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.
For this week I read Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane . I really enjoyed this short novel and the underlying themes that went along with it. Some of the things I noticed were the revealing of reality and how it is never as it seems, comparison of adulthood versus childhood, and the idea of other universes. The one theme that I want to mention and expand on is the idea that every person or being has a different side to them, that is not outwardly visible. In the father's case, it seemed that he was being controlled by the "flea" Ursula Monkton and almost drowned his son in the bathtub. This makes you wonder - did the evil person/creature make him do this or was there something evil and resenting in him the entire time? With the main antagonist, Ursula Monkton, she is an evil creature from another world that entered the world that we know it, disguised as a human. This provides some interesting perspective, that sometimes the evilest traits and experiences
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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