I’m not sure how to define cyberpunk. Oh, I can recognize it, but I’m not sure if I know how to pare it down to a digestible one-sentence review. I know that I can easily look the answer up online, but I’m more interested in how people categorize it not as a list of features … Continue reading Cities of Magic
*Spoiler warning for The Hunger Games trilogy, including the latest film, Mockingjay Part 1* Oh, the tears. There are probably reasons why these novels and films hit me so hard. I just finished a class about happiness (or the lack thereof) in Romantic literature led by a professor who feels so acutely that many members … Continue reading Some Thoughts on Katniss Everdeen and Female Emotion
Post-apocalyptic fiction continually attempts to project itself into the future by resisting endings; each ending becomes instead an opportunity for continuation. Storytelling is the main method by which post-apocalyptic fiction attempts to resist closure, and this method can be traced back to the roots of the genre itself. Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, published in … Continue reading “If you can read this, LEAVE!!!” Storytelling in Left 4 Dead and Zone One
Jeff Lemire’s Essex County explores numerous aspects of rural Ontario life, but perhaps none more than the ways that masculinity separates men from one another and prevents them from experiencing healthy relationships with one another. The examination of masculinity is particularly important to book 2 of Essex County, “Ghost Stories” which follows the diverging lines … Continue reading Rail Ways, Crop Rows and Line Mates: Masculine Isolation in Jeff Lemire’s “Ghost Stories”
The Magus by John Fowles follows an entitled, selfish English graduate as he escapes his failed ambitions and relationships to a Greek island. There he meets Maurice Conchis, a billionaire intellectual who may be (but probably isn’t) connected to a supernatural force. The novel, set just after the Second World War, explores post-war masculine anxiety, … Continue reading Life at the Grindstone: the small significance of grinding
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