Skip to main content

Come to Venus Melancholy

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.

Comments

  1. Katey StareNovember 19, 2019 at 10:48 AM

    Very interesting blog post. This short story sounds like a great read! I love stories that have elements of surprises in them!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Interview with a Vampire

In this weeks reading, Interview with a Vampire,  something that stood out to me was the way the author depicted what was considered good versus evil. Since the majority of the book is told from Louis's perspective, through dialogue in his interview, we get to learn about his beliefs as a vampire versus the other vampires around him. For example, Louis is depicted as a generally good character at the beginning. This is shown through his squeamish and hesitant nature about killing humans and his empathy towards their lives. He also points out that he doesn't realize he is able to take animal's blood rather than a humans. This appears as a sense of morality. This morality is directly contradicted with the personality of Lestat. He is depicted as a tough vampire who doesn't feel empathy and will hunt anyone he pleases. Later in the book he turns a little girl into a vampire which leads to his "death." He later comes back to life on more than one occasion to get h...
1 comment
Read more

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

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...
2 comments
Read more

Bloodchild

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...
Post a Comment
Read more