Author Archives: forrest

“To do anything, he would have to go outdoors, which Celia said again and again was very dangerous” (7) In The House of the Scorpion, Matt repeatedly references the Spanish mythological creature the Chupacabra.  It is a creature that “suck[s] your blood and [leaves] you to dry like an old cantaloupe skin” (10).  The repeated […] Continue reading →

Imagine you are Amanda Bates: “I don’t know the reason yet why I woke before the others.  Something to do with instinct I guess.” You are somewhat privy to being undead.  Something about the immortality is enticing.  So, from your coffin you emerged.  An eerie silence lies in the cabin of Theseus.  Maybe it was […] Continue reading →

Sometimes electrical stimulation of the brain induces “alien hand syndrome”– the involuntary movement of the body against the will of the “person” allegedly in control. Other times it provokes equally involuntary movements, which subjects nonetheless insist they “chose” to perform despite overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary. Blindsight by Peter Watts, Charybdis I choose the […] Continue reading →

An event horizon is a “boundary in spacetime beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer” (wiki).  It is most commonly referred to when talking about black holes.  But what about as a science fiction metaphor, Butler uses it when talking about Akin’s preconception of Lilith’s DNA.  She writes “there was something beyond the nucleotides […] Continue reading →

Do we trust the Oankali? Most of the members of the class said yes.  I think we need to reconsider whether or not we really feel this way about them.  With a novel full of aliens, in the extraterrestrial context, surprisingly very little seems foreign or “alien.”  The opening paragraphs describing Lilith’s cell while “Awakening” […] Continue reading →

The page from We3 that I choose to analyze has four panels.  The top begins after 3 is in the rottweilers mouth and the panel contains Bandit watching his friend being eaten.  You can see in the intricacy of the drawing both pain and anger; he is foaming at the mouth as well as shedding […] Continue reading →

“I want to know about the implants” (117). In the world of Neuromancer, society has advanced to a state where implants and biological augmentations are the norm; both Case and Molly are highly augmented.  It is this conflict between science and nature which was brought up in Frankenstein that commands my attention.  The role of […] Continue reading →

“He beat back the nausea, and, seizing a tray from dead hands, hurried into the street and ate ravenously, hiding to keep out the sights. ‘Yesterday, they would not have served me,’ he whispered, as he forces the food down.” At first glance, DuBois’s The Comet appears to be a work of science fiction because […] Continue reading →

“Each of you possesses the most powerful, dangerous and subversive trait that natural selection has ever devised. It’s a piece of neural audio technology for rewiring other people’s minds. I’m talking about your language, of course, because it allows you to implant a thought from your mind directly into someone else’s mind, and they can […] Continue reading →