For this week, I read the short story Come to Venus Melancholy by Thomas M. Disch. The story had quite a bit of dark tones to it, as well as taking some time to understand. I think the element of surprise was something that played a big part in this story. Something that appears to be so normal, so close to what we know, can be the complete opposite. In this story, in the beginning, I thought that the character was monologuing about their life. The element of surprise here is that the "her" is a cyborg of sorts, that used to be a human, but is now a computer in a house. The second surprise is that the environment of the swamp isn't from planet Earth, it's on planet Venus. The final surprise was the cyborg's confession of both love and craziness. This was quite a short read and an interesting perspective since it's told from the cyborg's point of view. I feel like in many of these stories there is often a hero, and the story is narrated from that hero's point of view. I liked that this was changed up a little bit, and was told from the robots' point of view. This plays a part in what we think of machines, and how intelligent they may be. This raises questions like: can you ethically kill or destroy a robot with a human soul? Overall I liked this short story a lot for the underlying concepts as well as stirring up some interesting and deep thoughts about humanity and space.
Discuss how the text(s) you read for this week's assignment did or did not reflect the values and perspectives of majoritarian culture. This piece did not reflect the values and perspective of majoritarian culture in the ways that it was portrayed as distinctly alien, and that humans were the invaders of another planet, and that in order to survive, humans had to have relationships with alien creatures that laid eggs inside of our intestines and organs. This storyline specifically is not something that people tend to think of on an everyday basis. The young main character of the story being chosen as the one to carry the alien babies, and going back and forth on whether to go through with it or not, is ultimately somehow a little bit closer to how we think. If there is any major decision we have to make as humans, it is often dragged out and thought over the possibilities many times before finalizing anything, let alone if other people's lives are at stake. This piece does re...
Very interesting blog post. This short story sounds like a great read! I love stories that have elements of surprises in them!!
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