I am guessing I missed a lot of his games he strung throughout the story but I would have to read this story a couple times to grasp full understanding of every corner of the book. The portion of the reading that kept my attention allowed me to grasp a colorful image of characteristics (since it was not as intimate as other stories) was their ability to transform themselves so vastly the characters took on different animals, mainly reptiles. It was this part where I was able to make my own assumptions about the characters depending on what type of animal they took on to understands peoples individuality more because of the connection with typical animalistic behavior.

Also as we stated in class, this book dissects the language more so than the plot or characters. Its a book that takes time and patience. I don't have an interest in getting into books like these further but I cannot say I completely hated it. I did not get a chance to continue onto Empire Star for this week.

The Stars My Destination

In Bester's novel we are taken through the journey of Foyle following his transformation while dealing with a drama oriented life through war. I was taken by my own thoughts of all the possibilities of what I could do if I had the ability to 'jaunte' from one place to another. Although teleportation isn't a new idea, it made the action of the book even more intense for me and gave me the ability to put myself into some situations of what I would do. I loved expanding on what possibilities and curves could be taken throughout the course of the book.

I will point out that frustrated me while reading it was the dialect in the book and Im sure I am not the first to point this out. It was what I was not used to reading so throughout the book it was a bit choppy and interrupted the rhythm because I had to make sure I understood proper linguistics to understand fully. There were concepts and ideas that he wrote about and made them possible 'just because' such as teleportation that were full of holes. This came to mind mind throughout the book but I am aware that he is not the only one who writes about sci fi and developes unexpained rules that the audience is meant to accept for the sake of the story. 

This space exploration book kept my attention the most because he also demonstrated human sociology through his characters. I appreciated this humanistic trend in the book combined with the science fiction because it brought it more to life and again helped me connect with the characters more. He especially does this with Foyle's character which is a twist from the typical 'pure' hero or villain that I see in other books. This novel along with Warbreaker was able to make main characters easy to understand because of physical changes of the body (such as hair color or facial tattoos.) He makes him more human by giving him a sinful side also focusing on transforming himself for the better much like what all beings strive to do as we evolve and become more educated with lessons of every day life.