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Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Audio #11 Response

I got Spaceship Earth vibes from this audio. I thought it was going to be boring, but it told stories that kept my attention. It was unexpected. I wonder if Lynntella in the story was the same voice actor as the current narrator of Spaceship Earth. They sound very familiar. This audio was talking about that anything is possible, cloning, and disabilities. They explore a shaft underground on Earth(?) too. And then there's a long part about shoes. The Bird People didn't want to talk about shoes, for whatever reason. Maybe the Shoe Factory took over the Bird People? Oh, and capitalism because the shoe shops make shoes that fail so that more people buy more shoes more often. And then every shop on that planet is a shoe shop, causing the humans of that planet to evolve into birds so they don't have to buy more shoes. The lesson that they go over is actually pretty interesting. The analogy with the monopolization of the shoe stores really makes you wonder about businesses in
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The Aquatic Uncle Response

From a writing perspective, I believe separating and writing to genres is vital. Audiences have set expectations from certain genres like Horror, Sci-Fi, etc. so writers have to lay down the ground rules of those genres, then they can choose to subvert them if they wish. However, as an audience member, I rarely pay attention to what genre I'm being exposed to. I know that's just a "me" thing though. The Aquatic Uncle has elements of a family drama and historical fiction. They seem like they can't go well together, but honestly, I kind of enjoyed reading through this story. Mainly because I was concerned about the characters. This story may not even need to be set back in the time when fish grew legs and it would still work. So I would still label this as a family drama story. I would say I wasn't affected by the two genres merging because one was much more dominant than the other. And again I was only paying attention to the characters, so the strange genr
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Bloodchild Response (Assessment)

1. I was confused, uncomfortable, and grossed out. I like happy, Disney-esque stories. I can't deal with the gross things that sci-fi has to offer. Also just coming out of "Attack the Block," I'm a little pissed off. How do I root for hoodlums? I don't want to root for bad people. But back to Bloodchild, the relationship between Gan and T'Gatoi saved the story a little, but that's all. It's a short story so I understand why we have so little info, but what about the world? I know we're on an alien planet, but I'd like to know more about it. That's what I like about storytelling: characters and worlds. Every plot's been told before, it's the different characters and worlds that I get invested in. In short, I wouldn't want to read this again. 2. I didn't make a single connection with this story. And that's honestly sad. I couldn't even connect with the protagonist, and that's the one thing a story is supposed to
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I Live With You Response

To start, frankly, I'm lost. A lot of things happen and the pronouns "I" and "you" show up everywhere. I think "I" and "you" are the same person, being the reader? Or it could be some crazy stalker lady who's obsessed with the character of the reader, but I have a good feeling the former is correct. The beginning describes "I's" routine, and "I" is bored of it. "I" wants to change, which is a very weird sentence on its own. This story is a mind experiment, given how weird and unconventional it is. I think that's a super interesting concept on its own merit, but I'm still confused. I didn't think that was Emshwiller's intention, at least I hope it wasn't. I like "mind-experiment" stories like this, but please make it make sense. Not right away, of course, but after you do some thinking and theorizing, everything should make sense. It's like a puzzle. You have the pieces
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Fragments of a Hologram Rose Response

In this story, one of the biggest metaphors and actual story-driven objects is this hologram machine and this smaller hologram machine that depicts a white rose in the hologram. The protagonist, Parker, uses it to gaze into other people's lives. Mostly prostitutes' lives, but other lives nonetheless. What's weird is that the machine acts exactly like a projector. He inserts a cassette tape (or betamax tape probably) into the machine and it projects the image in front of or around him. One of the first things we find out is Parker had a lover who dumps him and drives off. That's when Parker turns to porn. Parker finds another dead woman who he raids. He takes a cassette tape from her. And at the end of the story he recognizes that the woman was his lover because the memories its playing back where shared between them. This story is extremely short but it sets up this relationship well and it cleanly pays it off. Besides the holograms, not much else about the world is
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I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream Response

I can't believe that whole story was only nine pages long. There's so much content in this story that could've lent itself to a much longer runtime. The whole plot is very one-note, which isn't a bad thing. Limitation is often the best way of creating, after all. Now onto the actual story. It wasn't as weird as I originally thought. It's basically like Saw except the "mastermind" is a sentient computer. A lot of concepts in this story are also interesting: immortality, transfiguration, the world itself. Sci-Fi is great at building worlds, so I'm not surprised. One of the themes of this story is the ability of sentience. One of the characters, Ted, has a dream about if AM had legs and other human desires. Ted concludes that AM has such a grudge on humanity because he was created to be just as sentient as humans. But one thing AM can't do is be creative (or in other words, I believe he means have passions like cooking, woodworking, be an arti
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Vintage Season Response

Vintage Season  by C. L. Moore is very clever because of the style it chooses to tell its story in. While reading the story, I got a film noire type of narrative. It's not told in the first person like many film noire stories of the time, but the language it uses and even Oliver's sleuthing in the story all harken back to films like Casablanca . It's also very visual, describing every character with the most detail I've caught in a story in a while. And it's a product of its time with the narrative and the descriptions. I love old cinema so the style and tone kept me engaged. At first I thought the vacationers were going to be aliens, but it subverted my expectations by having them be time-travelers, which I found to be more interesting. I was also cautious that Moore might take a time-travel story in the wrong direction, but the time-travel itself wasn't a major factor in the story. It's more just a piece of world-building, and I think not focusing on tim
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