I seem to be one of the few people who found The Left Hand of Darkness worthy of a response paper, so maybe I read (oh God, the unintentional pun) too much into this one. However, I found Le Guin’s novel extremely entertaining, and I actually thought that it raised some interesting questions not only about gender, but also about sexuality in general. Obviously, the most blatant issues deal with gender, but I feel like there are some other things that we didn’t have the chance to touch on in class.

This is kind of in addition to my earlier post, but I was just wondering if anyone had drawn the connections between Orgoreyn and Soviet Russia. Obviously, they're both cold. BUT, also, Orgoreyn has a secret police, and their media is controlled by the censorship of the mysterious Sarf. In addition to these similarities, Orgoreyn is also "a genuine fullblown bureaucracy" (Le Guin 144).

Slightly departing from the central themes of the course, I was very interested in the concept of mental illness on Gethen. Obviously, insanity acts as a catalyst in the novel, simply by leading the king to order Estraven's exile. However, madness is less abhorred than respected in this culture, something that the narrator seems to find distasteful: he asks, confused "if these two psychopaths could not be cured" (Le Guin 63). There is a definite admiration found in the Karhider's voice when he responds, "Would you cure a singer of his voice?" (Le Guin 63).

I just finished watching the movie adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, and I have to confess that I was pretty disappointed. Obviously, Professor Fitzpatrick had warned us about the screenwriter’s not-so-feminist stance, but I was still pretty shocked. Some of the parts that I loved in the book came off as cheesy and over the top. For example, the Salvaging, one of the most chilling sections of the novel, had very little power in the film version. There was no “energy building…[no] tremor of readiness and anger” (278).

*I think I have a different addition, so my page numbers are probably very wrong. Sorry about that*

Since I wrote my last blog post about race, I decided to write this response paper about gender (mainly just to keep the title of the class going). I found the women in Neuromancer refreshingly different from the almost non-existent females of Starship Troopers. The character of Molly was obviously interesting, but I feel like we will talk about her in class even more on Wednesday. I was actually more interested in Linda Lee, Case’s arcade-haunting girlfriend. She seems to be a constant presence in the novel, and acts, at times, as Case’s motivation for his actions.

so i'm probably the only person watching this so late, but i just settled down to watch bladerunner and it's showing me that the content is unavailable. figures.
anyone else have this problem? i didn't have any problems watching starship troopers...

At first, I was really excited to read Neuromancer. It's won all kinds of awards, everyone in the class seemed pretty excited about it, and I had even heard of it!

I would like to preface this response paper by saying that I am not a science fiction reader. With the exception of Handmaid’s Tale, which I read purely on the basis of its being by Atwood, I have never even heard of any of the books on the syllabus. However, I am an English major, and I thought it downright prejudiced of me to discount an entire genre without even giving it a chance. That being said, I loved Starship Troopers.

sweet. technology.