Blog Post 8

When someone says they are going to tell a love story people expect to hear about a boy and girl who fall in love but have some type of obstacle in the way of their relationship. In the end they overcome the obstacle, get married, and live happily ever after. In "Day Million" by Frederik Pohl the characters do get married and they do seem to live happily, but not in the way we'd expect them to. One of the first things that makes this an unconventional love story is that Dora is a transgender woman. Romantic stories about transgender women are most certainly not something you hear about everyday or ever really. In the story Dora's change in gender seemed to not bother anyone, if only people were that accepting now. The second thing is that Don and Dora didn't even say a word to each other before Don proposed. And we thought Romeo and Juliette fell in love too quick. Also, there was the fact that after the marriage they never interacted with each other again. If they ever felt the desire to be with one another they would simply go back to the recorded analogues. It was a strange love story that had me thinking "What the @!%$ is going on?!"during every paragraph.

Parthenogenesis literally means virgin birth, it's when an embryo develops from an unfertilized egg. This is something that does not occur in mammals. A mammals egg must be fertilized in order to develop into an embryo. So parthenogenesis specifically may be impossible for humans but virgin birth isn't. A woman doesn't need to have any type of sexual intercourse with a man in order for her to get pregnant, she just needs some fresh or frozen sperm and some intimate quality time with a turkey baster and BOOM she'll have herself a stinky, crying, snot nosed infant in about nine months. There has also been some research done on whether a female egg could be fertilized by artificial sperm and it seems to be a possibility. So will men serve any purpose if women gain the ability to reproduce without them? In “When It Changed” by Joanna Russ, it seems that the purpose of men is to be arrogant a**holes who need to make women feel inferior in order to make themselves feel better. Huh, that actually sounds like a lot of men I know. Don't worry boys I know it's "not all men" but it sure is plenty. In reality men would still serve a purpose even if they weren't needed to reproduce because any woman who is straight, bisexual, pan sexual, or is of any kind of sexuality that has interest towards the opposite sex wouldn't want their potential male partners to disappear. They are companions, best friends, brothers, boyfriends, husbands, fathers, etc. etc. and I suppose they can be entertaining sometimes.

Blog Post 6

Oh boy, I don't even know where to start with "Burning Chrome" by William Gibson. To be honest it was insanely difficult for me to get into the story. I was baffled with what was going on in this story and almost gave myself a headache trying to figure it out. As the story continued I started grasp some of the general concept. The story seems to be about two hackers who are trying to hack and steal money from Chrome. There are what seem to be brothels and eye replacements and a bunch of other strange things. All in all, it was pretty confusing to me.

On the other hand "Computer Friendly" by Eileen Gunn, was a story I was able to understand and thoroughly enjoyed. The way the children were euthanized if they didn't pass the tests, or seemed to be "too fidgety" like that one little girl, was something I found to be really disturbing. It reminded  me of how a computer company might be trying to make a new product and they have a bunch of different prototypes and once one acts up, they throw it away and try again till they make the perfect one. This story also reminded me of how now in our time some kids may not live up to their parents expectations and that child then becomes a lost cause to the parent. Just like the end of the story ,when the kids who were seen as useless became useful to that Chickensomething guy, computers, kids, or whatever it is might be a lost cause or failure to some but that doesn't mean that they aren't a success to others. To be totally cliché, one man's trash is another man's treasure.

Blog post 5

In the story "Reason" by Isaac Asimov, robots are supposed to adhere to three rules, 1. robot may not harm a human, or through inaction allow a human to come to harm 2. A robot must obey orders given it by humans, except where such orders would violate the first law 3. A robot must protect its own existence, except where such action would violate laws 1 and 2. These rules were made to follow the idea that the humans would always be the masters of the robots, but what happens when they create a robot smart enough to make up his own master? Once that happens all these rules go down the drain. Once Cutie begins to believe that there is a higher power involved in all of this, humans become inferior beings. I thought it was cool that even though they had completely different beliefs, in the end they found out they could still work together despite those differences.
In "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" by Brian Aldiss, the world has become massively overpopulated and restrictions have been placed on having children. The world is so distraught that nobody wants to have windows if all they're going to see is chaos. With the technology that has been created everyone is able to stay inside and enjoy gardens or cities without actually having to go outside. Not to mention that social interactions or relations with other humans are no longer necessary  because synthetic humans are being made so that they can ease the loneliness. The technology in this stories allows for human interactions to cease existing.  I found it really sad that David just wanted to be loved by his mother, like any child would, even though he was a synthetic life form. However, the mother couldn't love him because she knew he wasn't actually her son or even human.